the well-known works of Eusebius and Prosper, the copying being
unfortunately not correctly done. More than this, Cassiodorus has
attempted with little judgment to combine the mode of reckoning by
Consular years and by years of Emperors. As he is generally two or
three years out in his reckoning of the former, this proceeding has
the curious result of persistently throwing some Consulships of the
reigning Emperor into the reign of his predecessor.[35] Thus Probus is
Consul for two years under Aurelian, and for one year under Tacitus;
both the two Consulships of Carus and the first of Diocletian are
under Probus, while Diocletian's second Consulship is under Carinus
and Numerianus; and so forth. It is wonderful that so intelligent a
person as Cassiodorus did not see that combinations of this kind were
false upon the face of them.

[Footnote 35: It need hardly be explained that, as a matter of
compliment to the reigning Emperor, the first Consulship that fell
vacant after his accession to the throne was (I believe invariably)
filled by him, and that though he might sometimes have held the office
of Consul before his assumption of the diadem, this was not often the
case. Certainly, in the instances given above, Probus, Carus, and
Diocletian held no Consulships till after they had been saluted as
Emperors.]

When the Chronicle gets nearer to the compiler's own times it becomes
slightly more interesting, but also slightly less fair. Throughout the
fourth century a few little remarks are interspersed in the dry list
of names and dates, the general tendency of which is to praise up the
Gothic nation or to extenuate their faults and reverses. The battle of
Pollentia (402[36]) is unhesitatingly claimed as a Gothic victory; the
clemency of Alaric at the capture of Rome (410) is magnified; the