aestimati, ita vobis rerum antiqua progenies imperaret.' For 'rerum'
we must surely read 'regum.']

[Sidenote: Its purpose.]

In reading this estimate by Cassiodorus of his own performance, we can
see at once that it lacked that first of all conditions precedent for
the attainment of absolute historic truth, complete impartiality[43].
Like Hume and like Macaulay Cassiodorus wrote his history with a
purpose. We may describe that purpose as two-fold:

[Footnote 43: My meaning would be better expressed by the useful
German word 'voraussetzungslosigkeit,' freedom from a foregone
conclusion.]

(1) To vindicate the claim of the Goths to rank among the historic
nations of antiquity by bringing them into some sort of connection
with Greece and Rome ('Originem Gothicam historiam fecit esse
Romanam'); and (2) among the Goths, to exalt as highly as possible the
family of the Amals, that family from which Theodoric had sprung, and
to string as many regal names as possible upon the Amal chain
('Evidenter ostendens in decimam septimam progeniem stirpem nos habere
regalem').

I have said that the possession of a purpose like this is unfavourable
to the attainment of absolute historic truth; but the aim which
Cassiodorus proposed to himself was a lofty one, being in fact the
reconciliation of the past and the future of the world by showing to
the outworn Latin race that the new blood which was being poured into
it by the northern nations came, like its own, from a noble ancestry: