Seven years of Amalasuentha's regency thus passed, and now at length,
at fifty-three years of age, Cassiodorus was promoted (Sept. 1, 533)
to the most distinguished place which a subject could occupy. He
received from Amalasuentha the office of Praetorian Praefect. As
thirty-three years had elapsed since his father was invested with the
same dignity, we may fairly conjecture that father and son both
climbed this eminence at the same period of their lives; yet,
considering the extraordinary credit which the younger Cassiodorus
enjoyed at Court, we might have expected that he would have been
clothed with the Praefecture before he attained the fifty-third year
of his age. And, in fact, he hints in the letter composed by him, in
which he informs himself of his own elevation[55], that that elevation
had been somewhat too long delayed, though the reason which he alleges
for the delay (namely, that the people might greet the new Praefect
the more heartily[56]) is upon the face of it not the true cause.

[Footnote 55: Var. ix. 24.]

[Footnote 56: 'Diutius quidem differendo pro te cunctorum vota
lassavimus, ut benevolentiam in te probaremus generalitatis, et
cunctis desiderabilior advenires.']

[Sidenote: Office of the Praetorian Praefect.]

The majesty of the Praetorian Praefect's office is fully dwelt upon
and its functions described in a letter in the following
collection[57], to which the reader is referred. Originally only the
chief officer of those Praetorian troops in Rome by whom the Emperor
was guarded, until, as was so often the case, he was in some fit of
petulance by the same pampered sentinels dethroned, the Praefectus