the train of the war, and of which Cassiodorus strenuously laboured to
mitigate the severity.

[Footnote 69: Var. xii. 20.]

[Footnote 70: Var. xii. 22, 23, 24, 27, 28.]

[Footnote 71: Var. xii. 25.]

[Sidenote: End of Cassiodorus' official career.]

It is possible that the Praefect may have continued to hold office
down to the capture of Ravenna in May, 540, which made Witigis a
prisoner, and seemed to bring the Ostrogothic monarchy to an end. Upon
the whole, however, it is rather more probable that in the year 538
or 539 he finally retired from public life. The dates of his letters
will show that there is nothing in them which forbids us to accept
this conclusion; and the fact, if it be a fact, that in 540, when
Belisarius, with his Secretary Procopius in his train, made his
triumphal entry into Ravenna, the late Praefect was no longer there,
but in his native Province of Bruttii, a little lessens the difficulty
of that which still remains most difficult of comprehension, the
entire omission from Procopius' History of the Gothic War of all
mention of the name of Cassiodorus.

[Sidenote: The Variae edited.]

The closing years of the veteran statesman's tenure of office were
years of some literary activity. It was in them that he was
collecting, and to some extent probably revising, the letters which