4. King Theodoric to the Senate of the City of Rome.

[Introducing Cassiodorus (Senior) on his accession to the honours of the Patriciate.]

Great deeds of the ancestors of Cassiodorus for three generations.

Compliments to the Senate, of which Theodoric wishes to increase the dignity by bestowing honours on its most eminent members.

Recital of the services and good qualities of Cassiodorus[216]:

(a) as 'Comes Privatarum;'

(b) as 'Comes Sacrarum Largitionum;'

(c) as Governor of Provinces.

(General reflections on the importance of a governor being himself a virtuous man).

'Having been trained thus to official life under the preceding King [Odovacar] he came with well-earned praises to our palace.'

(d) His eminent career as Praetorian Praefect and modest demeanour therein.

Services of previous members of his family. Fame seems to be always at home among the Cassiodori. They are of noble birth, equally celebrated among orators and warriors, healthy of body, and very tall.

His father, Cassiodorus [217], was 'Tribunus et Notarius' under Valentinian III. This last was a great honour, for only men of spotless life were associated with the Imperial 'Secretum.' A friendship, founded on likeness, drew him to the side of Aetius, whose labours for the State he shared.

Embassy to Attila. 'With the son of this Aetius, named Carpilio, he was sent on no vain embassy to Attila, the mighty in arms. He looked undaunted on the man before whom the Empire quailed. Calm in conscious strength, he despised all those terrible wrathful faces that scowled around him. He did not hesitate to meet the full force of the invectives of the madman who fancied himself about to grasp the Empire of the world. He found the King insolent; he left him pacified; and so ably did he argue down all his slanderous pretexts for dispute that though the Hun's interest was to quarrel with the richest Empire in the world, he nevertheless condescended to seek its favour. The firmness of the orator roused the fainting courage of his countrymen, and men felt that Rome could not be pronounced defenceless while she was armed with such ambassadors. Thus did he bring back the peace which men had despaired of; and as earnestly as they had prayed for his success, so thankfully did they welcome his return.'

He was offered honours and revenues, but preferred to seek the pleasant retirement of Bruttii in the land which his exertions had freed from the terror of the stranger.

His father, Cassiodorus[218], an 'Illustris,' defended the coasts of Sicily and Bruttii from the Vandals, thus averting from those regions the ruin which afterwards fell upon Rome from the same quarter.

In the East, Heliodorus, a cousin of the Cassiodori, has brilliantly discharged the office of Praefect for eighteen years, as Theodoric himself can testify. Thus the family, conspicuous both in the Eastern and Western World, has two eyes with which it shines with equal brilliancy in each Senate.

Cassiodorus is so wealthy that his herds of horses surpass those of the King, to whom he makes presents of some of them in order to avoid envy. 'Hence it arises that our present candidate [for patrician honours] mounts the armies of the Goths; and having even improved upon his education, generously administers the wealth which he received from his parents.

'Now, Conscript Fathers, welcome and honour the new Patrician, who is so well worthy of a high place among you.'