Archaeologists have tried to determine at what date the old religion became extinct in Italy.

Their research leads them well into the Middle Ages, but, undoubtedly, even then they pause too soon.
Legend says that Cassiodorus attained the age of nearly a hundred years.

We may be sure that to the end he lived busily, for of idleness he speaks with abhorrence as the root of evil.

Doubtless he was always a copious talker, and to many a pilgrim he must have gossiped delightfully, alternating mundane memories with counsel good for the soul.

Only one of his monastic brethren is known to us as a man of any distinction: this was Dionysius Exiguus, or the Little, by birth a Scythian, a man of much learning.