Theodoric's successors, no longer kings, but mere Gothic chieftains, strove obscurely against inevitable doom, until the generals of Juistinian trod Italy into barren servitude.

Only when the purpose of his life was shattered, when--Theodoric long dead--his still faithful service to the Gothic rule became an idle form, when Belisarius was compassing the royal city of Ravenna, and voice of council could no longer make itself heard amid tumult and ruin, did Cassiodorus retire from useless office, and turn his back upon the world.
He was aged about sixty.

Long before, he had written a history of the Goths (known to us only in a compendium by another hand), of which the purpose seems to have been to reconcile the Romans to the Gothic monarchy; it began by endeavouring to prove that Goths had fought against the Greeks at Troy.

Now that his public life was over, he published a collection of the state papers composed by him under the Gothic rulers from Theodoric to Vitigis: for the most part royal rescripts addressed to foreign powers and to officials of the kingdom.
Invaluable for their light upon men and things fourteen hundred years ago, these _Variae_ of Cassiodorus; and for their own sake, as literary productions, most characteristic, most entertaining.

Not quite easy to read, for the Latin is by no means Augustan, but after labour well spent, a delightful revelation of the man and the age.