The letters of Cassiodorus, chief minister and literary adviser of Amalasuntha, and the histories of Procopius and Jordanes, give us our chief information as to the character of Amalasuntha.

* Cassiodorus: A lost history of the Goths used by Jordanes

Jordanes was asked by a friend to write this book as a summary of a multi-volume history of the Goths ( now lost ) by the statesman Cassiodorus.

In the preface to his Getica, Jordanes writes that he is interrupting his work on the Romana at the behest of a brother Castalius, who apparently knew that Jordanes had had the twelve volumes of the History of the Goths by Cassiodorus at home.

* Arne Søby Christensen, Cassiodorus, Jordanes, and the History of the Goths.

But Cassiodorus does not supply any details about his correspondent or the size and nature of his pension, and Jordanes, whose history of the period abridges an earlier work by Cassiodorus, makes no mention of a pension.

De origine actibusque Getarum ( The Origin and Deeds of the Getae / Goths ), or the Getica, written in Late Latin by Jordanes ( or Jornandes ) in 551, claims to be a summary of a voluminous account by Cassiodorus of the origin and history of the Gothic people, which may have had the title " Origo Gothica " and which is now lost.

However, we cannot assess the extent to which Jordanes actually used the work of Cassiodorus ( see the discussion below on the sources also used by Jordanes ).

In the pen of Jordanes ( or Cassiodorus ), Herodotus ' Getian demi-god Zalmoxis becomes a king of the Goths ( 39 ).

Because the original work of Cassiodorus has not survived, the work of Jordanes is one of the most important sources for the period of the migration of the European tribes, and the Ostrogoths and Visigoths in particular, from the 3rd century CE.

The fact that Jordanes once obtained them from a steward indicates that the wealthy Cassiodorus was able to hire at least one full-time custodian of them and other manuscripts of his ; i. e., a private librarian ( a custom not unknown even today ).

Cassiodorus, Jordanes, and the History of the Goths.

The names of Rhovanion's royal family, Vidugavia, Vidumavi and Vinitharya are of Gothic origin and are attested in sixth-century chronicles by Cassiodorus, Jordanes and Procopius.

The History was used in the Excerpta de Legationibus of Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus ( r. 913 – 959 ), as well as by authors such as Evagrius Scholasticus, Cassiodorus, Jordanes, and the author of the Souda.

Sixth Century historian Jordanes makes two references the Aesti in his book " The Origins and the Deeds of the Goths ", which was a treatment of Cassiodorus ' longer book ( which no longer survives ) on the history of the Goths.

Strabo, Polyaenus, Cassiodorus, and Jordanes ( in De origine actibusque Getarum, The Origin and Deeds of the Goths ) also wrote of her.

According to other historians, Jordanes ' narrative has little relation to Cassiodorus ,' no relation to oral traditions, and little relation to actual history.

A Danish historian, Arne Søby has nonetheless proposed that Cassiodorus, who wrote the original text on which Jordanes ' work is based, invented him, with inspiration from the name of Βέρικος ( Berikos or Verica ).

The word is Latin, meaning " the four ways " ( or a " place where four roads meet "), and its use for the 4 subjects has been attributed to Boethius or Cassiodorus in the 6th century.

Cassiodorus mentions Estonia in his book V. Letters 1 – 2 dating from the 6th century.

* Epiphanius Scholasticus ( 6th century ), assistant of Cassiodorus who compiled the Historiae Ecclesiasticae Tripartitae Epitome, ca.

Cassiodorus spent his career trying to bridge the 6th century cultural divides: between East and West, Greek culture and Latin, Roman and Goth, and between a Catholic people and their Arian ruler.

The monastery built in the second quarter of the 6th century under the eye of Cassiodorus at Vivarium in southern Italy contained a purpose-built scriptorium, because he was consciously attempting to collect, copy, and preserve texts.

In the 6th century Cassiodorus was able to apply his own latifundia to support his short-lived Vivarium in the heel of Italy.

In the 6th century AD, the Roman writer Cassiodorus notes that the sweet wines of the area were favorites in the courts of the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy.

The comma is also absent from an extant fragment of Clement of Alexandria ( c. 200 ), through Cassiodorus ( 6th century ), with homily style verse references from 1 John, including verse 1 John 5: 6 and 1 John 5: 8 without verse 7, the heavenly witnesses.

It is the earliest known copy of the commentary written by Cassiodorus in the sixth century and the hands of six scribes have been identified within it.

As sources, Aurelian used Isidore of Seville, Cassiodorus, and above all Boethius, but the eight Tones were more likely than not imported from Byzantine music in the 8th century.

Thomas Hodgkin, a translator of Cassiodorus ' works, wrote in 1886 that it was " surely possible " the Romulus in the letter was the same person as the last western emperor.

Cassiodorus ' last ghost writing for the Gothic kings was done for Witiges, who was removed to Constantinople in 540.

At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Cassiodorus without colleague ( or, less frequently, year 1267 Ab urbe condita ).

According to the 5th-century Roman historian Cassiodorus the people known to Tacitius as the Aestii were the Estonians.

Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator ( c. 485 – c. 585 ), commonly known as Cassiodorus, was a Roman statesman and writer, serving in the administration of Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths.

Alan Cameron notes that Cassiodorus and Boethius both refer to him as " Macrobius Theodosius ", while he was known during his lifetime as " Theodosius ": the dedication to the De differentiis is addressed Theodosius Symmacho suo (" Theodosius to his Symmachus "), and by the dedicatory epistle to Avianus's Fables, where he is addressed as Theodosi optime.

The first Christian encyclopedia were the Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum of Cassiodorus ( 543-560 ), which were divided in two parts: the first one dealt with Christian Divinity ; the second one described the seven liberal arts.

Cassiodorus, a younger contemporary of the above, used the names tensibilia, percussionalia, and inflatilia ;

The author of a continuation of Dionysius's Computus, writing in 616, described Dionysius as a " most learned abbot of the city of Rome ", and the Venerable Bede accorded him the honorific abbas, which could be applied to any monk, especially a senior and respected monk, and does not necessarily imply that Dionysius ever headed a monastery ; indeed, Dionysius's friend Cassiodorus stated in Institutiones that he was still only a monk late in life.

However, other sources depict these men in far more positive light: for example Cassiodorus describes Cyprianus and Opilio as " utterly scrupulous, just and loyal " and mentions they are brothers and grandsons of the consul Opilio ; Theodoric was feeling threatened by international events: the Acacian Schism had been resolved, and the Catholic Christians aristocrats of his kingdom were seeking to renew their ties with Constantinople ; the Catholic Hilderic became king of the Vandals and put his sister Amalafrida to death ; and Arian Christians in the East were being persecuted.

Cassiodorus ' Vivarium " monastery school " was composed of two main buildings ; a coenobitic monastery and a retreat, on the site of the modern Santa Maria de Vetere near Squillace, for those who desired a more solitary life.

Cassiodorus had claimed to have the Gothic " folk songs " — carmina prisca ( Latin ) — as an important source ; recent scholarship regards this as highly questionable.

This was also a period of transmission: the Roman patrician Boethius ( c. 480 – 524 ) translated part of Aristotle's logical corpus, thus preserving it for the Latin West, and wrote the influential literary and philosophical treatise De consolatione Philosophiae ; Cassiodorus ( c. 485 – 585 ) founded an important library at the monastery of Vivarium near Squillace where many texts from Antiquity were to be preserved.