This other kind of count had vague antecedents in Late Antiquity too: the father of Cassiodorus held positions of trust with Theodoric, as comes rerum privatarum, in charge of the imperial lands, then as comes sacrarum largitionum (" count of the sacred doles "), concerned with the finances of the realm.

During his working life, as quaestor sacri palatii c. 507-511, as a consul in 514, then as magister officiorum under Theodoric, and later under the regency for Theodoric's young successor, Athalaric, Cassiodorus kept copious records and letterbooks concerning public affairs.

Cassiodorus was a native Italian ( Squillace, Bruttium ), who rose to become advisor and secretary to the Gothic kings in various high offices.

Cassiodorus, minister to Theodoric, established a monastery at Vivarium in the heel of Italy with a library where he attempted to bring Greek learning to Latin readers and preserve texts both sacred and secular for future generations.

Cassiodorus, a Roman in the service of Theodoric the Great, invented the term " Visigothi " to match that of " Ostrogothi ", which terms he thought of as " western Goths " and " eastern Goths " respectively.

Cassiodorus, a Roman in the service of Theodoric the Great, invented the term " Visigothi " to match that of " Ostrogothi ", which terms he thought of as signifying " western Goths " and " eastern Goths " respectively.

Cassiodorus the courtier and magister of Theodoric the Great and his successors, left a book of panegyrics, his Laudes.

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.

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.

Theodoric died in 526 and Cassiodorus went on to serve his successors in the same capacity.

Cassiodorus ' Variae, published in 537, contains a letter written by Cassiodorus in the name of Theodoric the Great, addressed to the Aesti:

In the west, it survived under the Ostrogoths in Italy, as Cassiodorus reports Theodoric the Great's correspondence.

Treated with distinction by Theodoric on account of his oration in behalf of the Dalmatians, and protected by Cassiodorus, he entered the service of the Gothic court, but resigned at the time of the struggle with Byzantium ( about 536 ).

Only through the reign of Theodoric the Great ( 495-526 ), the conditions improved due to the administration by Cassiodorus.

As its unofficial librarian, Cassiodorus not only collected as many manuscripts as he could, he also wrote treatises aimed at instructing his monks in the proper uses of reading and methods for copying texts accurately.

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.

As its unofficial librarian, Cassiodorus collected as many manuscripts as he could, he also wrote treatises aimed at instructing his monks in the proper uses of texts.

A classically educated Roman convert, Cassiodorus wrote extensively on scribal practices.

While serving as the armarius at Vivarium c. 540-548, Cassiodorus wrote a commentary on the Psalms entitled Expositio Psalmorum as an introduction to the Psalms for individuals seeking to enter the monastic community.

This miniature was probably based on an original in the Codex Grandior, a lost imported Italian bible at Jarrow, which showed Cassiodorus and the nine volumes he wrote of commentary on the Bible.

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.

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

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 ).

In 533 a letter ostensibly written by King Athalaric to the senate in Rome, but ghosted by Cassiodorus, mentions the great work on the Goths, now complete, in which Cassiodorus " restored the Amali with the illustriousness of their race.

Cassiodorus, in a letter written in A. D. 527, described a fair held at a former pagan shrine of Leucothea, in the still culturally Greek region of south Italy, which had been Christianized by converting it to a baptistery ( Variae 8. 33 ).

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.

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.

Adam based his works in part on Einhard, Cassiodorus, and other earlier historians, as he had the whole library of the church of Bremen at his fingertips.

He also drew on Josephus's Antiquities, and the works of Cassiodorus, and there was a copy of the Liber Pontificalis in Bede's monastery.

In the monastic library at Jarrow were a number of books by theologians, including works by Basil, Cassian, John Chrysostom, Isidore of Seville, Origen, Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine of Hippo, Jerome, Pope Gregory I, Ambrose of Milan, Cassiodorus, and Cyprian.

) Letters of Cassiodorus, London: H. Frowde.

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.

This was repeated by Claudian and Sidonius and reinterpreted by Cassiodorus.

Despite numerous errors taken over from Eusebius, and some of his own, Jerome produced a valuable work, if only for the impulse which it gave to such later chroniclers as Prosper, Cassiodorus, and Victor of Tunnuna to continue his annals.

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.

According to his own introduction, he only had three days to review what Cassiodorus had written, meaning that he must also have relied on his own knowledge.

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.

Furthermore, Cassiodorus used the term " Goths " to refer only to the Ostrogoths, whom he served, and reserved the geographical term " Visigoths " for the Gallo-Hispanic Goths.

Agapetus collaborated with Cassiodorus in founding at Rome a library of ecclesiastical authors in Greek and Latin and helped Cassiodorus with the project of translating the standard Greek philosophers into Latin.

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.