The Variae of Cassiodorus

A circular emblem or seal of the Society for the Opening of Sources of German Affairs of the Middle Ages (Monumenta Germaniae Historica), enclosed within an oak leaf wreath. The emblem contains text arranged in a circular border and central horizontal lines.

To the brief narration concerning the life of Cassiodorus, which we did not wish to exclude from this edition of the Variae Diverse matters, we have prefixed what remains of his own booklet on the lineage of the Cassiodorii. This was found some years ago among the diverse excerpts of Cassiodorus's Institutiones humanarum rerum Institutions of Human Affairs in the Codex Augiensis no. 106, now in Karlsruhe, folio 53' of the 10th century 1) Excerpts here seem poorly disturbed by the epitomizer from those that follow below.. It was happily discovered by Alfred Holder and edited by my excellent friend Hermann Usener (Festschrift for the Welcome of the XXXII. Assembly of German Philologists and Schoolmasters. Holder's Anecdoton. A Contribution to the History of Rome in the Ostrogothic Time. Leipzig 1877, pp. 80) and provided by him with a commentary as is his custom, clear and bright. The same Holder revised these for my sake.

Excerpts from the booklet of Cassiodorus the Senator [a monk and servant of God, formerly a patrician, ordinary consul, quaestor, and master of offices], which he wrote to Rufius Petronius Nicomachus, former ordinary consul, patrician, and master of offices.
The lineage of the Cassiodorii, who were writers among their progeny, or from
5 which learned men Usener notes: "from which learned men have progressed".
Symmachus, patrician and ordinary consul, a philosopher man, who was a novice imitator of the ancient Cato, but surpassed the virtues of the ancients with the most holy religion. He said

1. The remaining books of his Institutiones Institutions do not contain these excerpts. G. Schepps of Würzburg (Neues Archiv 11, 123 seq.) has demonstrated that the author of the unpublished commentaries on the consolation of Boethius (preserved in the Metz codex 377, the St. Gall 845, and others) used this treatise, but we have gained nothing for our own affairs from that.