PROOEMIVM Preface.

... [he followed] the precedent for the allecticii those enrolled in the Senate in the Senate, and imitating his own parents, he also published a Roman history in seven books.

Boethius excelled in the highest offices and was a most skilled orator in both tongues. In the Senate, he praised King Theoderic in a brilliant speech on the occasion of his sons' consulship. He wrote a book on the Holy Trinity, certain dogmatic chapters, and a book against Nestorius. He also composed a bucolic poem. But in the work of the art of logic, that is, dialectic, in translating and in the mathematical disciplines, he was such that he either equaled or surpassed the ancient authors.

Cassiodorus Senator, a man most learned and powerful in many dignities, while still a young man, became an advisor to his father Cassiodorus, a patrician and praetorian prefect. Having recited the praises of Theoderic, King of the Goths, most eloquently, he was made quaestor by him, then patrician and ordinary consul, and afterwards master of offices and praetorian prefect. He suggested formulas for speeches, which he arranged into twelve books and placed the title Variae Diverse Matters upon them. By the order of King Theoderic, he wrote a Gothic history, declaring their origin, their locations, and their customs in books.

The names of the authors of the Variae in the manuscripts and families—led by the Montpellier manuscript, and the Leiden manuscript, which is alone in the second [family] but the best of all, and in the fourth [family] where the Brussels manuscript is by far the primary one—testify that the author was Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator. Nor do the manuscripts that preserved his chronicles (Chron. vol. 2, pp. 108–161) differ. The name Flavius is added from the letter of Pope Symmachus, dated June 11th original: "III id. Iun.", to Flavius Senator, vir clarissimus, consul original: "Flavio Senatore v. c. cos.". In the subscriptions of ecclesiastical works—namely the Institutiones Institutions, the Orthographia Orthography, the Commentary on the Psalms, the Complexiones Brief Summaries, and even the Historia Tripartita Tripartite History—he is called only Cassiodorus Senator. All the consular fasti lists of consuls of that age, both of the West and the East, likewise the charters and titles that name him as the eponym of the year 514, and finally the Variae themselves—both in the two final books, where the letters are inscribed with his name, and where the author's name is announced in royal letters—use one name: Senator. Clearly, according to the custom of that age, both the ancient polyonymy multiple-naming convention remains and the legitimate abbreviation of the name prevails, by placing only the final name in the full sequence. I do not find anyone who uses the name Cassiodorus alone [to refer to him].

8 allecticiis cod.

10 boethius cod. 11 theodericum cod. 12 cap. cod. 13 bucolicum cod. logicae cod.

14 talis fuit cod. 15 aequiperaret cod. 17 praetorio consiliarius cod. et om. cod. 18 theodericho cod. 19 officiorum cod. ad Iordanem p. XL, c. 3. [suggessit] proposui ego in praef.

ad Iordanem cod., sed a m. 1. emendatum est. praef. prae-

coniectura ad sententiam solummodo certa; praefuisset cod.; Usener verba praefuisset

21 superposuit insiticia iudicat. theodericho cod. 22 moresque XII libris Usener. post enuntians

erasi versus septendecim.