PROOEMIVM.

...he himself says in letter XI.39 that he served as judge in the province from which he drew his origin, that is, that he also administered the governorship of Lucania and the Bruttii, following his father's example.

When Senator was born cannot be determined with certainty. But since he was made quaestor while still quite young, and as he himself says, at a "primeval" original: "primaevus" (in the prime of life/early youth) age, both because of the splendor of his birth and because his eloquence had pleased the King, we may rightly assume he began his course of illustrious honors at about twenty years of age. Since the letters he wrote as quaestor seem to be contained within the years 507–511 AD, he should be believed to have been born around 490 AD. While his birth cannot be fixed before this point, he could easily have been born a few years earlier. This is consistent with the fact that throughout the entire collection of the Variae, he never aspires to the privileges or excuses of old age—something a writer of that temperament would certainly have done if his age had allowed—and therefore it is likely that at the time he published the Variae, that is, in 537 AD, he was of mature rather than elderly age.

He became a counselor to his father, the Praetorian Prefect—an honor from which we already know from the anecdote that Cassiodorus began his public life—no earlier than 501 AD, as we have seen his father's prefecture to be later than 500 AD.

Although the anecdote narrates that he was created quaestor because of the praises of King Theodoric he recited, it is not very clear in what capacity he could have delivered such an oration before being admitted to the Senate. Later, as he says in the preface to the Variae, he "publicly praised queens and kings," and certain fragments of his orations survive, handed down without the name of the author, but probably related to Cassiodorus, which we have appended to the Variae. The time of his quaestorship is determined by the fact that, as will be shown below, the letters of the first four books of this collection were written by Cassiodorus during his quaestorship. None of them can be proved by certain arguments to be earlier than 507 or later than 511 AD. We shall therefore conclude that his term of office fell between these dates, perhaps even more restricted; for it is unlikely that an office rightfully held for one year was continued for five years.

The fairly ample interval that exists between the author's quaestorship and his mastership will probably be attributed to the aforementioned governorship of Lucania and the Bruttii, which he administered after his illustrious honors, following his father's example.