An ornamental woodcut headpiece features a central siren figure holding foliage, flanked by scrollwork and reclining cherubs.

INTO THE NEW

EDITION OF THE WORKS OF

MAGNUS AURELIUS

CASSIODORUS

SENATOR.

PREFACE.

HERE, Kind Reader, you have a new Edition of all the works of Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator. Since we are undertaking this, it is necessary for us to explain in a few words why it is called "new." 1. No one before us had gathered into one body the individual writings of this most celebrated Author, which we have collected after searching with the greatest diligence for manuscript codices and searching through the archives of the learned. 2. We have restored many things that were lacking in published works from older, authenticated manuscripts: we have provided whole pages, filled in gaps, and corrected what was foully corrupted through the ignorance of copyists or the error of the press, in such a way that sometimes, having completely neglected the printed context, it was necessary to adhere only to our manuscript codices. In the whole work, however, we have loaded the margins with various texts which, although doubtful, could be considered worthy by a fair Reader. Thirdly, finally, this present Edition is called New because we have added certain works never before published.

Regarding the series of books or treatises, which you see here, Reader, we have arranged the whole work into two volumes. The first contains all that our Senator wrote as a politician and historian. The second contains what the Author published on Holy Scripture, and his books on the institutions of Divine and human letters, and finally the book which he inscribed concerning the Soul.

On the book of "Variae."

But lest the Reader be unaware of what we now intend to be his own, we shall say a few words about each. We begin with the distinguished work of the Variae Diverse Letters, which is completed in twelve books. It is a collection of various types of Epistles which he wrote frequently under the Gothic Kings Theodoric, Athalaric, Theodahat, and Vitiges, and in their name; and which he directed in his own name while he held the office of Praetorian Prefect under those Kings. There, also, various formulas of dignities to be granted under that Gothic Monarchy are held. By this genre of writing, our Aurelius so won over everyone to himself; although some complain that the barbarism of the style does not attain the dignity of the subjects and the majesty of the Royal name. Others protest, and do not deny Cassiodorus his charms of writing; nor will even a rigid Aristarchus critic deny that nowhere can be found such acuteness of wit, so many weights of reasoning, such gravity of sentences, such a manifold abundance of varied erudition, and a storehouse so filled with both kinds of wisdom, as in our most illustrious Senator.