=Cassiodorus and S. Benedict.=--In the literary history of Europe, the part played by Cassiodorus was so important and the service rendered by him was so distinctive, that it seems pertinent for the purposes of this story to present in some detail the record of his life and work. As is indicated by the name by which he is known in history, Cassiodorus was of Greek lineage, his family belonging to the Greek city of Scyllacium in Southern Italy. His full name was Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator. His ancestors had, for several generations, held under the successive rulers of Italy positions of trust and honour, and the family ranked with the patricians. The father of the author and abbot, usually referred to as Cassiodorus the third, was finance minister under Odovacar, and when the Herulian King had been overcome and slain by Theodoric, the minister was skilful enough to make himself necessary to the Gothic conqueror, from whom he received various important posts, and by whom he was finally appointed Prætorian Prefect. The Cassiodorus with whom this study is concerned, known as Cassiodorus the fourth, was born about 479, or three years after the Gothic conquest.[10] He began his official career as early as twenty, and it was while holding, at this age, the position of Consilarius, that he brought himself to the favourable attention of Theodoric by means of an eloquent panegyric spoken in praise of that monarch. Theodoric appointed him Quæstor, an office which made him the mouth-piece of the sovereign. To the Quæstor belonged the duty of conducting the official correspondence of the Court, of receiving ambassadors, and of replying in fitting harangues to their addresses, so that he was at once foreign secretary and Court orator. He also had the responsibility of giving a final revision to all the laws which received the signature of the King, and of seeing that these were properly worded and did not conflict with previous enactments.[11] Theodoric, who had received what little education he possessed from Greek instructors in Constantinople, was said never to have mastered Latin, and he doubtless found the services of his eloquent and scholarly minister very convenient.