2. The other work of Jordanes commonly called _De rebus Geticis_ or _Getica_, was styled by himself _De origine actibusque Getarum_, and was also written in 551. He informs us that while he was engaged upon the _Romana_ a friend named Castalius invited him to compress into one small treatise the twelve books--now lost--of the senator Cassiodorus, on _The Origin and Actions of the Goths_. Jordanes professes to have had the work of Cassiodorus in his hands for but three days, and to reproduce the sense not the words; but his book, short as it is, evidently contains long verbatim extracts from the earlier author, and it may be suspected that the story of the _triduana lectio_ and the apology _quamvis verba non recolo_, possibly even the friendly invitation of Castalius, are mere blinds to cover his own entire want of originality. This suspicion is strengthened by the fact (discovered by von Sybel) that even the very preface to his book is taken almost word for word from Rufinus's translation of Origen's commentary on the epistle to the Romans. There is no doubt, even on Jordanes' own statements, that his work is based upon that of Cassiodorus, and that any historical worth which it possesses is due to that fact. Cassiodorus was one of the very few men who, Roman by birth and sympathies, could yet appreciate the greatness of the barbarians by whom the empire was overthrown. The chief adviser of Theodoric, the East Gothic king in Italy, he accepted with ardour that monarch's great scheme, if indeed, he did not himself originally suggest it, of welding Roman and Goth together into one harmonious state which should preserve the social refinement and the intellectual culture of the Latin-speaking races without losing the hardy virtues of their Teutonic conquerors. To this aim everything in the political life of Cassiodorus was subservient, and this aim he evidently kept before him in his Gothic history. But in writing that history Cassiodorus was himself indebted to the work of a certain Ablabius. It was Ablabius, apparently, who had first used the Gothic sagas (_prisca carmina_); it was he who had constructed the stem of the Amals. Whether he was a Greek, a Roman or a Goth we do not know; nor can we say when he wrote, though his work may be dated conjecturally in the early part of the reign of Theodoric the Great. We can only say that he wrote on the origin and history of the Goths, using both Gothic saga and Greek sources; and that if Jordanes used Cassiodorus, Cassiodorus used, if to a less extent, the work of Ablabius.