As dates were still reckoned by Consulships, at any rate through the greater part of the life of Cassiodorus, I have inserted the Consular Fasti for the period in question. It will be seen that several names of correspondents of Cassiodorus figure in this list. As a general though not universal practice, one of the two Consuls at this time was chosen from out of the Senate of Rome and the other from that of Constantinople. We can almost always tell whether a chronicler belongs to the Eastern or Western Empire by observing whether he puts the Eastern or Western Consul first. Thus, for A.D. 501, Marcellinus Comes, who was an official of the Eastern Empire, gives us 'Pompeius et Avienus, Coss.;' while Cassiodorus, in his 'Chronicon,' assigns the year to 'Avienus et Pompeius.' Pompeius was a nobleman of Constantinople, nephew of the Emperor Anastasius; while Avienus was a Roman Senator[186]. Again, in A.D. 490, Marcellinus gives the names of Longinus and Faustus, which Cassiodorus quotes as Faustus and Longinus. Longinus was a brother of the Emperor Zeno, and Faustus was for many years Praetorian Praefect under Theodoric, and was the receiver of many letters in the following collection. [Footnote 186: See Usener, p. 32.] I have endeavoured to give the priority always to the _Western_ Consul in the list before us, except in those cases where an Emperor (who was of course an Eastern) condescended to assume the Consular _trabea_. [Sidenote: Indictions.] Another mode of reckoning the dates which the reader will continually meet with in the following pages is by _Indictions_. The Indiction, as is well known, was a cycle of fifteen years, during which, as we have reason to believe, the assessment for the taxes remained undisturbed, a fresh valuation being made all round when the cycle was ended. Traces of this quindecennial period may be found in the third century, but the formal adoption of the Indiction is generally assigned to the Emperor Constantine, and to the year 312[187]. The Indiction itself, and every one of the years composing it, began on the 1st of September of the calendar year. The reason for this period being chosen probably was that the harvests of the year being then gathered in, the collection of the tithes of the produce, which formed an important part of the Imperial revenue, could be at once proceeded with. What gives an especial importance to this method of dating by Indictions, for the reader of the following letters is, that most of the great offices of State changed hands at the beginning of the year of the Indiction (Sept. 1), not at the beginning of the Calendar year. [Footnote 187: Compare Marquardt (Roemische Staatsverwaltung ii. 237). He remarks that the Indiction seems to have been first adopted in Egypt, and did not come into universal use all over the Empire till the end of the Fourth Century.]