'It will be a great gain to us that the Burgundians should daily look upon something sent by us which will appear to them little short of miraculous. Exert yourself therefore, oh Boetius, to get this thing put in hand. You have thoroughly imbued yourself with Greek philosophy[246]. You have translated Pythagoras the musician, Ptolemy the astronomer, Nicomachus the arithmetician, Euclid the geometer, Plato the theologian, Aristotle the logician, and have given back the mechanician Archimedes to his own Sicilian countrymen (who now speak Latin). You know the whole science of Mathematics, and the marvels wrought thereby. A machine [perhaps something like a modern orrery] has been made to exhibit the courses of the planets and the causes of eclipses. What a wonderful art is Mechanics! The mechanician, if we may say so, is almost Nature's comrade, opening her secrets, changing her manifestations, sporting with miracles, feigning so beautifully, that what we know to be an illusion is accepted by us as truth.' [Footnote 246: Evidently 'sic enim Atheniensium scholas longe positus introisti' does not mean that Boethius actually visited Athens, but that he became thoroughly at home in the works of Athenian philosophers.] 46. KING THEODORIC TO GUNDIBAD [SIC], KING OF THE BURGUNDIANS. [Sidenote: On the same subject.] Sends the two clocks, or rather perhaps the celestial globe and the water-clock. 'Have therefore in your country what you have often seen in Rome. It is right that we should send you presents, because you are connected with us by affinity. It is said that under you "Burgundia" looks into the most subtle things, and praises the discoveries of the ancients. Through you she lays aside her "Gentile" (barbarous) nature, and imitating the prudence of her King, rightly desires to possess the inventions of sages. Let her arrange her daily actions by the movements of God's great lights; let her nicely adjust the moments of each hour. In mere confusion passes the order of life when this accurate division of time is unknown. Men are like the beasts, if they only know the passage of the hours by the pangs of hunger, and have no greater certainty as to the flight of time than such as is afforded them by their bellies. For certainty is undoubtedly meant to be entwined in human actions.' BOOK II. CONTAINING FORTY-ONE LETTERS WRITTEN BY CASSIODORUS IN THE NAME OF THEODORIC. I. KING THEODORIC TO ANASTASIUS, MOST PIOUS EMPEROR. A.D. 511. [Sidenote: Consulship of Felix.] 'By excellent ordinance of the ancients the year is named from the Consul. Let the happy year take its title from our new Consul, _Felix_ [Consul with Secundinus, A.D. 511[247]]. [Footnote 247: 'Portamque dierum tali nomine dicatus annus, tempos introeat.' The figure here used seems borrowed from Claudian, In Primum Cons. Stilichonis ii. 425-476.]