Such then was the general purpose of the Gothic History of Cassiodorus. The book itself has perished--a tantalising loss when we consider how many treatises from the same pen have been preserved to us which we could well have spared. But we can speak, as will be seen from the preceding remarks, with considerable confidence as to its plan and purpose, because we possess in the well-known treatise of Jordanes 'On the Origin of the Goths[45]' an abbreviated copy, executed it is true by a very inferior hand, but still manifestly preserving some of the features of the original. It will not be necessary here to go into the difficult question as to the personality of this writer, which has been debated at considerable length and with much ingenuity by several German authors[46]. It is enough to say that Jordanes, who was, according to his own statement, 'agrammatus,' a man of Gothic descent, a notary, and then a monk[47], on the alleged request of his friend Castalius, 'compressed the twelve books of Senator, _de origine actibusque Getarum_, bringing down the history from olden times to our own days by kings and generations, into one little pamphlet.' Still, according to his statement, which there can be little doubt is here thoroughly false, he had the loan of the Gothic History for only three days from the steward of Cassiodorus, and wrote chiefly or entirely from his recollection of this hasty perusal[48]. He says that he added some suitable passages from the Greek and Latin historians, but his own range of historical reading was evidently so narrow that we may fairly suspect these additions to have been of the slenderest possible dimensions. Upon the whole, there can be little doubt that it is a safe rule to attribute everything that is good or passable in this little treatise to Cassiodorus, and everything that is very bad, childish, and absurd in it to Jordanes. [Footnote 45: 'De Rebus Geticis,' or 'De Gothorum Origine,' is the name by which this little treatise is usually known. It seems to be doubtful, however, what title, if any, Jordanes himself prefixed to it. Mommsen calls it simply 'Getica.'] [Footnote 46: Especially Schirren, 'De Ratione quae inter Jordanem et Cassiodorum intercedat' (Dorpat, 1858); Sybel, 'De Fontibus Libri Jordanis' (Berlin, 1838); and Koepke, 'Die Anfaenge des Koenigthums bei den Gothen' (Berlin, 1859).] [Footnote 47: _Possibly_ in the end Bishop of Crotona, or a Defensor of the Roman Church, since we find a Jordanes in each of these positions; but this is mere guesswork, and to me neither theory seems probable.]