SOURCE: “The Variae,” in Cassiodorus, University of California Press, 1979, pp. 55-102.

In the following essay, O'Donnell analyzes the compilation, content, and character of Cassiodorus's Variae, arguing that while Cassiodorus extols the virtues of Gothic rule, the work was not intended as a polemical treatise.

The collapse of Ostrogothic Italy in the face of Byzantine reconquest casts a shadow over the most important literary product of Cassiodorus' public career. That career, dated according to the documents in the Variae, did not last beyond 537 or 538; his appointment as praetorian prefect had originally been made in 533 in the name of Athalaric under Amalasuintha's influence, but we have seen how that youth died less than a year afterwards, to be followed swiftly to the grave by his murdered mother, leaving Theodahad in control of the kingdom. Theodahad's reign lasted scarcely two years, for it was in 535 that Belisarius set out on the...