to restore her monuments; at the same time we hear of marble stolen from palaces in decay, and of temples which, as private property, are converted to ignoble use.  Moreover, at Rome sits an ecclesiastical dignitary, known as Papa, to whose doings already attaches considerable importance.  One of the last acts of the Senate which had any real meaning was to make a decree with regard to the election of this Bishop, forbidding his advance by the way of Simony.  Theodoric, an Arian, interferes only with the Church of Rome in so far as public peace demands it.  In one of his letters occurs a most remarkable dictum on the subject of toleration. “Religionem imperare non possumus, quia nemo cogitur ut credat invitus—­we cannot impose a religious faith, for no one can be compelled to believe against his conscience.”  This must, of course, have been the king’s own sentiment, but Cassiodorus worded it, and doubtless with approval.

Indeed, we are at no loss to discern the mind of the secretary in these official papers.  Cassiodorus speaks as often for himself as for the king; he delights to expatiate, from an obviously personal point of view, on any subject that interests him.  One of these is natural history; give him but the occasion, and he gossips of beasts, birds, and fishes, in a flow of the most genial impertinence.  Certain bronze elephants on the Via Sacra are falling to pieces and must be repaired:  in giving the order, Theodoric’s minister pens a little treatise on the habits and characteristics of the elephant.  His erudition is often displayed:  having to convey some direction about the Circus at Rome, he begins with a pleasant sketch of the history of chariot racing.  One marvels at the man who, in such a period, preserved this mood of liberal leisure.  His style is perfectly suited to the matter; diffuse, ornate, amusingly affected; altogether a precious mode of writing, characteristic of literary decadence.  When the moment demands it, he is pompously grandiloquent; in dealing with a delicate situation, he becomes involved and obscure.  We perceive in him a born courtier, a proud noble, a statesman of high purpose and no little sagacity; therewith, many gracious and attractive qualities, coloured by weaknesses, such as agreeable pedantry and amiable self-esteem, which are in part personal, partly the note of his time.

One’s picture of the man is, of course, completed from a knowledge of the latter years of his life, of the works produced during his monastic retirement.  Christianity rarely finds expression in the Variae, a point sufficiently explained by the Gothic heresy, which imposed discretion in public utterances; on the other hand, pagan mythology abounds; we observe the hold it still had upon educated minds—­education, indeed, meaning much the same thing in the sixth century after Christ as in the early times of the Empire.  Cassiodorus can never have been a fanatical devotee of any creed.  Of his sincere piety there is no