[200] 'Tu enim illos assumpsisti verâ laude describere, et quodammodo historico colore depingere.'
[201] 'Contingit enim dissimilem filium plerumque generari, oratio dispar moribus vix potest inveniri.'
[202] 'Duodecim libris Gothorum historiam defloratis prosperitatibus condidisti.' By an extraordinary error this sentence has been interpreted to mean that Cassiodorus wrote his history of the Goths after their prosperity had faded; and some writers have accordingly laboured, quite hopelessly, to bring down the composition of the Gothic History to a late period in the reign of Athalaric. It is perfectly clear from many passages that Cassiodorus uses 'deflorare' in the sense of 'picking flowers,' 'culling a nosegay.' See Historia Tripartita, Preface (twice); De Instit. Divin. Litterarum, cap. xxx; and De Orthographiâ, cap. ii (title). I doubt not that careful search would discover many more instances. It is only strange to me that Cassiodorus should, by the words 'defloratis prosperitatibus,' so naïvely confess the one-sided character of his history.
[203] The editors waver between 'quod est in edicto' and 'quod est in edito (constitutum).'
[204] 'Vos totius orbis salutare praesidium, quod caeteri dominantes jure suspiciunt quia in vobis singulare aliquid inesse cognoscunt.' 'Suspiciunt' seems to give a better sense than the other reading, 'suscipiunt.'
[205] 'Quia in vobis singulare aliquid inesse cognoscunt.'
[206] 'Illum atque illum.' I shall always render this phrase (which shows that Cassiodorus had not preserved the names of the ambassadors) as above.
[207] 'Quia pati vos non credimus, inter utrasque Respublicas, quarum semper unum corpus sub antiquis principibus fuisse declaratur, aliquid discordiae permanere.'
[208] 'Pomâ meute deposcimus ne suspendatis a nobis mansuetudinis vestrae gloriosissimam caritatem.'
[209] For some remarks on the date of this letter, see Introduction, [p. 23]. The mention of interrupted peace, which evidently requires not mere estrangement but an actual state of war, points to the year 505, when Sabinian, the general of Anastasius, was defeated by the Ostrogoths and their allies at Horrea Margi; or to 508, when the Imperial fleet made a raid on the coast of Apulia, as probable dates for the composition of the letter. Its place at the beginning of the Variae does not at all imply priority in date to the letters which follow it. It was evidently Cassiodorus' method to put in the forefront of every book in his collection a letter to an Emperor or King, or other great personage.