César François Cassini, or Cassini de Thury (1714-1784), son of Jacques Cassini, was born at the observatory of Paris on the 17th of June 1714. He succeeded to his father’s official employments, continued the hereditary surveying operations, and began in 1744 the construction of a great topographical map of France. The post of director of the Paris observatory was created for his benefit in 1771, when the establishment ceased to be a dependency of the Academy of Sciences. Cassini de Thury died at Thury on the 4th of September 1784. His chief works are:—Méridienne de l’observatoire de Paris (1744), Description géométrique de la terre (1775), and Description géométrique de la France (1784).
See C. Wolf, Histoire de l’observatoire de Paris, p. 287; Max. Marie, Histoire des sciences, viii. 158; J. Delambre, Histoire de I’astronomie au XVIII’e siècle, pp. 275-309; R. Wolf, Geschichte der Astronomie, p. 451; J.J. de Lalande, Bibliographic astronomique.
Jacques Dominique Cassini, Count (1748-1845), son of César François Cassini, was born at the observatory of Paris on the 30th of June 1748. He succeeded in 1784 to the directorate of the observatory; but his plans for its restoration and re-equipment were wrecked in 1793 by the animosity of the National Assembly. His position having become intolerable, he resigned on the 6th of September, and was thrown into prison in 1794, but released after seven months. He then withdrew to Thury, where he died, aged ninety-seven, on the 18th of October 1845. He published in 1770 an account of a voyage to America in 1768, undertaken as the commissary of the Academy of Sciences with a view to testing Pierre Leroy’s watches at sea. A memoir in which he described the operations superintended by him in 1787 for connecting the observatories of Paris and Greenwich by longitude-determinations appeared in 1791. He visited England for the purposes of the work, and saw William Herschel at Slough. He completed his father’s map of France, which was published by the Academy of Sciences in 1793. It served as the basis for the Atlas National (1791), showing France in departments. Count Cassini’s Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de l’observatoire de Paris (1810) embodied portions of an extensive work, the prospectus of which he had submitted to the Academy of Sciences in 1774. The volume included his Éloges of several academicians, and the autobiography of his great-grandfather, the first Cassini.
See J.F.S. Devic, Histoire de la vie et des travaux de J.D. Cassini (1851); J. Delambre, Histoire de l’astronomie au XVIII’e siècle, pp. 309-313; Phil. Mag. 3rd series, vol. xxviii. p. 412; C. Wolf, Histoire de l’observatoire de Paris (1902), p. 234 et passim.
(A. M. C.)
CASSIODORUS (not Cassiodorius), the name of a Syrian family settled at Scyllacium (Squillace) in Bruttii, where it held an influential position in the 5th century a.d. Its most important member was Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator (c. 490-585), historian, statesman, and monk. “Senator” (not a title) is the name used by himself in his official correspondence. His father held the offices of comes privatarum and sacrarum largitionum (controller of the emperor’s private revenue and the public exchequer) under Odoacer, and subsequently attached himself to Theodoric, by whom he was appointed corrector (governor) of Bruttii and Lucania, and praefectus praetorio. The son at an early age became consiliarius (legal assessor) to his father, and (probably in 507) quaestor, an official whose chief duty at that time consisted in acting as the mouthpiece of the ruler, and drafting his despatches. In 514 he was ordinary consul, and at a later date possibly corrector of his native province. At the death of Theodoric (526) he held the office of magister officiorum (chief of the civil service). Under Athalaric he was praefectus praetorio, a post which he retained till about 540, after the triumphal entry of Belisarius into Ravenna, when he retired from public life. With the object of providing for the transmission of divine and human knowledge to later ages, and of securing it against the tide of barbarism which threatened to sweep it away, he founded two monasteries—Vivarium and Castellum—in his ancestral domains at Squillace (others identify the two monasteries). The special duty which he enjoined upon the inmates was the acquisition of knowledge, both sacred and profane, the latter, however, being subordinated to the former. He also collected and emended valuable MSS., which his monks were instructed to copy, and superintended the translation of various Greek works into Latin. He further amused himself with making scientific toys, such as sun-dials and water-clocks. As he is stated to have written one of his treatises at the age of ninety-three, he must have lived till after 580. Whether he belonged to the Benedictine order is uncertain.
The writings of Cassiodorus evince great erudition, ingenuity and labour, but are disfigured by incorrectness and an affected artificiality, and his Latin partakes much of the corruptions of the age. His works are (1) historical and political, (2) theological and grammatical.
1. (a) Variae, the most important of all his writings, in twelve books, published in 537. They contain the decrees of Theodoric and his successors Amalasuntha, Theodahad and Witigis; the regulations of the chief offices of state; the edicts published by Cassiodorus himself when praefectus praetorio. It is the best source of our knowledge of the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy (ed. T. Mommsen in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores Antiquissimi, xii., 1894; condensed English translation by T. Hodgkin, 1886).
(b) Chronica, written at the request of Theodoric’s son-in-law Eutharic, during whose consulship (519) it was published. It is a dry and inaccurate compilation from various sources, unduly partial to the Goths (ed. T. Mommsen in Mon. Germ. Hist.: Auct. Ant. xi. pt. i., 1893).