The Letters of Cassiodorus: Being a Condensed Translation of the Variae Epistolae of Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator
Translated by Thomas Hodgkin
These letters offer an intimate window into the collapsing Roman world. Cassiodorus, chief minister to Theodoric the Great, composed these official correspondences from within the heart of Ostrogothic Italy, where Roman bureaucracy met Gothic martial rule. The letters reveal the delicate art of governance during civilization's transformation: requests for tax relief, diplomatic communications with Constantinople, appointments to office, and the rhetorical strategies of power. What emerges is not dry bureaucracy but the living texture of a world in flux, seen through the eyes of a man desperately trying to preserve Roman order while serving barbarian kings. Hodgkin's translation preserves the elaborate formality of late antique letter-writing while trimming the formal repetitions that would test modern patience, giving us the substance beneath the ceremony.
