'Cassiodorus (Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator), politician, writer, and monk (c. AD 490-c.585). His Bruttian family had a tradition of provincial leadership and official service. He assisted his father, praetorian prefect of Italy, 503-507, under the ostrogothic king Theodoric. Writing Theodoric's diplomatic letters in 506, he was quaestor sacri palatii (rhetorical draftsman and legal adviser), 507-512. (...) Prefect of Italy from 533, he was again both administrator and royal draftsman. (...) Remaining prefect under kings Theodahad and Witigitis, and made patrician, he retired in 537/38 during the gothic wars. Moving to Constantinople, he assisted pope Vergilius in the Three Chapters controversy (550). Soon after, he withdrew permanently to his monastery of Vivarium on his ancestral estate at Scylacium. There he organized translations and manuscript copying, partly to support the Three Chapters against official condemnation, partly to promote Christian education. Vivarian texts soon circulated widely, but the monastery quickly shared in the decay of civilization. Among his works: (1) a short chronicle of the world and Rome; (2) a lost, tendentious Gothic story, extensively used in Jordanes 'Getica'; (3) Panegyrics (fragmentary) on Gothic royalties; (4) 'Variae': twelve books of state papers, edited c. 537, an invaluable source for Ostrogothic Italy, and the structures, culture, and ideology of late-Roman government. The collection was both an apology for the Ostrogoths and their Roman collaborators, and a moral, rhetorical, and practical guide for future rulers and ministers; Cassiodorus' blending of ekphrasis and learned digression into official discourse is remarkable; (5) The appended 'De anima' grounded the 'Variae' in religious reflections on human nature and society; (6) 'Expositio Psalmorum' (...); (7) 'Institutions': an intellectual Rule for Vivarium (...); (8) 'De orthographia': a guide for Vivarian copyists. (...) Cassiodorus did not save classical culture, as is sometimes claimed; but, especially from Carolingian times, 'Variae', 'Expositio', and 'Institutiones' were widely read, and helped to maintain and integrate the Christian and roman inheritances in western Europe.' (SAMUEL JAMES BEECHING BARNISH in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2003, pp.298-299).