Dietrich could have done so: perhaps not even Cassiodorus himself.
Take as one example, such a letter as this.--After a lofty moral
maxim, which I leave for you to construe--'In partem pietatis recidit
mitigata districtio; et sub beneficio praestat, qui poenam debitam
moderatione considerata palpaverit,'--Jovinus the curial is informed,
after the most complex method, that having first quarrelled with a
fellow-curial, and then proceeded to kill him, he is banished for
life to the isle of Volcano, among the Liparis. As a curial is a
gentleman and a government magistrate, the punishment is just enough;
but why should Cassiodorus (certainly not King Dietrich) finish a
short letter by a long dissertation on volcanoes in general, and
Stromboli in particular, insisting on the wonder that the rocks,
though continually burnt, are continually renewed by 'the
inextricable potency of nature;' and only returning to Jovinus to
inform him that he will henceforth follow the example of a
salamander, which always lives in fire, 'being so contracted by
natural cold, that it is tempered by burning flame. It is a thin and
small animal, connected with worms, and clothed with a yellow
colour;' . . . Cassiodorus then returns to the main subject of
volcanoes, and ends with a story of Stromboli having broken out just
as Hannibal poisoned himself at the court of Prusias;--information
which may have been interesting, though not consoling, to poor
Jovinus, in the prospect of living there; but of which one would like
to have had king Dietrich's opinion. Did he felicitate himself like
a simple Teuton, on the wonderful learning and eloquence of his
Greek-Roman secretary? Or did he laugh a royal laugh at the whole
letter, and crack a royal joke at Cassiodorus and all quill-driving
schoolmasters and lawyers--the two classes of men whom the Goths
hated especially, and at the end to which they by their pedantries
had brought imperial Rome? One would like to know. For not only was