De Cassiodori Senatoris Orationum reliquiis

The panegyrics written by Cassiodorus survive only in a few fragments, edited in 1894 by Ludwig Traube, who argued that they belong to two different orations, one in praise of Eutharic and the other of Matasuintha and Vitiges. In 1978, Domenico Romano wrote that the fragments come from six panegyrics and that Cassiodorus praised Eutharic in one of them. This paper argues that Traube’s reconstruction is probably correct, yet the first panegyric was written in praise of Theoderic, since the prudentissimus princeps to whom the protagonist of the oration gives his advise should be identified with the emperor, not with the Ostrogothic king.