Cassiodorus

Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator was born in Scylacium (modern Squillace) in Bruttium (modern Calabria) to a senatorial family of Eastern origin. For three generations his ancestors were important public officials. His birthdate is inferred from the fact that in 503/507 he was iuvenis and approximately in 507 he was primaevus. Cassiodorus became an official of the Ostrogothic kings in Ravenna and held the offices of quaestor palatii from 507 to 511; corrector Lucaniae et Bruttiorum from 511 to 533; consul in 514; magister officiorum from 523 to 527; praefectus praetorio from 533 to 537; and patricius in 537. In 550 he was in Constantinople from where he returned to Italy probably in 552/53. In 554 he founded a monastery, Vivarium (Monasterium Vivariense), on his ancestral estate in which he assembled a substantial library. He died in Vivarium in his ninety-third year.

Reinhard Pummer, Early Christian Authors on Samaritans and Samaritanism: Texts, Translations and Commentary, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 92 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 242.