Under the pretext of detailing how the ostrogoth king exempted the possessores of Como of the obligation to provide additional horsepower for mail coaches, Cassiodorus wrote a beautiful text in praise of the lake, brought to fame by Pliny. As often with Variae, literary echoes abound, though in a discreet form. As all panegyrics, the text is also replete with topoi, some of them very ancient : for instance the theme of a river that runs through the lake without mixing with its waters can be traced back to Greek sources. The same topos is found in a text by Ennodus from Pavia in the sixth century AD, a blame of the lake written in response to another text by senator Faustus Niger, which extolled the lake and has been lost. Cassiodorus's praise was obviously written in keeping with that literary context. It may also echo Ammianus Marcellinus's descriptions of lake Geneva being run through by the Rhone river, and lake Constance by the Rhine.