We are bound by a most harsh lot, that those whom we before called sweet kindred, we now charge with most bitter matters—charges which no one can let pass who is known to ponder the memorials of piety. For who could be ignorant that Amalafrida, of divine memory, the outstanding ornament of our race, met among you a violent setting of her light, and that her whom you long had as your mistress you did not suffer to live, not even as a private person? If she seemed, against the law of kinship, to be a burden, she ought to have been sent back to us honourably—she whom you sought with great entreaties. It is a kind of parricide, that her whom the union of the king had made your kinswoman, you should by wicked daring involve in her own destruction. What so great an evil did she, abandoned by her consort, deserve?
If the succession was owed to another, could a woman ever be found within that ambition? Nay rather she ought to have been held as a mother, who passed kingdoms over to you. For this too would have been added to your nobility, if among the stock of the Hasdingi you had retained the purple dignity of the Amal blood. This our Goths understand to have been attempted to their own reproach. For he who brought death upon the lady of an alien people is seen to have utterly despised the virtue of her kindred, since no one thinks that he ought to attempt what he believes must be cut off. And therefore, admonished by moral reasoning, through these our legates we first seek equity from you in words, looking to see what excuse may be offered for such great misfortunes.
For even if any business whatever had arisen in such a person, it ought to have been made known to us, so that she might perish even by our judgment, who had mingled herself in wicked deeds. It remains that her natural death be feigned. We do not speak of impossibilities, we seek nothing novel: hand over this man and that man and the other, through whom the matter that was done must be made clear. Let there be in them a complete proof of the whole cause, without war, without slaughter, either to make us appeased or to render you guilty. But if you think this is to be despised, and do not dispose yourselves to reasonable answers, we are absolved from the condition of the peace entered into, we who are not held by the bond of a violated treaty.
Let the heavenly Majesty now avenge the crime, committed by whatever art, that Majesty which declares that the impious slaughter of a brother's blood cries out to it. Whoever desires that the state and the general summit should stand must be solicitous for all things, because there is no health in the body except such as the members too can obtain. By the injury of one place the whole frame is shaken, and so great is the force of cohesion, that you would believe one wound to be received everywhere when that one part has begun to ache. For the state is not the care of a single city, but the provident guardianship of the whole realm: wherefore if anything is diminished from it, losses are felt at the source. For he must needs have less, from whom anything perishes.
And therefore the ever-watchful care of the various cities troubles us, lest evils, if allowed too far, should be able to burden the palaces. For a tree, which you see flourish, which you behold rejoicing in the highest greenness, is quickened by the subterranean sap of fruitfulness, rendering at the surface what it holds in the root. The countenance of men too is adorned with great cheerfulness, if with sound inward parts it feels the burden of no injury. So a realm is rightly called most whole, if it has nowhere been diminished. This can be done when unbridled licence is everywhere driven away, and no daring is granted to a malign mind to sin under an abominable liberty.
The curials, who take their name from provident care, are said to be shaken by most grievous harassment, so that whatever is delegated to them for the sake of honour seems rather to be turned to their injury. O wicked crime, O unbearable evil! when they ought to profit by serving the state, then they are seen to lose their liberty together with their fortunes.
Wherefore by edictal proclamation we decree: that if anyone shall have been engaged either in the injury or in the loss of a curial, or shall perhaps have presumed to impose upon him anything beyond what has been commanded by us or by the courtiers whose powers are concerned, let him either be struck with the loss of ten pounds of gold—of profit nonetheless to the very man who has suffered such a thing—or, if his means do not suffice for the penalty, let him be torn by flogging punishments, and pay by penalties the debt which he could not discharge by money; yet in such wise that whatever has been delegated for the public benefit be fulfilled with honourable care, since they begin to owe more, whom we do not permit to bear the iniquities of others.
Let no one seize by unlawful purchase the estates of the curials, whence chiefly snares are laid for men of middling station, because it cannot be called a contract unless it comes from the laws. Concerning the molestations of the saiones and the soldiers, let them be protected by the help of the judges. From the governors themselves too our authority will vindicate them, since he must be more grievously punished if he, to whom help is delegated, is proved to bring detriment. Lift up your necks, you who are downcast: raise your spirits, you who are weighed down by the burdens of evils: give zeal to recover what you know you have ill lost. To each citizen his own city is his commonwealth. Administer justice in the cities with harmonious will. Let your orders live equitably.
Do not oppress those of middling station, lest the more powerful be able deservedly to oppress you. This is the penalty of sin, that each one may receive in himself what he insolently practised against another. Live justly, live temperately, since scarcely does anyone dare to transgress against those in whom he cannot find faults. The cranes know how to practise a moral concord, among whom no primacy is sought, because there is no ambition of iniquity. They keep watch in turn, they guard themselves with common caution, the very feeding is by turns. Thus honour is taken from none, while all things are kept under community. For these too their flight is ordered with a reciprocal equality: the last becomes first, and the one that held the primacy does not refuse to be later.
Thus, joined together by a kind of community, they obey one another without kings, they submit without lordship, they serve without terror. By serving voluntarily they are free, and by loving one another they are fortified. The writers on natural things, observing their custom, record that there is a certain polity among them, whom they have known to live with civic affection. If you imitate these, you will exclude from yourselves all the calumnies of depravities. For you, who receive the vows of the upright, have by the laws power over your fellow citizens. For antiquity did not grant you a curia in vain, nor did it idly call you the lesser senate, naming you also the sinews and the vitals of the cities. What of power or of honour do you not possess in that appellation?
For he who is compared to the senate is excluded from no genius of renown. If all assiduous labour exacts such diverse fruits, that gold and silver are bought by the customary exchange, why do we not diligently seek out those very things, for the sake of which we seemed to demand others? Let rich Italy bring to us golden fruits as well. Every revenue is acquired where the tawny metal is found. For what need is there for the earth to be wearied with manifold fruitfulness, if the very prices themselves can be found in it? Nature, with industry seconding her, grants us grain for ordinary use: wines pour themselves forth on every side: metal is rarely brought forth, that it may be the more zealously sought.
Wherefore we order Your Magnitude to dispatch a clerk to the estate of our right, Rusticiana, situated in the province of the Bruttii, and if, as is said by Theodorus, an artificer of these matters, the earth is fruitful in the said things, then, with workshops solemnly established, let the bowels of the mountains be searched through: let entry be made by the benefit of art into the inner chamber of the earth, and let nature, rich as in her treasures, be sought out. For with the vaults turned back by ingenious presumption, imitating the mole-creature, they dig passages which lay open to none before. Thus ambition leaves nothing hidden, nor any place where in the meantime it might endure the uttermost.
Men enter the deep darkness, they live without those above, they are exiles from the sun, and, while they seek gains beneath the earth, they sometimes forsake the joys of light. For them their own way is sometimes a ruin, and they cannot procure a return, who with laborious hands made paths for their own feet. But those whose art is more cautious have a happier life: they enter needy, they go out wealthy: without theft they snatch riches, they enjoy to the full the longed-for treasures without envy, and they alone of men are seen to acquire prices without any trafficking.
For as soon as they have been restored to the upper light, they separate from their mother earth, by waters that discern the heavier portions, all the finer particles, and, stored away in clay vessels, they boil them down in a vast furnace, until they are usefully dissolved into liquid; and the streams that come from the flame they purge with so great a fire, until they yield up their own beauty, which the earthen bowels had hidden, lest they should be coveted. Nature is overcome, while industry betters her. It is more beautiful once it has burned, more excellent once it has been boiled down, because it grows so much in price as it has been cleansed with sincerity. Its origin indeed is noble, but from the flame it takes the force of colour, so that you would rather believe it born from that whose likeness it is seen to be adorned with.
But since it bestows a splendid redness on gold, and confers a most white light on silver, it is a wonder that one substance should transmit what can be fitted to unlike things. Accordingly, whatever you know to pertain to the exercise of the skill of this art, let your ordering bring to completion, so that the land of the Bruttii too may find of itself a tribute which it can give—it which luxuriates rich in fruits. For it is fitting that among so many goods even those should not be wanting which are thought to be foremost. For why should that lie without use, which can be an honourable gain? For indeed it is impious to seek gold through wars, perilous through the seas, a disgrace through falsehoods, but in its own nature it is justice.
Honourable are the gains by which no one is harmed, and that is well acquired which is taken away from no owners as yet. Griffins are continually said to dig out gold and to delight in the inspection of this metal; and since they have no ambition of gain, they are not said to be inflamed with the crime of cupidity—namely, because every act lies in the quality of its purpose, and that is not to be blamed which has been wanton by no will. Let them therefore be continual in zealous working for gain; let them not dread envy: what is called a skill is freed from crime. Happy is the complaint, when the laws are surpassed by piety, and blessed is the condition of subjects, if they recognize that man to have had mercy on others, whom they desire to be propitious to themselves also.
For the most sacred laws bound the curials for no other reason than that, when the princes alone should release them, they might find heralds of indulgence—that is, where the lord dissents from his own judgments by a loving contention, since it is itself a kind of justice that he who is called pious should by no means be held to the strict term of severity. For this too is a certain reasonable order, at length to release from service those who are proved to be unequal to the labours. For a curial, if he is held by no soundness of body, is set up only for deceptions, and what will it profit that he be present, if he chance to be found failing in strength? For he is indeed like one absent, by whom commands cannot be fulfilled.
Moreover, while the curia rejoices in a manifold numerousness, it does not seem, stricken by losses, to have lost a few out of very many. Wherefore let Your Illustrious Magnificence cause Agenantia, the wife of Campanianus, a most eloquent man, settled in the province of Lucania, and their sons, to be diligently erased from the roll of her curia, so that posterity to come may not know there was that which it is forbidden to cast up as a reproach, since calumny is not presumed where no proof is to be had. Accordingly let them rather be placed in the number of the landholders, destined nonetheless to suffer the molestations which they themselves were inflicting on others. For they will be troubled toward the accustomed tributes:
they will dread the face of the compeller—they who before knew not that orders had come from the powers—and, wearied by a longed-for ignorance, they will begin to fear the things delegated, through which formerly others were made to fear. For from this very circumstance too they are to be approved of having lived by good morals, since they suffer to live idle among those whose hatred they do not recognize themselves to have deserved. Otherwise they would not suffer to be under those whom they knew they had incited by evil deeds. Let them therefore enjoy the princely benefit: let them live tranquil in relaxed peace, who were composed in the quality of their actions.
By the complaint of the landholders of your territory we have learned that, beyond the necessity of the time, they endure the execrable savagery of certain of their fellow citizens, who, in the first season, having bought up the produce of panic-grass into their own private store, looking to a dearness grievous to men of middling means, so that they may bring detestable nakedness upon those who store more sparingly, when men placed in the peril of famine, beseeching, offer those very things which they know they can be plundered of. For indeed in the necessity of want there is no contention over price, while a man suffers himself to be led, lest he be smitten by any delay.
Condemning therefore these designs, we have dispatched the present bearers, so that, whether in the granary or in other places they shall have been able to find the stores of grain, each owner may retain for himself or for his household only as much as he knows he can expend, and let him sell the remainder to those in peril—in the presence, that is, of the bearers of this letter, who are known to have been appointed to that very matter—at a moderate amount of price, however, at which it shall be established that he bought it from his own provincials, so that neither may he who buys be too greatly burdened, nor he who sells be left without some gain.
Wherefore fulfil with willing minds what has been commanded, because in this matter you owe it to one another to take counsel, lest, while you seek excessive dearness, you should rather choose for yourselves something wicked—which God forbid. Let no one therefore complain of the sale imposed upon him; let him know that liberty is not to be sought in crime, but that it is rather the mark of a good disposition not to hasten to transgress. Let him therefore who sells, sell on a just reckoning. If he consents, he works his own praise: if he dissents, he makes it our heralding, since the good belongs to him who commands, if justice is imposed on the unwilling.
Since you have kept watch with long-continued labours, you assert that you have been so grievously wounded by the weakness of body that you cannot even hasten to attain the renown of the service to which it is agreed you have rushed with eager vow—fearing lest, through your absence, the sweetest fruit should seem to be torn from you almost from your very jaws—petitioning also that, constrained by the necessity of a chilled body, you may be relaxed by the dryness of the Baian bath. It is plainly worthy that we bestow it among the highest rewards, that, as we confer hope on the vanquished, so we may grant health as well to suppliants. Wherefore we both absolve you from the bond of the emolument's terror, and relieve you with the gift of the aforesaid bath, so that, first refreshed by the gladness of mind, you may the more easily recover the soundness of your limbs.
For it is a natural care to give gladness to the sick: for make the invalid rejoice, and he is healed. Go therefore to the pleasant retreats: go to a sun, so to speak, brighter: where, with the salubrity of the air tempered, nature is more gentle to the lands. There, the marvels weighed with deep thought, the human mind converses with the secrets of the world, nor does it cease to wonder at the things it knows can be done there: first, that the streams of Nereus are filled with sea-delights, that nature's prudence has set so many harbours between the bays of the land, so many noble islands endowed with the embrace of the deep: then the briny sea let into Avernus, where for the pleasure of men the life of oysters is governed, and that by the industry of mortals it comes to pass that a thing fortuitous elsewhere there always appears abundant.
With how great masses the marine boundaries have been there gracefully invaded! over how great spaces has land been pushed forward into the bowels of the sea! On the right and left shoals of fish play. Let abundant delights be shut up elsewhere by industrious walls: let the watery shoals be held captive: here everywhere the fishponds are under liberty. Add that the fishing thus undertaken is so pleasant that, before the sumptuous banquet, it feeds the gaze of the beholders. For it is a great joy to have caught the things desired: but in matters of this kind the pleasantness of the eye is generally more welcome than the usefulness of the catch. But, not to wander further, he is believed to dwell among the treasures of Neptune, to whom the leisures of Baiae are furnished.
Fattened therefore by these things in a delightful exercise, you press on to the most beautiful baths, which are both full of marvels and precious in the quality of health. For although they are known to be fashioned by the care of men, they are certainly exhibited by natural ministries. There the furnaces do not kindle conveyed timbers: with the flame ceasing, a perpetual heat works: there smoky globes are unknown: the air is most pure, which ministers the vapours, and sweetly provokes the panting sweats: and it is found so much more salubrious than common baths, as nature is loftier than human industry. There you may see the waters steam with perpetual eddies, which so seem to fulfil the desires of those who bathe that you would believe them tempered by human zeal.
Let the ever-praised renown of the coral sea give way: let the more wealthy fame of the Indian sea, from the whiteness of its white things, subside. What have I to do with prices, if the mind does not enjoy the things desired? Nothing can be more excellent than the Baian shores, where it befalls one both to feed on the sweetest delights and to be filled with the priceless gift of health. Enjoy therefore the goods you have nonetheless sought after: by our benefits you will come to your own profit: by Baian remedies obtain the thing of health. After the illustrious administrations of forebears, eminent dignities are well conferred on their posterity, while no one's genius consents to lie within the estimation of his own people, since it is a certain honourable ambition, by praises to wish to outstrip those whom we follow in time.
It is added also that those learned in the doctrines of the ancients delight to be increased by the favour of reputation. For the more each one knows that he has striven after the better arts, by so much the more does he presume to seek greater things. Long ago, therefore, the Roman state felt the diligence of your father of illustrious memory. For presiding over the count of the largesses, and having discharged also the offices of the prefects, he conducted the praetorian dignity most uprightly, repairing the curia, restoring to the poor what had been taken away; and although he was unpolished in liberal studies, he did not fail to please the industrious, since a good genius can naturally commend itself of itself, even when it does not appear adorned by accidental circumstances. But how much is this in comparison with the notice of your letters?
For learning indeed, which distinguishes some from the unskilled, joins them to the wise in a friendly fellowship—learning, to which it is most easy to adorn the well-born, which even out of obscurity makes a man noble. There grows also to your illustrious merits the fact that, into the grace of affinity, such a man chose you—one whom it has always befallen to be praised for the integrity of his judgment, common in his morals, singular in his conscience, who always made himself praised by his own morals and by the converse of friends and by his own probity. To what kind of man, then, must he be reckoned to have joined his own blood, who never determined to attach even to his own community one of evil reputation? And therefore, although you come young to honour, after the judgment of so great a man it is foolish to say that you are not approved.
For if we lend placid ears to them when they make good suggestions in the causes of strangers, why should we the more not follow their judgments in their own kindred, where even those who frequently transgress in other matters always zealously look out for themselves? And therefore—be it spoken with good fortune—for that indiction we grant you the fillets of the urban dignity, so that, as you are first in that order, so you may be held foremost also in the praise of merits. For indeed what is transacted in that city is offered, one might say, to the eyes of the lands. Whom now will a judge make appeased to himself, if he offend that senate of so great benignity? What is of maturity, what of prudence, you recognize in the estimation of that very order, whose first-springing seeds, as soon as they have grown up, are called fathers.
There youth begins with mature counsel: young men conduct themselves with the restraint of old men. There a weight of character is set forth in the very flower of age, such as is scarcely produced elsewhere even in white-haired years. With such moderation, therefore, shall you bear yourself, that when you summon so many nobles to the court, you may lay open before them an opinion worthy of your will. For it is exceedingly difficult to say among them anything of the kind that could fail to displease so many prudent men. And so the man is to be reckoned of no ordinary worth who has been able to win a favourable judgement from that throng of the learned. For if it is gratifying to be praised even where praise is rare, what joy can come to him whom the votes of so many noblemen have commended? Love justice; bestow yourself graciously upon the oppressed.
Render to your descendants the praises which you yourself received from your forebears. It is our purpose to adorn honourable labours with the palm of reward, so that, by the change of fortune in which the advanced rejoice, the slothful may be stung and may impute it to themselves that under the most clement times of our judgement they do not earn its rewards. And therefore, with God's help, we have resolved to send Your Illustrious Greatness once again to the provinces of Dalmatia and Savia, so that whatever you recognise to be for our advantage you may arrange with even-handed ordering, and through your justice may render the people devoted and most welcome to us; for he is joined to the praises of his lords when one who is chosen conducts himself commendably. Do not seek out the examples of others.
Be mindful of what you have done, and you need no reminding. For what is there that anyone should doubt concerning your conduct, when you know that your own good name still breathes fragrant in those very provinces? In a manner it is already owed that men should wish to serve well one in whose presence you know you have been praiseworthy. For a willing spirit is justly granted to the obedient, and to those we know to be mindful of benefits we unhesitatingly extend our affection anew. Your age indeed is advanced, but your conduct too is the more mature; what now could steal anything from you, in whom not even your youth was blameworthy? But these things you did in the reign of our lord grandfather: now show such deeds that you may seem to have reserved for our times whatever measure of probity you shall add.
Throughout the provinces granted to us by God's bestowal we desire to send such men as are endowed with arms and glorious in justice, so that from you may be banished both the fear of foreign nations and that you may not lie open to slanderous snares; for it is no less an evil to have avoided war than to escape harsh exaction. For that is true security which dreads no iniquity of a judge. And therefore — let it be said with God for our author — we have decreed that the Illustrious Count Osuin, distinguished both in our palace and most well known to the provinces through long acquaintance, shall preside over the Dalmatians. Take care to obey him when he commands for our advantage, since you have so often experienced his great justice that, even without a royal command, you ought, mindful of former times, to obey him.
For he who is just possesses his own proper authority: for although he is in no way exalted by the terror of power, yet, equity persuading, he is always heard. At the same time we have also judged that the Illustrious Severinus should be directed to you, so that, being well-matched, with harmonious will they may be able to enjoin upon you what is praiseworthy. For if it befits unequal reeds to sound forth a single melody, much more is it fitting for most prudent men to counsel what is just with concordant voice. But that our beginnings might commence from benefits conferred, and that you might feel a most clement lord on the very threshold of our reign, whatever was sought from you under the name of increase through the fourth indiction we have now ordered the Illustrious Count of our patrimony to remit.
And we further grant you this in addition: that when, by God's favour, we shall have caused the aforesaid man to come to attend us, you should send such persons through whom we may clearly learn in what manner the census imposed in future is being assessed, so that, if we find you to be burdened, we may relieve you in such part as shall seem fit, considering equity. Thus it comes to pass that you may have hope of a future benefit also, who have already in part obtained remedies. Wherefore it is fitting that you serve our interests, since that which you could rather have hoped for by entreaties, princely munificence has bestowed unasked. For thus we have learned from our most clement author who handed it down to us, that we should not be idle in the matter of benefits toward our subjects.
Plainly, the discipline of ruling is to love what profits the many, since the commonwealth receives the greatest solidity if the resources of the taxpayers remain unharmed. Some while ago we judged that the rise of our reign should be announced to you: now it is fitting that a benefit should follow, for the increase of the joy of all, so that those to whom our advent was most welcome may find the royal spirit in some part munificent toward them. We desire that all things should grow together with us by God's bestowal, because that is truly our revenue which a glad possessor pays out. Therefore we withdraw from money what may be added to glory, and we strive lavishly to raise up the cultivators of the soil, even the grasping, unto our own praises.
Long ago our lord grandfather of divine memory, presuming much upon his own benefits — because long-lasting peace both granted cultivation to the fields and increased the peoples — appointed within the province of Sicily, under the wonted moderation of his prudence, that a census be exacted, so that devotion might grow in you to whom prosperity had spread. But his praiseworthy justice prepared a place for our benignity, so that what could justly be offered to him, we with a clement spirit might bestow as though they were tributes brought in; and by a certain presage of the divine mind he rendered dutiful even the one for whom he was preparing the rule.
And therefore, throughout the happily-numbered fourth indiction, whatever beyond the customary levy was sought from you under the name of increase, or is established to have been exacted, our liberality remits. And although you could justly have paid it, we rather command you to attribute it as glory to our bounty. But that our clemency may be extended more widely, and that you may feel a lord made gentle by benefits bestowed, whatever the assessors of the new census are proven to have fixed through the fifth indiction, we have caused them to bring to our notice, so that what shall have been reasonably assessed you may endure with willing hearts, since justice observed harms no one.