Whoever is sent forth from the inner chambers of a judge is believed to be a great man, since a man is esteemed to love justice the more, the more often it is established that he heard it from him. A judge is understood through his soldiers, and as disciples betray the knowledge of their master, so the manners of those who attend us disclose us. The headlong man is not thought to have served a moderate master, the greedy is not perceived to have obeyed a self-restrained one: the foolish is not believed to have served the prudent. We are in peril, I confess, in our actions, if you should conduct yourselves with evil intent and—what befalls none of you—another's vice be celebrated as our reproach. We undergo such mishaps as we cannot judge in others, and the law which all enjoy cannot be kept in our case.
But on the other side we have again a consolation, in that your good deeds are believed to be our commands, and whatever of glory is gained by your labors is acquired for us though we be idle. For if anyone should see you acting wisely, at once he exalts the fame of your instructor, since such teaching is believed to have been given, as the deeds are no less perceived to be. The verdict of the common people is one: that judges are such as you may happen to be approved to be. And therefore great care must be taken, lest he begin to judge of you whose reputation you may chance to have torn before. He avenges with penalties what you have spread in tales, and repays with your torments what the wounded populace exaggerates.
How perilous it is to endure a judge reasonably angered, and to have him decide concerning your fortunes whom it is established that you have grievously provoked! Wherefore strive rather that you be praised by our voice, for as the judge's word, when adverse, can press you down, so a most prosperous verdict can raise you up. Go forth therefore, with God's help, through that indiction to that province, adorned with the pomp of the chancel-bars and girt with glorious gravity. Though absent, think on the modesty of one present. For why should you, who serve under honor, attempt anything base? The fasces of the judges obey you, and while you are believed to bear the commands of the praetorian seat, you in a manner assume that very power, to be revered. Be the first to observe our edicts: show the good way to those who look to you.
For what kind of judge is it to keep the commands, if the soldiers seem to neglect our ordinances? Flee that queen of shameless vices, avarice, to whom all crimes do service with detestable devotion: who, when once she has entered the breast of a man, admits also her malefic cohorts in droves. Once received, she cannot be borne, since she knows not how to be solitary. She has a most flattering retinue, takes up arms made of talents, and by sweetness overcomes those whom she captures with bitter deception. Therefore be diligent for public advantages: procure what is enjoined by moral compulsion. He who inculcates reason accomplishes more than the terrible can effect. Let your person be a refuge for the oppressed, a defense for the weak, a safeguard for one hemmed in by some calamity.
For thus you properly conduct our chancel-bars, if you loose the impious fetters of the injured. I give thanks to the Divinity, because the provincials too have done what I admonished, and I have fulfilled all that I promised. For no one felt me defiled by any venality, nor did I tolerate undutiful taxpayers. We have on both sides that which we ought to love in ourselves: they found affectionate judges, we have acquired most upright criers. Let us therefore, by God's grace, carry on what we have begun. Let the landholder gladly bring in to me the public moneys: I will pay out to him the tributes in the assembly of justice. To you, moreover, what is truly perceived to have been done is conveniently repeated, since a great hope for the future is rendered concerning things past.
For you have proved that we compelled no one to give what he ought not to have offered. No one was afflicted by me with losses, whether public or private. We made the terrors of the auditors to be unknown. Nor did we seek extraordinary exactions, who wished all things to be conducted by the laws. But neither should you be dissimilar in that part. The rulers willed that the laws be imitators of our dignity, on whom they conferred almost the same jurisdiction throughout the provinces as upon ourselves. Justice, which is to be followed, repudiates no one: it makes illustrious all whom it exalts by participation in itself: he alone makes himself less who has departed from it. Why should we follow the wishes of receiving? He receives no glory who is called rich: on the contrary, he is adorned with all praise who is proclaimed just.
Let us rather desire that which makes us more precious than the wealthy. We take up the fasces that we may be obliged to be weighty: we ascend the tribunals that we may be borne up by the grades of character. Nothing base, nothing covetous, becomes judges. For they render their own stains conspicuous, if those to whom many look should grow sordid by some reproach. Otherwise it is more expedient not to be seen than to be marked by the mockery of all. Let all of us, then, who seek the heights of the seats of office, forsake the lowliness of vices. Let there be in us an open brow, that we may be able to amend the sins of others. Every crime levels those whom it stains, and therefore he who judges ought to be unlike the accused. It befits us to speak these things in a yearly address, because of good things there is no surfeit. I confess the eagerness of my desire:
I desire that I may wish to be proclaimed together with you. Let us now come to the customary matters: which ought therefore to be received with gratitude, because they are proved to be solemn observances. Wherefore—and may it be spoken with good fortune—we command you and your office, with God's help, to admonish the landholder to pay the tributes of the thirteenth indiction with devout mind, so that, the regulation of the threefold instalment being kept, he may bring in the function owed to the commonwealth. Let the appointed times of the exactions be observed, yet so that no one may groan that he was levied upon under the wrong of premature compulsion, nor again that a ruinous bounty of postponements be furnished under base venality. For the delay of a tribute becomes the cause of a greater loss, when that is vainly suspended which is avoided by no procrastinations.
You shall also hasten, by the observed custom, to direct to our offices a faithful account of expenditures comprised every four months, so that, the fog of all error being wiped away, the clearness of the public reckoning may appear. For if you should do otherwise, the losses regard you, which through your neglect are heaped upon the public interests. And that you may the more easily, with God's aid, accomplish what has been ordained, we command, in the customary manner, that such-and-such soldiers of our seat press upon you and your office, so that our ordinance may attain its effect without blame. Beware therefore lest you show yourself unequal to our admonitions, for it is too foul that we should rather approve as needing pruning the very man from whom we demand back things worthy of praise.
It is indeed fitting that all things be carried on under tranquillity, in such manner as may accord with good morals. But so great in the commonwealth is the diversity arising from the variety of characters, that no one is able to defend the laws unless terror seem to temper something. For the sick there is not one cause of health: one is restored by foods, another is reduced by the benefits of abstinence: this one seeks soothing baths, that one the iron for his wounds: and the differing quality of afflictions demands a varied remedy. So he who is known to preside over peoples is found endowed with no single counsel. The fierce must be pressed down with strictness, the gentle admonished in a civil way: the crafty are to be handled cautiously, the simple under mildness.
And therefore prudence is everywhere proved to be necessary, since it is seen to apply itself fittingly to all matters. Wherefore we depute your devotion, in solemn manner, to the support of that most distinguished man, our chancellor, so that you rise up against no other man save him who has scorned to obey the laws. Drag to the forum him who does not accept what is just: be angry under self-restraint, exact under maturity. We wish you to be feared rather than approved, because that especially will be reckoned to your vigor, if by no one's presumption there be any sinning. Let the faithful exaction of the public money be considered before all things. Let the contempt of another be your advantage. Let him do under compulsion what he has neglected to fulfil of his own will. Apply yourself only to the cases delegated to you.
If you follow the precepts, you do not seek out byways. He is free from fault who has performed what was commanded. In an executor this is the worst, if he abandon the judge's discretion. Do not boast of this, that you cannot be opposed, nor wish to assume arrogance because the lowliness of many dreads you. Brave men are always modest in peace, and those who have often handled battles love justice exceedingly. How pleasing it is, if, returning among your kinsfolk, you bring back no reproach of complaints, but they recognize that you have so acted as diligent men are proved to wish! We too gladly receive him who comes with praise, and we do not allow him to be free for leisure whom we perceive to have acted commendably.
To these men also the Lord of affairs entrusts greater things, whom he has proved to have managed their own concerns with a good conscience. How great are the things that the wise can carry off! No one acquires more than he who has conducted himself with a good manner of life. The most opulent furnishing of the royal table is proved to be no small ornament of the commonwealth, since the Lord is believed to possess as much as the novelties on which he feasts. It belongs to a private man to have what one place produces: at a royal banquet this surely befits to be sought out, which the sight ought to admire. Let the Danube dispatch the carp, from the Rhine let the anchorago come, let the exormiston of Sicily be offered, however laborious; let the Bruttian sea send sweet acerniae: let savory fish be brought from diverse ends of the earth.
Thus it befits a king to feast, that by the envoys of the nations he may be believed to possess well-nigh all things. And therefore wines must be procured, such as Italy singularly nourishes in her fruitfulness, lest we who ought to crave foreign things should seem not to have sought out our own. By the report of the count of the patrimony it has been declared that the acinaticium—which has its name from the grape (acinus)—has been diminished in the court cellars. And since all dignities ought mutually to minister to one another the necessities which are proved to pertain to the lords of affairs, we command you to approach the landholders of Verona, where the special care of this matter lies, so that, a competent price being received, no one may delay to sell what he ought to offer to the royal favor. A worthy product indeed, of which Italy may boast.
For although ingenious Greece commends herself by manifold subtlety of diligence and seasons her wines either with perfumes or flavors them with admixtures of the sea, yet under so great a search nothing is found to have its like. For this is a wine both royal in color and pre-eminent in flavor, so that you would think the purple-fish to be dyed from its very springs, or its liquors to be pressed out of the purple. There a sweetness is felt of ineffable suavity: it is strengthened by I know not what firmness of body: its touch grows rich with density, so that you might say it is either a fleshy liquid or an edible drink. It pleases me to relate how singular its gathering appears to be.
In autumn, the grape gathered from the vines is hung upside-down on the trellises of the homestead, kept in its own vessels, guarded in natural casings. It wrinkles, it does not liquefy from age: then, sweating out its insipid humors, it grows sweet with great suavity. It is drawn out to the month of December, until the winter season opens its flow, and in a marvelous way it begins to be new, when in all the cellars it is found to be old. A wintry must, the cold blood of the grapes, a vintage in the frost, a bloody liquor, a drinkable purple, a violet nectar—it first ferments in its own origin, and when it has been able to mature, it begins to have a perpetual newness. It is not injuriously trodden with heels, nor darkened by any admixture of filth, but, as is fitting, so great a nobility is brought forth.
It flows down while the water hardens: it is fruitful when all the fruit of the fields is gone. It distills a liquor matching gems: it weeps forth I know not what delightful thing, and besides that its sweetness delights, in appearance its beauty is singular. This, sought out as quickly as may be and gathered at competent prices, hand over to the charter-keepers who have been dispatched for the matter, to be conveyed; nor should you think that to be neglected which shines back with a milky cup, since that is the more marvelous which you have been able only with greater difficulty to find. There the whiteness is comely and the purity serene, so that one would be believed born of roses, the other of lilies. Foreign indeed in color, but kindred in flavor: the aspect unlike, yet in both a like suavity.
For that it tastes sharply, that it quickly restores, is understood to be common to them both; but great is the distance which appears between them. This one you behold glad with redness, that one you look upon festive with whiteness. And therefore their procurement ought to be most swift, since there is known to be in both that which is equally to be sought. Generally indeed it befits a most exalted magistrate to enlarge his benefits, since he who is known to preside over all is judged to bestow profitable things upon all. But, nature favoring it, we owe more to those who are joined to us by some nearness, since to depart from equality seems to be a certain kind of right intention.
For we render modesty to colleagues, we exhibit reverence to fathers, we owe a common favor to fellow-citizens, but a singular affection to sons: and so great is the force of kinships, that no one judges himself to be despised, if he recognizes that another's pledges have been preferred to himself. And therefore it is nothing unjust to be more solicitous for one's native land, especially at that time when we seem to come to the aid of its perils. For we are believed to love the more those whom we hasten to rescue. Therefore the numerous army that is coming, which is known to be destined for the defense of the commonwealth, is said to have laid waste the cultivated lands of Lucania and the Bruttii and to have thinned the abundance of those regions by its zeal for plunder.
But since it is necessary, according to the quality of the time, both to give to the one and to take from the other, learn from the command of the Lord of affairs the prices which the ancient order established to be moderated, so that, far more closely than you were wont to sell, they ought to be reckoned as furnished into the public lump-sum, in such a way that neither may the landholder sustain losses nor the toiling army endure want. Be not, therefore, anxious. You have escaped the hands of the exactors; the present apparatus takes the tributes from you. But that your knowledge might be the more easily instructed, we have judged that the sums of the imputations should be set forth in the briefs written below, that no one may sell you a benefit which you know was conferred by public bounty. Restrain, therefore, the intemperate motions of the landholders.
Let those love quiet things whom no one drives headlong to uncertainties. While the army of the Goths wages war, let the Roman be at peace. It is the wish of the fortunate which is here commanded, lest the rustics, that rough kind of men, while they flee the wearinesses of labor, be carried away into unlawful acts of daring and begin to rise up against you, whom you could scarcely govern in peace. Wherefore, by royal command, admonish the several contractors of the great estates and the powerful landholders, that they contract no barbarity in contention, lest they hasten not so much to be of use in wars as to throw quiet things into confusion. Let them seize the iron, but that whereby they may cultivate the fields: let them take up the points as goads for oxen, not for fury.
The greatest praise of the defenders is, if, while they seem to protect the aforesaid regions, these others do not cease to cultivate their ancestral holdings. Let the judges have vigor from the laws: let the benches not cease to thunder the laws against evil manners: let the robber fear the judgment which he has always dreaded: let the adulterer tremble at the bosom of the judge: let the forger shudder at the voice of the crier: let the thief not laugh at the courts, because then liberty rejoices, if such things do not rejoice. For thus you will most prosperously perceive war to be waged, if you have in common a counsel concerning civic order. Let no one oppress the needy: assail the invaders, pursue the persecutors. A becoming civil battle is yours. You render all things peaceful, if you suppress the leaders of crimes.
In the reckoning of the grain-supplies be vigilant, lest anyone's cunning be able to defraud another. Know, moreover, that a deputy has been assigned to the commanders of the army by the lords of affairs in my own presence, so that, when they are duly requested by you, aid may be rendered for hardships imposed through injustice. Let them nonetheless preserve discipline, by which an army is ever more sturdily armed. A kind of benefit has also been added: that, from the present devotion to the royal commands, not even the divine household should seem exempted, but that whatever is levied for the general welfare should be borne by all in common. Now therefore rise up zealously together with your brethren, and provide with all needful caution, so that it may truly profit our most noble fatherland to have brought forward such records.
For men even of moderate understanding are able to rule provinces that are quiet and to administer them according to custom; but this is the toil, this the labour: to govern rather that which, once left to itself, cannot hold itself in check. For the sailors' skill lies idle in calm weather, nor does it lend a name to the craftsman, unless there be some great force of peril. You have, then, a time wherein you may both win the renown of wise men and, with the Lord's praiseworthy help, keep yourselves safe in every quarter. My own people, however, I commend not at all above the rest, since we desire that to befall all men which we wish to come to pass in our own household. For my private care has slipped away, ever since I began to ponder the guardianship of the whole.
I wish my own people well, but only such good as may be shared in common, since it is a kind of great injustice to want for oneself a judge other than the community at large can endure. Although the commands which the lords of affairs have given out of their inborn piety are abundantly sufficient, yet for the importunate and the foolish we double our threats by applying severity, so that those who cannot blush may at least restrain themselves through fear. For who shall congratulate himself on his own presumption, when he is about to lose his good name who has attempted what is forbidden? Let the blind ambition of the covetous be beaten back; let insolent audacity be reined in; let him who seeks gain from evil be terrified by the penalty set before him; let him who desires honour through wicked deeds be rather thrown into turmoil by the loss of his reputation.
It is added moreover that in our times ill-gotten money shall avail nothing, nor does he redeem his guilt who knows himself to be culpable. To unjust frauds no opening shall lie open: we prosecute transgressors, we do not sell them pardon. Where now, you evil takers, will you have hope, when both the lords of affairs and your own judges threaten you? You, however, whom our choice has caused to attain to public administrations, take confidence in the honesty of your conduct, for no venality shuts you out, if uprightness of action has restrained you. Serve the public interests, firmly fixed, since no private losses shall shake you. Render this return to my judgment, that you, whom I have caused to be burdened by no fee of your own appointment, may strive that my deeds be praised in you.
Know therefore that the term fixed beforehand by the lords of affairs must be observed, yet in such wise that you ought to provide and pay over those things which have been decreed to you for the public benefit. Under the clemency of a good prince it is established that nothing is permitted to chance occurrences, since they correct adverse mishaps who have decreed to bestow most prosperously. For how should the stripped man bear savage barbarism and a stern prince, when, despoiled, he refuses by right what in abundance he had learned to render? And therefore, to this man and that, whose lands were laid waste by the inroad of the Suevi, the royal serenity has remitted the treasury-dues of the fifteenth indiction, as the precept, when re-read, will be able to instruct you.
Wherefore, commending obedience, from the aforesaid proprietors, with respect to the estates which you shall have ascertained to be laid waste, you shall not exact the tributes of the present indiction; but the rest see to by the customary compulsion, so that at the appointed times you may make up to our treasurer the remaining sum. Beware therefore lest you become more grievous than the enemy, if you should still wish to strip those already laid bare: let not those tremble at the cloak who feared arms; let them feel no plunderings after the brigands. They have found valid receipts against you: their own calamity has given them invincible warrants of security: the violent man has taken away what you were seeking. He to whom nothing seems left over is established to be freed from tributes. It seems to be a new kind of profit that those requesting acquire and those granting feel no losses at all.
For it is received from one in such a way that it cannot perish from another: it is granted without expense, ceded without diminution, and that bears the name of munificence which knows not to depart from the rights of the lord. Wherefore that man complains that the treasury-due of his cottages situated in that province, which the schedule subscribed below sets forth, is vexed by the enormity of the tax-collectors, desiring, without any diminution of the public benefit, that he ought to render to our treasurers the due payment. To which we, who are known to study the harm of none, provided that the dues competent to the treasury be discharged by reasonable satisfaction, gladly assent, since this is to hold good desires in suspense, even as it is to perpetrate unlawful ones.
On which matter your Respectability, having admonished the decurions and the compellers, as well as those whose interest is recognized, shall cause the exaction from the aforesaid cottages to be removed from that indiction onward under this condition: that, if within those Kalends the sum which is due has not been fully paid to the treasurer, the customary exaction be carried out within the province; but if, on the contrary, he shall have proved by the treasurers' receipts that the pledge of his promise has been fulfilled, let the designated estates be freed from all disturbance of the compellers, since those things ought rather to be chosen which are proved to be offered without suspicion of loss and with a willing mind. For an exaction made without the pressure of a compeller is pleasing to us, and to make devout that which one could scarcely fulfil even under coercion.
And would that the proprietor of his own accord might both relieve us of the necessity of delays and free himself from losses by competent payments! For he himself makes the necessity imminent who has put off rendering the customary dues. It is full of piety to bind a foreign people by public benefits, and not so much to admit blood-kindred to the gains of an estate as to invite even strangers themselves: that inheritance which is without next of kin, succession apart from kindred, and the sole kinship of race is to speak the ancestral tongues. For the African so seeks benefits as to teach that they were once granted to him: a gift without the name of a recipient, bounty apart from the person, since it was first conferred upon the people, that afterwards the name of the petitioner might be affixed.
Hence it is that by a kind of right they claim others' inheritances, and to them alone does that seem to belong which a Roman cannot obtain in similar cases. They did not have such a benefit in their own homeland, but here all are kindred under this condition: the whole nation, as far as concerns the benefit of succession, is one family.
Wherefore let your Experience sift his petition by careful examination; and if in very truth that man whom he reports to have passed from this light left no sons, nor is established to be lawfully possessed by another, let your office celebrate, after the custom, the induction into the said property, so that the ancient piety of the present rulers may restore the benefits of their lords, and he may be able to supplicate for those under whom he understands himself the more to have merited what he had vowed. Let him resume the means which he had sighed to have lost. He could no longer call himself a foreigner who acquires the lands he longed for. Let him have a dignity like that of proprietors, and now, restored, let him render tributes, who had been seeking aid from another's hands.
Let him rejoice to have been brought to this, that he may give what assuredly is not proved to emerge except in one who possesses—to other proprietors inferior in this lot alone, namely that he cannot alienate what he has prevailed to possess. But this too we believe to have been devised with great equity: that he who succeeds in the place of a pledge should preserve his substance with a father's affection by right against outsiders. Once fed by compassion, let him now feed others also: a happy and praiseworthy captivity has befallen him, to enjoy Roman citizenship and to have been able to be mingled with the privileges of the Africans. The remnants of public accounts are to be compared to an ill-omened sickness, which burdens and weakens, unless they depart with speed. It is a kind of guilt to be under debt, nor can he truly be called free who is proved to be found liable.
The prudent man compels himself; less cautious is he who is urged on by another. For what has the whole year's undertaken compulsion accomplished? Let the sum of the coming indiction and its amount be exacted. By sparing you do not spare; by unburdening you weigh down the more; and while you seek venal delays, you double the burdens of tribute. Lay aside at last a cruel mercy, benefits embittered with every loathing. He strikes more grievously who advances by flattering, and he wounds under the guise of indulgence who has put off exacting the tributes at the accustomed seasons. And therefore cease at last to traffic in the losses of proprietors, since, constrained by inconveniences, you give back the whole that you took away by unjust postponements.
After these things do not believe that you are being admonished again by words, but compelled by an irremissible exaction. Wherefore if by that day you shall not, with accounts settled, have either brought in yourself or sent on to our treasurer the sum which is solemnly required of the provinces, degraded within the province you shall speedily render up what you know you have wrongly delayed, since it is exceedingly unjust that a public penny should lie idle through your negligence, and that the treasurer should ceaselessly spend out borrowed money for the public benefits. He ought to be of proven conscience who is set over the disbursing of the prince's bounties, lest by any filth of cupidity that be dried up which is poured forth from so great a liberality.
For the hands of plunderers alter any largesses whatever, and just as the purity of a spring is corrupted by miry ground, so the abundance of a good king is changed by greedy distributors. Even gold itself, when it is dissolved into liquid, unless it be received in a most clean little cup, is tainted; since those things alone preserve their purity which are darkened by no admixture of filth. How pleasing it is to see the rivulets running over snow-white pebbles and to behold nature's free purity, as it were, smiling, when, injured by no stains, it is not befouled! Thus the gifts of the lord of affairs ought to be darkened by no pollution, but, even as they go forth from him in plenty, so they ought to reach the Romans most pure.