The Letters of Cassiodorus Part 82

[Footnote 800:'Haec nos annuo sermone convenit loqui: quia bonarum rerum nulla satietas est.']

'Now, to proceed to business. Do you and your official staff impress upon all the cultivators of the soil the absolute necessity of their paying their land-tax[801] for this thirteenth Indiction[802] at the appointed time. Let there be no pressing them to pay before the time, and no venal connivance at their postponement of payment after the time. What kindness is there in delay? The money must be paid, sooner or later.

[Footnote 801: 'Trina Illatio.']

[Footnote 802: Sept. 1, 534, to Sept. 1, 535.]

'Prepare also a full and faithful statement of the expenditure for every four months[803], and address it to our bureaux[804], that there may be perfect clearness in the public accounts.

[Footnote 803: 'Expensarum fidelem not.i.tiam quaternis mensibus comprehensam.' As the receipts of the _Trina Illatio_ had to be gathered in every four months, the account of Provincial expenditure covered the same period.]

[Footnote 804: 'Ad scrinia nostra dirigere maturabis.']

'In order to help you, we send A and B, members of our official staff, to examine your accounts. See that you come up to the standard of duty here prescribed for you.'

3. SENATOR, PRAETORIAN PRAEFECT, TO ALL THE SAJONES WHO HAVE BEEN a.s.sIGNED TO THE CANCELLARII.

[Sidenote: General instructions to the Sajones.]

'There must be fear of the magistrate in the heart of the citizen, else the laws would never be obeyed. But as in medicine various remedies are required by various const.i.tutions, so in the administration of the laws sometimes force and sometimes gentleness has to be used. Wisdom is required to decide which is the best mode of dealing with each particular case.

'Therefore we despatch your Devotion[805] to attend upon A B, Clarissimus Cancellarius. Be terrible to the lawless, but to them alone. Above all things see to the punctual collection of the taxes.

Do not study popularity. Attend only to those cases which are entrusted to your care, and work them thoroughly. No greater disgrace can attach to an officer of Court than that a Judge's sentence should be left unexecuted[806]. Do not swagger through the streets exulting in the fact that n.o.body dares meet you. Brave men are ever gentle in time of peace, and there is no greater lover of justice than he who has seen many battles. When you return to your parents and friends let it not be brawls that you have to boast of, but good conduct. We also shall in that case welcome you back with pleasure, and not leave you long without another commission. And the King too, the lord of all[807], will entrust higher duties to him who returns from the lower with credit and the reward of a good conscience.'

[Footnote 805: 'Devotio tua' was the technical way of addressing the _fortis Sajo_.]

[Footnote 806: 'In executore illud est pessimum, si judicis relinquat arbitrium.']

[Footnote 807: 'Rerum Dominus.']

4. SENATOR, PRAETORIAN PRAEFECT, TO THE CANONICARIUS[808] OF THE VENETIAE.

[Footnote 808: Revenue-officer.]

[Sidenote: Praise of Acinaticium, a red wine of Verona.]

'A well furnished royal table is a credit to the State. A private person may eat only the produce of his own district; but it is the glory of a King to collect at his table the delicacies of all lands.

Let the Danube send us her carp, let the _anchorago_ (?) come from the Rhine, let the labour of Sicily furnish the _exormiston_[809], let the sea of Bruttii send its sweet _acerniae_ (?); in short, let well-flavoured dishes be gathered from all coasts. It becomes a King so to regale himself that he may seem to foreign amba.s.sadors to possess almost everything.

[Footnote 809: 'Perhaps a kind of lamprey' (White and Riddle's Latin-English Dictionary).]

'And therefore, not to neglect home-produce also, as our fertile Italy is especially rich in wines, we must have these also provided for the King's table. Now the report of the Count of the Patrimony informs us that the stock of _Acinaticium_[810] has fallen very low in the royal cellars. We therefore order you to visit the cultivators of Verona, and offer them a sufficient price for this product of theirs, which they ought to offer without price to their Sovereign.

[Footnote 810: Apparently a kind of raisin wine; from _acina_, a grape or berry.]

'It is in truth a n.o.ble wine and one that Italy may be proud of.

Inglorious Greece may doctor her wines with foreign admixtures, or disguise them with perfumes. There is no need of any such process with this liquor. It is purple, as becomes the wine of kings. Sweet and strong[811], it grows more dense in tasting it, so that you might doubt whether it was a liquid food or an edible drink[812].

[Footnote 811: What are we to make of 'Stipsis nescio qua firmitate roboratur?']

[Footnote 812: 'Tactus ejus densitate pinguescit: ut dicas esse aut carneum liquorem aut edibilem potionem.' Questionable praise, according to the ideas of a modern wine-grower.]

'I have a mind to describe the singular mode of manufacturing this wine. The grape cl.u.s.ter, gathered in autumn, is hung up under the roof of the house to dry till December. Thus exuding its insipid humours it becomes much sweeter. Then in December, when everything else is bound by the frost of winter, the chilly blood of these grapes is allowed to flow forth. It is not insultingly trodden down by the feet, nor is any foul admixture suffered to pollute it; its stream of gem-like clearness is drawn forth from it by a n.o.ble provocation. It seems to shed tears of joy, and delights the eye by its beauty as much as the palate by its flavour. Collect this wine as speedily as possible, pay a sufficient price for it, and hand it over to the _Cartarii_ who are charged with this business.

'And this point is not to be forgotten, that it is to be served up in goblets of a milky whiteness. Lilies and roses thus unite their charms, and a pleasure is ministered to the eye, far beyond the mere commonplace facts that the wine has a pleasant taste, and that it restores the strength of the drinker.

'We rely on you to provide both the wine and the drinking vessels[813]

with all despatch.'

[Footnote 813: We might have expected to find wine-bottles rather than wine-gla.s.ses thus requisitioned; but I think the words of Ca.s.siodorus, 'quod lacteo poculo relucescit,' oblige us to adopt the latter translation.]

5. SENATOR, PRAETORIAN PRAEFECT, TO VALERIAN, VIR SUBLIMIS.

[Written probably in the autumn or winter of 535, when Belisarius was in Sicily threatening the Southern Provinces of Italy.]

[Sidenote: Measures for relief of Lucania and Bruttii.]

'The ruler's anxiety for the common good of all over whom he is placed, may allowably show itself in an especial manner towards the dwellers in his own home, and that pre-eminently at a time when they need his succour from peril.

'The numerous army which was destined for the defence of the Republic is said to have laid waste the cultivated parts of Lucania and Bruttii, and to have diminished the abundance of those regions by its love of rapine.

'Now since they must take and you must give, and since the cultivator must not be robbed nor the army starved, know that the prices of provisions are fixed by the order of the Lord of the State at a much lower figure than you have been wont to sell at[814].

[Footnote 814: 'Pretia quae antiquus ordo const.i.tuit ex jussione rerum Domini cognoscite temperata, ut multo arctius quam vendere solebatis in a.s.sem public.u.m praebita debeant imputari.']

'Be not therefore anxious. You have escaped the hands of the tax-collector. The present instrument takes away from you the liability to tribute. In order that your knowledge may be made more complete, we have thought it better that the amounts of the provisions for which you are held responsible should be expressed in the below-written letters[815], that no one may sell you a benefit which you know to be conferred by the public generosity.

[Footnote 815: 'Sed quo facilius instrueretur vestra not.i.tia, _imputationum summas infra scriptis brevibus credidimus exprimendas._'

Apparently the ordinary taxes for the two Provinces are remitted, but a certain quant.i.ty of provisions has to be furnished to the army, perhaps by each towns.h.i.+p; and besides this, the commissariat officers have a right of pre-emption at prices considerably below the market rate.]

'Repress, therefore, the unruly movements of the cultivators[816].

While the Gothic army is fighting, let the Roman peasant enjoy in quiet the peace for which he sighs. According to the King's command, admonish the several tenants on the farms, and the better sort of peasants, not to mingle in the barbarism of the strife, lest the danger to public tranquillity be greater than any service they can render in the wars[817]. Let them lay hands to the iron, but only to cultivate their fields; let them grasp the pointed steel, but only to goad their oxen.

[Footnote 816: 'Continete ergo possessorum intemperantes motus.']

[Footnote 817: 'Ex Regia jussione singulos conductores ma.s.sarum et possessores validos admonete, ut nullam contrahant in concertatione barbariem: ne non tantum festinent bellis prodesse quantum quiete confundere.' Evidently the rustics are dissuaded from taking up arms lest they should use them on the side of Belisarius.]

'Let the Judges be active: let the tribunals echo with their denunciations of crime. Let the robber, the adulterer, the forger, the thief, find that the arm of the State is still strong to punish their crimes. True freedom rejoices when these men are made sad. Here, in this civil battle, is full scope for your energies: attend to this, and enjoy the thought that others are fighting the battle with the foreign foe for you.

'Exercise great care in calculating the rations of the soldiers, that no trickery may succeed in defrauding the soldier of his due.

'The officers of the army are by the rulers of the State placed under my authority, and you are therefore to admonish them if they go wrong, while redressing all their real grievances. They, in their turn, must uphold discipline, which is the most powerful weapon of an army. Rise to the dignity of the occasion, and show that you are able to govern a Province in a disturbed condition of public affairs, since anyone can govern it while all things are quiet.

'The royal household is specially ordered to pay the same obedience to this rescript as all the rest of the Province; and as for my own dependants, I say expressly that, though I wish them well, I ask for no favour for them which I would not grant to all the other inhabitants of the Province.'