The Letters of Symmachus, Book X

I know it was done out of love, whereby you are wont often to honor eminent men, that I was employed as reader of your sacred discourse. But when I understand that that speech excels in every way all other writings which the senate has heard on this subject, I too consider myself held in greater esteem than the rest. For to great undertakings, just as to greater comedies, are assigned actors chosen out. Not the same honor attended Publius Pollio in the delivery of plays as attended Ambivius, nor did equal fame come to Aesopus and Roscius. Wherefore, best of princes, whatever you have graciously determined concerning me, I embrace as offered by divine favor. Your praise, lord Gratian, is my duty; since you are so disposed that, when you administer healing to the commonwealth, you summon the service of my voice. You have restored our public disturbances to tranquility. It stood by the merest chance that we did not all perish, so great was the wickedness that those who held the highest powers by evil arts had contrived.

That fierce Maximinus, on account of his successes, a brooder over judgments, hard to bring to decision, ready for feuds [lacuna] And at the same time your own affairs have returned to tranquility. These blessings, though they befell as a necessity of your office, have nevertheless gladdened my mind as if doubled. But, fearing higher matters, this news does not yet satisfy me, so long as the reckoning of the stored harvest has not proceeded into the next season. See to it, then, that I know what each day brings into the granaries, that the pleasure of my leisure may be increased along with the abundance of my country. Farewell.

You bid me be present at the opening ceremonies of the quaestorian games on the sixth day before the Kalends of November. I received the letter of this summons two days before the appointed time, near Naples. As you see, the long stretch of the journey and the nearness of the day of the ceremony excuse my absence. But, the gods aiding, I shall make up the debt of my service with many spectacles of your own. Now I beg you to be ready to grant pardon; for it is not right that so great a loss of mine should also be joined with blame. Farewell.

It is my purpose and my nature to care for the reputation of those I love. But kinship urges me to bestow still more favor upon you. Wherefore I bear with impatience that it should be announced to the senate by the notaries of the attendants that you allow a magistrate of the Roman people to be absent, and that it is charged against you as an injury that the duties owed to the fatherland are neglected by those bound to them. Even though I presume this has been falsely brought to public ears, still I discharge the duty of a father in admonishing, and I beg that you add this title also, over which we labor, to the other praises of your administration. For it is grievous that, for a man of noble family, presiding over the highest tribunals throughout Africa, some of his colleagues should shirk the Roman duties, and that a year almost empty of givers of games should breed envy against the dignity of a consular.

Let those who neglect their duties hear at least with what modest expense the praetor Aedesius, in the past year, produced the games of the city, and let them gather from that example what honor and relief is owed to present magistrates.

My mind desires to be present at your vows, but the state of my bodily health refuses so long a journey. For, as leisure is fruitful in producing illnesses, once again the pain of the feet has bound me while I was indulging in the quiet of the countryside. Grant, therefore, I beg you, a just remission of my duty, and allow me in the meantime to be absent from the nuptial pledges of your house, that a little later, being healed, I may join in the festivities. Farewell.

It is not customary to beg pardon anxiously of friends. Wherefore I compel myself to few words while at leisure in the country, an illness of one foot having crept upon me unawares. I ask, then, exemption from the desired office of attending in person. The gods, under their auspices, will grant me the means to be present, restored to health, at the nuptial vows of your family. Farewell.

My brother Rabilianus, distinguished by birth and affection, has lamented to me in private complaint the bitterness of the wrong done to him. For he asserts that his procurator was rebuked without naming anyone, and though he ought to have obtained satisfaction against you—which, while he was staying at Rome, he requested—he found instead that the wrong to his household had been increased. This I judge to have happened through forgetfulness. For how could you enjoin what, when it was set before you face to face, you disapproved? Wherefore, as a parent I admonish you, do not think it a mark of good conscience to aggravate what has already caused pain. Certainly, if fairness is lacking in judgments rendered, give me a friendly account of the matter, so that you may know that a governor ought to undertake, for absent masters, the role of their defense. Farewell.

The receipt of your letters was pleasant to me, for friendship rejoices in mutual services. But would that the diligence of my agents had fulfilled the promise of your assurance. For though you wrote that they had set out to pay the rent, they lost a small part of the income; nor were they ashamed, amid so fruitful a year, to incur an accumulation of debts. Deign, therefore, to take up care for our interest, and to compel the debtors to pay. For what does it profit that they are aided by your zeal and kindnesses, if our own advantage does not feel it? Farewell.

Having first offered greeting, which it is customary to place before the letter, so that wishes may precede the ordinary course of friendly correspondence, I cannot be silent with you that the works at Caieta's Formiae are growing cold; and unless your presence adds a spur to the undertaking, I fear lest the summer opportunity for advancing the work be lost. What ought to be done about this I leave to your judgment. It is enough for me, in matters pertaining to your praise, to have fulfilled the part of a friendly advisor. Farewell.

I rejoice most abundantly that you are taking care that my son's games be furnished with more bears, and I would have sent at once the price to be reckoned, had not the harshness of winter hindered transport. But a little later, when the favorable season of spring shall have softened the difficulty of the roads, the purchase of the beasts will be seen to, for which you have promised the justice of a fixed price.

Meanwhile I give and hold thanks to you, and declare myself provoked to the increase of our friendship, though of your own accord you deign to observe that honorable kindnesses do not perish among the mindful. Farewell.

Through our mutual friend Gaudentius I have sent the little petitions of my kinsman Valentinus, matters indeed touching my own good faith and conscience. For his brother Proserius, when he was pressed by his last hour, both in person and by letter besought me with the utmost entreaties that, an easy rescript of authority having been obtained, his daughter should be joined in marriage to the son of his brother—a thing which manifest precedents testify to have been granted to many. Wherefore I cannot deny my aid to this pious supplication, since the will of my dying kinsman has bound my good faith concerning this marriage, as the letter joined with the petitions declares. Deign, therefore, to assist the fulfillment of this pious wish, to this extent, that if anyone should attempt to disturb the paternal mandate, he be deterred by the threat of infamy. But when the favor of the rescript shall have been obtained, let it be brought by a bearer of proven trustworthiness. Farewell.

The common cause deserves your assistance. For whatever pertains to senatorial duties must be carried out with shared effort and joined resolve. Assist, therefore, with the authority that is fitting, the interests and accounts pertaining to the most illustrious senate: you will gain much praise from this business, if the payment demanded of those liable shall restore the duties of our order, which it is plainly evident have long been wavering. Farewell.

Fortune, which willed to bring you to the governance of Apulia, provides for our games. Use, then, the present opportunity, and at the praetorship of our house, to which bears will shortly and successfully be brought from overseas, decree fitting protections, so that this increase too may be added to your earlier services. Farewell.

I am delighted by your diligence and judicial vigor. But the poverty, or rather the destitution, of the order of Formiae is even impatient of remedy. For just as bodies afflicted with a long-standing disease cannot bear a harsher medicine, so a senate reduced in number and in poverty is destroyed by the harshness of an unrestrained correction. Take willingly, then, the counsel of a father, who does not defend the fault of the order, but requires a measure of correction. Account must be taken of the public revenues, and the restoration of the summer baths must be weighed against the resources of the commonwealth, so that if anything remains over from other expenses, it may be applied to the cost of the work. A longer time also must be allowed for the restoration, lest a hasty repair detract from its solidity. Nothing is taken from your glory by this delay; for the fault of the old senate does not reach the present judge.

I could add more, but since consideration of all these matters flourishes in your wisdom, I refrain from being more prolix, content with one admonition: that we must take great care that your coming bring relief rather than further exhaustion to some already worn-out orders.

If we were seeking a new favor concerning the purchase of bears, a longer circuit of words would be needed. But since we are recalling promises already made, it is fitting that you be reminded rather than asked. This, then, is the sum of my letter: that you not be reluctant to assist with your aid my agents, to whom I have already entrusted the purchase of the beasts, so that our games, which, God willing, we are preparing for my son, may be furnished by your help and at my expense. Farewell.

Suessa is the fatherland of honorable citizens, so that I may rightly say that even men of the smallest fortune there ought to be judged free of the vices of the common people. I wish you, then, to believe that none from that city would have come forward into the clamor of the forum, had not a bitter oppression compelled them—of which my letter shall not speak. For the public voice will plead more forcefully for their grief than a private one could have done. They desire only, through me, to merit a ready hearing. But whatever must be hastened for those despoiled and harassed, your favor and the standard of the laws will supply. Farewell.

The pleas of the people of Suessa are commended to you by public office, to me by private compassion. And so from you the aid of judicial vigor is asked, from me only words. I fulfill, then, my part, and ask you in friendship that, having heard the lamentations of the unfortunate, you may be moved to that side which is friendly to justice and to compassion. Farewell.

The first reason for writing is that I may render the honour of a salutation. The second, that I may approach your well-proved modesty with a just petition. For very many of the household of my house, having escaped by flight, are hiding in these regions which border upon yours; these, once you have heard the representations of my agent, I beg you to restore. For it accords with your character both to have regard for our friendship, and to deny refuge to servile wickedness. Farewell.

After I had received your letter from the Sicilian strait, roused to the duty of reciprocation, I announce my greeting as favorable to me, and wish that it may be sufficient for you. Next I remind you concerning the preparation of our exhibition, although a conscientious mind requires no other reminder. But before all the other things which the Roman spectacles require, the theatrical performance demands crocodiles above all. Of these I hold your faithful promise, to which an easy fulfillment will follow, if the efforts of your favor especially assist the matter sent for this purpose. Farewell.

The trustworthy report of messengers asserts that several bears from Dalmatia will shortly be arriving for the exhibition of our house: the transport of which, with vehicles arranged, we must privately provide for. Your diligence, proven by experience, promises me the completion of this care. I beg, therefore, that you undertake this province immediately [lacuna]

[lacuna] has expiated with capital destruction and the tears of all. Now man shines forth to man again. The Senate holds to its ancient state. It is pleasant to live: one does not regret having been born, and all things look toward safety. No one is in danger from poverty. The republic has recovered its former age, and decrepit spirits have been changed, after you spoke words unto virtue. With like vigilance we see it provided that the grain supply be more liberally poured into the satiety of the city: that ample purification purges away the wickedness of debased coinage: that no observer any longer sees the balance tipped by the increase of provincial gold. A thousand other things, which, if I should wish to pursue them, mindful of your glory, unmindful of my own smallness, I would seize upon. For no prudent man of sense has ever corrupted oracles with words.

Therefore let your divine mind, youthful Augustus, glory of the Roman name, be borne along on the chariot of its own eloquence; we, in rendering thanks, crawl upon the ground, fitter for the slipper than the buskin, now that eloquence has become a matter of empire. For, so far as I know, you have given the Muses a place and lodging in the palace: may this turn out favorably for you and your piety, since you give no heed to pride and idleness, the vices of a grander fortune. For me it is enough of well-being that you are well. Felicity, entreated by the public vow, will grant that as great as is your clemency's will to render benefits, so great may be the abundance for advancing affairs.

To me, quiet and long since removed from desires of honors, you have of your own accord granted the prefecture desired by many. I give thanks to the will of so many good princes toward me. But I understand how much more anxiety a magistracy has which comes by judgment than one which comes by favor. For the former, given as it is for merits, must live up to the hope reposed in it: the latter, sought through kindness, is free from the risk of performance, my lord Emperor. Who then shall make me equal to this burden? Surely your clemency, whose concern it is that I not be thought rashly chosen. For my own conscience it is enough not to have sought after public charge. What I shall be found to be now lies in the hand of the times. For it is the favor of princes that makes good magistrates, and the virtues of judges always flow from your character.

Grant that all may understand, if perchance sound vigor and a just conscience should be lacking in the governors, it is the fault of the man, not of the age. I am not immoderate in wishes, since I commend my honor to its own authors. For how much is it that I give thanks to your divinity? Grant that the republic too may be grateful to you on my account.

For a long time now, as the matter shows, the judgments of your divinity have regarded me with favorable second thoughts. For otherwise, since emperors grant nothing rashly, I would not have come among the first, or even the first. I seem, therefore, to have been delayed together with the republic hitherto, which, when it called the care of your majesty to the distant parts of the empire, found among you judgments already meditated, my lord Emperor. It is just, therefore, that I should give thanks to your eternity for the honor alone which I have received. You have often made prefects, and through boundless age will make them, but such as constant attendance and habit have thrust forward. Me, though long since a man of proconsular rank, yielding now for a long time to the ways of the powerful, you wished to receive the magistracy before I expected it. Now I beg and beseech you to assist your own deed with perpetual favor. It is pleasant to preside over citizens, but difficult to please them.

For among acquaintances too, constancy is often a hard thing. What of the fact that it often happens that some, through long use of power, no longer recognize my honor? Let not those desert who gave. I shall strive, as far as I am able, that it may not seem that a prior report deceived your clemency about me: it will be for your divinity to guard the common cause. For in good magistrates the fame of the times seeks greater glory than that of the judges.

That we should not keep silence, before the guardians of his fame, about a matter which we would not have kept silent before the deified brother of your clemency, the late emperor, if the Roman state still enjoyed him, I insinuate with that devotion by which it befits your prefect to prefer fidelity to flattery, my lord Emperor. It has been falsely believed that the height of the city's power was raised by the use of a foreign and haughty vehicle. For this reasoning alone once persuaded a kindly disposition to the new arrangement, that a rich pomp should carry what was once a plain magistracy. Sober honor refuses distinction of this kind, since it never repents of itself. If we suffer anything to be added to it, we confess that till now something has been lacking. And so the eyes of the city seek the noble modesty of a private vehicle, and the Roman people judges that prefecture degenerate which has drawn later examples after it.

Far be it that the governor of a free city, and one moreover devoted to you, should be borne along like another Salmoneus. We care nothing for foreign marvels. Your Rome does not endure the incitement to pride, mindful, doubtless, of her good forefathers, whom the arrogance of Tarquin and even the chariot of Camillus offended. For to that great man the white four-horse chariot brought a sad exile. Publicola lowered the consular axe before the assembly of citizens, and broke the summit of his own honor that he might raise up the liberty of the state. Let us, then, be judged rather by character than by insignia. We do not blame the new benefit, but we prefer the good old ways. Remove the vehicle whose adornment is more conspicuous: we prefer that whose use is more ancient.

Among matters of chief importance it has often been provided for that philosopher-teachers be sought from Attica for the instruction of the nobility. And so public law and authority have received several such men for the use of our city, my lord Emperor. Now the goodness of your age has of its own accord claimed the foremost of philosophers for the schools of Rome: since Celsus, born of a father named Achetimus (whom the memory of letters agrees to have been nearly equal to Aristotle), promises to our youth the mastery of the liberal arts, seeking no profit from his profession, and is therefore worthy to be enrolled in the most ample order, so that we may reward with the prize of rank a spirit free from the vices of avarice. There are noble examples of this matter, which prudent imitation might emulate. For the Athenian senate deemed Carneades the Cyrenaean and Clytomachus the Carthaginian worthy of association; likewise they granted citizenship to Zaleucus, founder of the Locrian laws.

It is worthy, therefore, of the eternity of your divinity, to adjudge Celsus, praiseworthy in birth, learning, and disposition, to the nobility, by the pledge of rank, namely with consular precedence, lest we seem to have sought his expense rather than his teaching, not without a mark of avarice, if we demand public duties from one who offers gratuitous instruction.

The Roman people indeed awaits the especial benefits of your divinity, my lords Emperors. But it now demands as though owed those things which your eternity has of its own accord promised: not that it distrusts that they will be granted to it (for nowhere is hope greater than in the promise of good princes), but lest it be thought to hope disdainfully for what has been offered, unless it presses for it insistently. It begs, therefore, your clemency that, after those provisions which your generosity will afford for our sustenance, you also supply the pleasures of the chariot-races and of the stage, for the circus and the Pompeian theater. For that urban joy rejoices, whose longing you have stirred by your promise. Messengers are expected daily to confirm that the promised gifts draw near to the city. Report is gathered concerning charioteers and horses: every vehicle, every ship is said to have brought stage-artists. And yet it is love of your perpetuity that whets the desires of the people, not eagerness for shows.

Grant, therefore, meanwhile what is asked, that there may be room for the rest, which you will bestow without end.

Antiquity devoted the Kalends, the auspices of the year, by which the recurrence of the months is opened, to the giving of gifts, my lords Emperors. You anticipate the use of this custom by the haste of your generosity, thinking a liberality tardy which is applied at its set times. Happy, by Hercules, is the age in which princes know not how to withhold long the granting of prayers, while they delay to exact what is owed to themselves. What then shall I proclaim first, what chiefly? The ready and swift generosity of your divinity, or your mindful diligence concerning those absent, or that you have increased the sacred gift by the honor of your words? I shall say, as the matter stands, that your clemency has taken care that, as though I were placed in your presence, I might both enjoy the addresses of the princes and venerate your august countenances in the very gifts themselves. When shall it fall to me rather to seize express and living joys from you?

How great a good is truth, whose likeness and image is already wonderful! I give and hold thanks, therefore, and my own part, since I am not able to repay it, I commit to the heavenly virtues. May they reward your clemency with worthy advancements; we cherish, we love you; which you know to be more excellent than all things; you who for this reason rule the republic beneficially, that you may deserve these things alone.

Of all the benefits which a more favorable fortune bestows upon its subjects, there are fixed times, my lords Emperors. Only the laws, which proceed to the common good, never suffer decline. The venerable order gives thanks to your divine sanctions, even in the name of posterity, to whom a reformed republic will be handed down. For when a foul display of extravagance had overwhelmed senatorial duties with heavy expenses, you restored to our morals and our expenditures their ancient soundness: lest either a meager exhibition should discolor colleagues unequal in means, or unconsidered lavishness should overwhelm, through shame, those who attempted things beyond their strength. Moreover, by the wholesomeness of the same reasoning, the old form of delivering opinions has been restored: lest to each the foremost place in decreeing be granted, not by the measure of his services, but by the fortune of the wealthy; and lest the agreement of the rest should follow, even unwillingly, what a more fortunate man had judged before all others.

We believe, therefore, that with these things removed, the virtues have returned to their own kingdom. In the giving of exhibitions frugality will be maintained, in the Senate order; nor will opulence display itself, ever weak in good times. It remains that those matters which your serenity has entrusted to the fathers for deliberation, once the decree of the Senate is known, an august law may confirm. For with no one dissenting, what measure the assessment should have, once or several times; what moderate limit should be applied to those performing exhibitions; what temperings of expense are fitting for gladiatorial shows and for stage plays; what degree of liberty present outlay deserves to have, what penalty the obstinacy of the absent ought to undergo to experience. These things your venerable eternity, when it entrusted to the Senate matters to be determined, commanded to be referred back to itself at once, that decisions might be confirmed for all by an immortal law. We have obeyed the commands.

We await the oracle, by which, favorably, as is familiar to your divinity, you may confirm the decrees of the Fathers: with a threat added, should any ambition ever corrupt these or those things which you have sanctioned by heavenly counsel for the dignity of the order.

To give thanks pleasingly for your benefits on behalf of the city of Rome is, while it is a task of commendable duty, also one of arrogant boldness. For words match not such vast things, and no speech fills the person of the Roman people, most excellent emperors. But because in such matters the reckoning of desire counts for more than that of talent, I do not fear the reputation of falling short, so long as I flee the name of one ungrateful toward the City that is dear to heaven and the stars: for whom you heap up and bestow the goods of all lands, and you think it chiefly accrues to yourselves whatever Rome has gained. We have received the faithful security of an ancient prerogative: since it is agreed that, with you ruling, whatever noble thing anywhere either nature has begotten or industry has fashioned belongs to the Roman people. Indeed you have also given an excellent example to posterity.

Future ages will know that public pleasures flow abundantly only when the palace does not demand them for itself. This is the mark of a temperate spirit: to deny oneself what is bestowed on others, and to prefer the joy of the rest to one's own private consolations. This practice becomes good princes. For the enjoyment of ears and eyes is fleeting, that of generosity eternal. Others would have kept these gifts for their own triumphs, so that, the laurel set aside, the Pompeian stage might resound for new performers; so that, instead of captive tetrarchs, the Indian beast might lead the chariot; so that a long line of horses might be led like conquered nations. Your triumph will receive the Arsacids bound behind your back, and the treasures of conquered Babylon. For into great souls affected ostentation does not fall. You do not know how to delay what is to be granted: whatever the servitude of nations has offered becomes at once public property.

Deservedly the senate and people extol you with their mouth, venerate you with devotion, embrace you with love. Believe me, you possess the secret places of every heart: those seats of good affections where the love of children, where that of parents, dwells. And because every reward, while it is compared to your benefits, is too small, the most illustrious order has found a pleasing return by which it might prove itself grateful. For it has consecrated with equestrian statues among the ancient names the founder of your family and line, once general in Africa and Britain, who begot that most fortunate star, saving for the empire. Thus are honored those whose children are born for the public good. But the people, filled with the pledges of imperial munificence, yielded to their love for you with ready inclination. When it learned, on my announcement, that the gifts of the public parents were at hand, it poured forth spread abroad through every gate into the distance, judging happier than the rest whoever should be first to see your bounty.

As for me, though the gifts of princes are usually awaited, now they came unannounced. Moreover that day, on which the pomp of noble horses went before the royal elephants through the crowded ranks. I prefer to describe the roar of the Vale of Murcia, and that distribution of four-horse chariots, in which, when one seemed to himself more fortunate to whom the urn presently granted the choice, he who chance had made last was equal or even superior. How often did the first grudge the one who followed? For the choice is doubtful, when judgment is made among equals. Do not think that a pleasure of this kind seems small to the Martial plebs, for whom the delights of the neighboring circus games have provided such enjoyment: for whom it seemed the highest honor, that in triumph they should ride upon the backs of horses, that in triumph the chariot should bear them along: since Victory, familiar to the race of Romulus, rewards your clemency according to the wish of all?

You have brought it about that the aged City flourishes anew, restored to its former joy, and to that spring, as it were, of its once vigorous age. I dare now to hope for even better things. You will also send the royal fleet, which may increase, with provisions of grain, the sustenance of the devoted plebs. This then the senate, mingled with the people, will receive at the mouths of the Tiber. They will venerate as sacred ships those that bring in the happy cargo of Egyptian grain. These are not greedy vows, which the kindness of the age has aroused. This confidence comes from precedent. By taking great things we presume greater ones. Now read the auspicious votes of the senate and people: though they know that more is contained in their hearts than can be expressed in words: and accept certain first-offerings of the public love toward you. If what has been said so far seems small, attribute it to the wonder caused by your gifts.

For the greatness of amazement has left no room for many exclamations of praise.

I would have preferred to be the bearer of joyful news, most excellent emperors; but the principle of public duty has laid upon me the necessity of sad tidings. Your Praetextatus, adorned with honors, the champion of ancient probity, has been snatched away by envious death—a man of every virtue at home and abroad. In his place, it is exceedingly difficult even for your eternity, which knows how to choose the best, to substitute one like him. And so he has left behind the utmost longing for himself in the Republic, and great grief among grateful citizens. For as soon as the bitter rumor about him grew rife at Rome, the people refused the customary pleasures of the theater; and, testifying to his illustrious memory with much acclamation, they inveighed heavily against the malice of fortune, for having taken away from them the benefit of glorious emperors.

And he indeed has fulfilled the law of nature; but he has thrown us, the companions of his spirit and of your judgment, into such grief that we ask for the remedy of leisure. I say nothing of the other things which do not allow me to bear the prefecture with patience. This alone, the loss of a colleague, is just cause for obtaining release. Let others love perpetual offices; for me the highest fruit of happiness is that I may draw near in person to your divine majesty, and gaze upon the stars of your benevolence. This one thing, above all that you have granted, I desire. It is a simple petition, and does not aim at a path to seeking honor. For it is clear enough that there is nothing else I desire, since as a suppliant I have shunned a magistracy.

Although I suppose my letter has been anticipated by messengers or by rumor—for what can be swifter than fame, holy emperor?—yet I, compelled by the necessity of public duty, do not pass over in silence the death, still fresh in my grief, of an illustrious man. The fates have snatched away Vettius Praetextatus, equal to the men of old, a man of every virtue, amid the great lamentation of his country, to which he lent conspicuous distinction. His praises and his due eulogies I pass over in the consternation of my mind. Nor indeed is there room for anyone's testimony, since the judgments of your clemency bear witness to the glory of his life, and the grief of all has made his death renowned.

Although Vettius Praetextatus has been released by the law of nature, yet he lives on in the memory and love of all: and by this one thing he punishes envy, that death has conferred so much glory upon him that even this fortune must be envied by malice, most excellent emperors. For besides that unusual grief of the Roman people, the senate too, impatient of its loss, seeks solace from the honor due to virtue, and prays to your divine majesty that the enduring presence of statues may hand down to the eyes of posterity a man wonderful in our age: not that he desires earthly rewards, he who, even while acting as a man, trampled the pleasures of the body as fleeting things; but because imitation is spurred on by the ornaments given to good men, and rival virtue is nourished by the example of honor bestowed on another. Hence it came about that, even in the still rustic ages, the best of the citizens, fashioned by hand and art, were sent forward into lasting memory.

And would that afterward the facile flattery of sycophants had taken nothing away from this distinction! Though things sought by unequal art are not equal. It is fitting, then, that he who remains in the hearts of all should be on the lips of many. He was always loftier than his own magistracies, moderate toward others, severe toward himself, easy of access without contempt, revered without terror. If any advantage of inheritance came to him, it soon returned to his nearest testators. He was broken by no prosperity, laughed at no one's adversity, was ignorant of unbecoming largess: he whom honor always followed against his will, to whose fairness every man entrusted the boundaries of his own rights, as bordering on his own. I would wish to say more of him, I ought to say more of him, but everything must be reserved for the testimony of your clemency. For praise proceeding from a heavenly judgment is more illustrious.

Therefore, as patrons of probity, set forth for future ages too the good deeds of your times, worthy to be seen. Certainly this is that Praetextatus whom you had rightly made consul, that the calendars, mindful, might extend his renowned name. Repair, for the benefit of others, the losses ordained by fate. Let the reward depart with the man, but let judgment endure after the man. Prove that against glory misfortunes have no power. For what he earned from the citizens is singular; what he has lost is common to many.

If the merits of your divine clemency are considered, no wealth, whether nature supplies it or fortune bestows it, will match the gratitude of our love toward you, holy emperor. But, as I judge, the public estimation of an excellent emperor is not to be measured by gifts: yet the senate, ready to comply, spontaneously undertakes every part of duty by which affection is shown, and prays your saving majesty that in this offering, which has added somewhat to previous ones, you may understand that care has been taken that we should not seem to be able to do less under you. For to your divine parents, for their decennial, a smaller sum was decreed to each. Even your divine brother, of gentle memory, when he completed the third lustrum of his imperial life, is said to have been honored with a more sparing munificence. Now our zeal has grown with our love for you.

For the devoted order has promised sixteen hundred pounds of gold for the decennial celebrations of your reign, to be contributed by the weights of the City, that is, by the reckoning of a more generous balance. But if the senate had had resources equal to its spirit, you would know that in the public love there lies wealth for your eternity. But it preferred to please your clemency by the faithfulness of its payment, rather than by the magnitude of an unfaithful promise. Hereafter, under a young emperor, a sound measure of gift is a pledge to be made often. Far be it that we should press upon a good prince more than we are able. For the generosity of those who love does not diminish the strength of those who offer it. Therefore now too accept willingly the subsidies decreed to the sacred treasury, and reserve for the future advances of your reign the hope of similar tributes.

Public necessities have this property, that they often persuade to impossible things, holy emperor. But care is needed lest the harshness of the matter, with the effect frustrated, provoke only offenses—offenses which no one ought more to avoid than a young man and prince, whose favor ought to grow along with his age. Therefore, reconsidering both the reputation of your majesty and the difficulty of the task, I have hesitated to summon the incorporated merchants, members of the eternal City, to the levying of horses which you commanded by letter: lest a public complaint should forestall the release granted by your clemency. The matter is untouched: it still awaits the wholesomeness of a more careful counsel. Grant to justice what you remit to ill will. What we take care to avoid comes from precedent: since your clement father, now a partaker of heaven, when he had attempted to impose a slight burden on this class of men, moved by the freedom of the populace, refrained.

And indeed that matter demanded the care of few, and there was need rather of diligence in handling the public money than of the expense of contributing it. Nevertheless he had regard for his own glory, lest he should command anything against the people's will, and, most diligent and deliberate emperor that he was, he forewent the hoped-for profit, as one mindful of popular favor. Nor let your eternity think that a man near to God abandoned rashly what he had begun. He knew that the burdens of so great a city were sustained by the service of these guilds. This one brings in the woolly flock; that one drives cattle for the people's food; some are bound to the function of pork; part carry wood to be burned for the baths. There are those who devote skilled hands to imperial works; through others chance fires are kept at bay. Already it would be tedious to enumerate the innkeepers and bakers' services, the porters of grain and oil, and many others of this kind serving the fatherland.

In sum, it is clear that this ancient privilege costs the Romans dearly. By continual service they have earned the name of immunity. But if unaccustomed burdens are added, perhaps the accustomed ones will cease. Wherefore we urge upon your clemency your father's example. I have set before you the oracle that you, a dutiful successor, might imitate. I beg and beseech that you do not equate the people, whom you have often venerated as triumphant, with other cities. A better fortune will supply whatever military necessity demands. By the merit of your humanity your necessity will be assuaged.

From almost the very founding of the city of Mars, the custom of New Year's gifts grew up, by the authority of King Tatius, who first received the sprigs of the auspicious tree from the grove of Strenua as the omens of the new year, most excellent emperors. The name itself shows by its meaning that these things belong to men of vigor, on account of their virtue: and therefore such a distinction is owed to you; whose divine spirit expects testimony of vigilance rather than an omen. Accept, then, defenders of the public welfare, these small gifts, wrought solemnly in gold: not because you delight in the honor of rich metal, but that our devotion may testify to the abundance of a fortunate age. To good princes we offer things well gained. Accept open acts of homage from your judges, you who condemn hidden bribes. Rightly do we offer you the solemn bowls, with the five gold pieces, as to divine powers of integrity: gifts by which neither your modesty nor our means is burdened.

May such a custom of duty toward us endure through the ages: and may the unending return of years renew this honor to your clemency without end. Gladly will the prefecture perform its office at the solemn New Year gifts, in offering them to men of vigor.

I confess of my own accord that I know your clemency is able to write back a rescript. I undertook the provocation more out of modesty than of right, since no sentence had been given: lest I should be thought offended by the objection of a voice indeed free, but premature, most sacred emperor. For when, between the next of kin of Emphasius, a most illustrious man, and likewise the appointed heirs, who long since by the praetor's favor enjoy possession of the estates, an action concerning the right of the will was in question, and they impatiently demanded a sentence on the possession—those to whom, intestate, possession of the goods did not at all belong, since it was shown to have been granted to the appointed heirs according to the tablets—Priscianus and Polemonianus, when the case was postponed at the announcement, made their appeal. And when the reason for this was demanded of them, they testified that others had incited them to that voice of theirs, as the connected records in writing will show.

Nor was the office lacking to the parties in suggesting a penalty for the prejudicial delay. But it befitted a judge of your age to reserve the force of the constitution for the sacred oracle, since the petitioners alleged that a stranger's urging had driven them to an ill-considered appeal.

Love of your age and care for the republic bid my fidelity not to conceal what must be corrected, most sacred emperor. Since the sum of civil affairs pertains to the urban prefecture, certain fixed departments are entrusted to lesser offices, for the governing of which industrious and disinterested men ought to be employed, so that each may advance his own duty with blameless readiness. Such men public usage now awaits from the judgment of your divine will. But I do not wish to blame those now in place, since it is enough for my anxiety if you entrust the offices within the walls to better men. For upon my shoulders the weight of all affairs is sustained, while the rest yield, whom the manifold occupation of your clemency could not put to the test. The felicity of these times has men more worthy. The vein of good men is fruitful. You will provide better for our city in future, and you will choose men even unwilling.

Your felicity indeed promises to the eternal City an abundance of its accustomed nourishment, most sacred emperor. But we ought to be secure in fact rather than in hope: which is easy to accomplish, if your clemency's care regard also this matter. For as summer advances, since very little is brought over from the African regions, we are touched by no idle fear lest the grain supply be driven into grave straits. And therefore I beg and beseech the wholesome protection of your perpetuity, that you order the African judges, and the notary to whom your eternity has entrusted the grain shipments, to disregard the stricter instructions, sending energetic men for this business, who, while navigation is still practicable, may furnish the customary loads for the sustenance of the City. This befits your age, this is worthy of your divine virtues, that you should count the security of the Roman people among your chief and foremost cares.

Ships full will come with the longed-for voyages, and a frequent and laden fleet will enter the Roman ports, if the favorable auspices of your divine will breathe upon them.

The outcome of old quarrels is difficult. For a matter agitated by many judgments becomes entangled both by the variety of actions, and by the changes of those examining it, and by the alterations of persons, most sacred emperor. As has now come to my experience, when I heard the year-long struggle between Gaudentius, curator of Martiana, a most illustrious woman, and likewise Liberius, procurator of her aunt, called by the same name while she lived. For at the very threshold of the question, when the procuration which the elder Martiana, a most illustrious woman, had entrusted, was said to be invalid, because it had earlier been enjoined upon a certain principal official, when we found that the actions had been referred back to the mistress, and that by the acts of the praetor the rights had again been transferred to Liberius; we recognized the objection of a void procuration: then the defense of the opposing party denied that the person could stand whose procuration the records of the earlier judgment did not sustain.

Against this, they said that the reading-out of the mandate had earlier been required, and that between the parties the benefit of restoration had been granted to the procurator: on this point the contention lingered longer than was fitting. But because the earlier examiner, as to a rightful defender, had restored the course of time, which could not be obtained through the agents, and the procuration was read as bound to the praetor's judgment: this exception too was set to rest. Another issue followed, namely that by the death of Martiana, a most illustrious woman, the mandate was said to have been extinguished. But against this, the venerable Julian's ordinance had commanded that the offices of procurators continue, once begun while the owners of the causes were living. Therefore, since Liberius had obtained both the restoration while Martiana still lived, and the agreement of the opposing party concerning the valuation of the goods, we pronounced that the mandate had not perished.

Then, as the petitioner pressed that, according to the constitution of your divine will, for the sake of securing the debt, execution should be directed against the maternal estates, since the adversary, though bound by the agreement, had refused to make the valuation of the goods, it was answered that the good faith of the petition must first be examined. This, which seemed reasonable, I admitted. So, an opening having been made for discussing the petition, the defender of Martiana, a most illustrious woman, seemed to detect a falsehood in the petitioner: because, when he had said that her granddaughters born of Placidianus had received an inheritance under the will of Prisca, her mother, he could not prove that all the granddaughters had been named heirs by her. It was answered that the petition concerned only those whom the grandmother had made heirs, and that mention was never made of all of them, but only of those to whom the succession had been delivered.

At this, the curator's defense began to demand the choice, that the petitioner should state from which titles the actions proposed derived. Then, coming from the opposite side under the name of Placidianus, a most illustrious man, who was the father of the adult woman, he answered that it had flowed from excessive donations. But he asserted that a supplement of twelfths was being sought from the heir of Placidia, whose succession Martiana her sister had received. To this the adversary replied only so far as to say that Martiana the younger, most illustrious woman, had obtained not only the succession of her father Placidianus, but also, for certain twelfths, that of her sister Placidia, and yet no mention of Placidia was contained in the series of the petition.

But since the allegation of the other party maintained that it was pursuing a matter bound by the designated titles of the actions, and that what came into dispute Martiana, most illustrious woman, possessed for a certain share; and since it was shown that her name, with the designation of the causes, was included in the petition, my judgment's deliberation came to a stand: the one side asserting that the person of Placidia ought to have been added to the petition; the other denying that, after the designation of the matter and of the person who today enjoys possession of the estates, anything further need be sought. A weightier reason was added to my hesitation; because, since the law orders that within four months the possessor be bound to the petitioner for the valuation of the goods, now, as the records will show, the time seemed too narrow, by the agreement, for valuing estates situated abroad. And therefore, moved by these ambiguities, I have kept all matters to be distinguished by the oracle of your divine will.

For in doubtful matters there is one path of safety, that all things divine, or nearest to the divine, be consulted. The joined pages have taken up the allegations and supplements of the parties: which, when the justice of your majesty has weighed, I pray that you set the bounds of this troublesome suit by a final decision.

When your clemency remembered that the expense of making the carriage had been decreed from the sacred treasury, you ordered that its silver be returned to the public funds from which it had been taken, most sacred emperor: but the faithfulness of examination found that the ornament of the vehicle had received its material drawn from other accounts. Of this matter, even my illustrious predecessor, Anthemius Bassus, is said to have made report to your perpetuity. And therefore the equity of your age has commanded that I set forth what has been examined and ascertained. Since the treasury did not have at the time what ought to have been on hand, silver was furnished for the ordered work from the quaestor's coffer, likewise from the funds of the "formae," and besides from the thrift of the silversmiths. The repayment of this, if the use of the carriage still stood, might rightly be sought from the imperial treasuries.

But now that the newness of the vehicle has been done away with, each claims his own back: nor do we think it hard to obtain what is asked of the parents of the laws. I beg that you give answers worthy of the times, whereby the most illustrious and distinguished count of the sacred largesses may know that what other contribution has drawn out, without any loss to the imperial treasury, must be repaid to the public accounts and to the private persons.

I know indeed that, by a fault of human nature, uprightness lies open to envy. But I marvel that the plots of rivals have gone so far, that by a raw lie the reputation of an innocent man should be assailed, most sacred emperors. For what would they not dare, or what would they leave untried, who, in the citadel of the world, have invented shrines avenged for injuries against the Christian law? He wept, I believe, the fabricator of this scene, when he pretended that men had been snatched from the inmost sanctuaries of the Church for torture, when he described bishops led in chains from distant and neighboring cities. For without these artifices he would not have driven the serene mind of your clemency to convene the people by sacred edict, so that, in terms harsher than is the custom of your piety, he might accuse the prefect whom you chose without ambition.

Let him now, whoever he is, give the reasons for his deceit, who, under the pretext of a just inquiry, which you ordered me to make concerning the worship of despoiled walls, boasts that tragic questions were raised concerning the ministers of the catholic religion. Let him answer the letters of Bishop Damasus, in which he denied that any adherents of that same religion had suffered any insult. I do not greatly urge the answers of my own office: from which the truth of the matter was sought for this reason, lest any deed escape the recollection of the inquirer. Let credit be given to the bishop of that law which is pretended to have been injured. Let credit be given to the prefect, who, warned by the edict of your perpetuity, marvels that in the field it is believed to have been done, which Rome does not know to have happened.

I pass over the injury to the prefecture and to my own conscience: since the accusation has gone so far as to touch even you yourselves, the authors of my honor, with a certain reproach. For those who discredit the judges of the highest place seem to attack the trustworthiness of the sacred testimony itself. Long ago your divine father deemed me worthy of the chief honor of his divine will: that peerless arbiter of merits, whose rule you have received along with his character. Follow your father's judgment, guard your own. Let us, who have earned the prefecture without ambition, lay it down without offense. I am thought to have abused the suggestions of the excellent man and well-deserving of the republic, Praetextatus, prefect of the praetorium. What if, from that decree which he plausibly obtained, no inquiry has yet been undertaken by me? For I foresaw what my rivals might suspect, and therefore I had committed the sacred orders, sealed, to the office of the prefecture.

Nor did this conjecture of mine deceive me: since I am accused of having severely executed what I am not proven to have even attempted. All these things, comprised in the good faith of the records, I have subjoined: adding only this, that your perpetuity absolve me from the necessity of that inquiry whose authority you ordered to be reported to the palace offices. For if wicked men were permitted so much against me, while the order stood: what will not be permitted when the letters are reconsidered? Indeed, since the praiseworthy man the bishop denies that any of his people are held either in prison or in chains, and the office reports the same, I do not know whom above all you have ordered to be released. The laws do indeed hold the guilty of various crimes, but, as I have learned, men foreign to the mystery of the Christian law.

What therefore your eternity may decree I await devotedly, and I beg that you refute the deceit which has disturbed the quiet of your divine breast, which has forced the venerable prince's care to the necessity of an edict. Envy has fortified me: for it will no longer have a place in your sacred ears, once convicted of falsehood. If, however, the murmur of detractors renews its assault, I desire a trial. Those who cannot prove me guilty will find me steadfast under imperial examination.

The dispute recently arisen concerning the tribunate of the wine market has brought me occasion to consult the arbiters of the laws, most sacred emperor. The prefect insisted that the office allotted to him be assumed. An old law, which fixed certain times for acts of this kind, allowed him to withdraw with honor. Following the custom preserved through a long age, I admitted the man who lately presented the benefit of your majesty. But so that hereafter, if occasion should so require, an established form may remove the hesitation of judgment, I have determined to inquire of the sacred oracle of your divine will, whether it is right that new tribunes be postponed, the law being observed, or rather that the old ones be removed by devotion to duty.

One relief to my injuries the event has granted, lord emperor, that for the sake of the public advantage of the Romans, Hesperius, a most eminent and illustrious man, ever devoted to your clemency, was sent as count. For if I did not have him as witness of the outrages I have endured, who would doubt that that prefecture, which at Rome is superior to all others, had done something turbulent by force of power? He, since he is ever a friend to the truth, and cherishes the reputation of good times, if your eternity shall grant the opportunity, will not keep silent about the contempt of the laws and of the age. I, as I shall be able, will relate a few things out of many, having briefly recalled the causes which, as I judge, have stirred up these ambushes against me.

When, according to the diligence which ought to be present in all judges, an accounting of the public silver was being sought, which the givers of shows had contributed to the census-officials, among other frauds it was found that certain persons, though exempt from their obligations, had not given the expense owed to the republic. And so that the deceit might be the better concealed, they contributed from another’s silver, under false headings falsely charged to the census-officials, as much as the two ought to have contributed. When the most illustrious men had of their own accord restored this without any addition of loss, I consulted the senate in the ancient manner, as to what the authority of the fathers might indicate in a matter of common concern. After several opinions had been spoken, the assent of the venerable order approved my action.

Some days having passed, when the vicar, an illustrious and respectable man, had come to Rome, Cessus, a most illustrious pleader of my forum, an associate of him who had repaid the debt of expense, demanded protection against me, and demanded that the most illustrious prefect of the grain-supply be removed from the vicarial seat, since I, having been approached in a public case, had brought a civil suit against his mother concerning the office of her grandson, the answer being reserved by which she is said to retain the patrimony of Candidatus; while the illustrious prefect of the grain-supply was said only in word to be demanding back a baker of the public grain-supply, whom Cessus had snatched out of the hands of the officials. Here now it is for your perpetuity to judge the affront to the prefecture: whose pleader, having suffered nothing, obtained the aid of a second hearing. Since by these things they by no means shook my patience, there was added what I cannot dissemble.

For when, for the examining of the acts of Bassus, prefect of the City, the vicarial power had come forth to the common secretariat, someone, I know not who, having given a petition to the vicar, complained of collusion, or iniquity, on the part of my office; namely, that Memorius the litigant, ordered by Bassus for the sake of paying a debt to be conducted to the African courts, though he had petitioned both the illustrious man Aventius, my predecessor, and myself by petitions, that he not proceed thither, had been carried off by ship. This man the illustrious and respectable vicar at once, as the subscription of the petition shows, ordered to be present. When we had both sat together, and I had learned the sequence of the complaints from the reading, I advised that he who was present should enter to prove the vicarial seat's case. Then his office replied that the man was missing, who ought to have been summoned to examination by order of his judge.

What is to be judged here, I leave to the wise. Once and again he is summoned by the voices of the herald, yet, though called, he does not come running. Then, with no one present, the urban apparitorship began to press, that he had been carried across to Africa, where he could accuse the most illustrious man Bassus of the crime. It was suggested that it was a matter of the parties' judgment; which, when Bassus, after a struggle of the parties, had pronounced, an appeal did not overturn. To this Fulgentius, illustrious man, tribune and notary, asserted that the assistants of the urban seat had been assembled to prevent Memorius from sailing; and when he was asked whether Memorius had reported anything to him about these charges, he said that his complaints were contained in the pages of petitions: I believe he did not dare to pretend what he would have wished to be the accuser.

To this the assistant of the urban office replied that it had been entrusted to him through Felix by the illustrious man Fulgentius, that he be conducted to Africa according to the judgment of Memorius. Soon we resolved that Felix should be detained, so that it might become clear whether the messenger of this mandate had gone forth. Meanwhile the respectable vicar, though others were present whom we could have heard in the causes of Bassus, on account of his absence—how easily he might be recalled from the African provinces—abandoned the whole trial: I know not whether at the order of those who had flocked together to be heard. Having promised a report, I depart. Felix, who was ordered to be detained in common, is seized by the execution of the office.

When he had asked from me the following day the aid of protection, and, relying on the support of a single nomenclator, was proceeding through the peaceful city, he was violently seized behind the carriage of the prefecture, by order of Fulgentius, through Gaudentius and Victor, agents in affairs, and Bonifacius, a palatine, who up to now has served in the urban office, and is led away into the house of him by whose orders he was to be examined. When Fulgentius, the illustrious man, author of my affront, thought this would be held against him, he hastened to the secretariat of the circus, wishing to give an account of the unlawful deed, saying that he had feared lest the office be suborned by some impulse. You expected, I believe, most august princes, that the prefect, both secure in your judgment and in his own innocence, would be said to have decreed something severe. I confess, and I do not repent, I tempered my spirit, while I hope for a sure vengeance from you.

I decreed that Felix be handed over on sureties, who were not known to Fulgentius. What could have been decreed more mild, more lenient? Then he went out, as though about to comply. But when the head of the office had gone to his house once and again, and could not bend the man's obstinate defiance, he brought back an empty bond, by which he had deferred the surrender of Felix to another day by a pledge. He keeps at home the witness whom he knew was to be examined concerning himself. Even this injury I take with patience. Blame me as you will, as is fitting. I knew that the cause of the judges, which is reserved to the masters of affairs, was the better one. We waited that on the next day he would be returned, provided with the office. But he, on the next day's light, as the records will show, contrary to the faith of the bond, was led away to be handed over to the vicarial power.

When the head of the office learned this, he ran out accompanied by a few: he detains Felix in a crowded place of the City, yet does not rescue him. And so Fulgentius, who pretends that he was beaten, resisted the laws with a stronger hand. Meanwhile Felix is carried off by the soldiers of the vicarial power. And since the head of my office is heard under the eyes of the Roman populace, I see what your perpetuity ought to judge concerning this deed. I will keep the order of the record. The litigant confesses under the examination of another judge, that nothing had been entrusted to him by my apparitors against Fulgentius. Here, by his order, he is brought before the common secretariat, whither, for the sake of making the offering, I had assembled all the leading men, by the heads of both offices. For nothing had been found that could implicate the prefecture. Then Fulgentius, roused by the consciousness of his own deed, complains that he was beaten.

But soon, by the response of this same Felix and of the most devoted man, the head, that part was cleared. And yet I did not deny a hearing to his complaint, the illustrious and respectable vicar having been admitted into partnership in the inquiry, if he wished to arrange the names of plebeian witnesses to be given. He promised: I believe, so that my grief might either be softened by delay, or by satisfaction, or that he himself might again contrive other ambushes. Which, as the matter shows, through the conscience of the man who had been suborned, by whom the petition had been offered to the vicarial power, having confessed privately before the same man, dared to request that his apparitors, whom he had ordered detained in prison custody on account of the litigant's departure, should not be subjected to injury.

After this, the public trial being again usurped and neglected, conscious of his audacious deed, he flew off so as to forestall the just complaints of the prefecture, ignorant, as the matter is, that the parents of the human race are moved more by justice than by envy. That these things happened thus, and are not fabricated by any art, the appended documentation will testify. In which your eternity will find that the prefecture, which you conferred upon me with pure judgment, had attempted nothing at all toward the vindication of public discipline: though it yielded to all the injuries which good men presume ought to be avenged by the vigor of the age. For this hope and confidence has broken the right of the power entrusted to me, that the authors of my honor, and of public dignity, and of their own judgment, should defend the affront with just severity.

By turns of each month the acts of the senate and people are sent, written, to your perpetuities, which will be able to indicate what the man of surpassing and illustrious memory, Praetextatus, brought forward, either to the most ample order, or to the people devoted to you, for the commendation of your age, lord emperor. But because you have specifically ordered by sacred letters, that if anything was done by him at Rome in these assemblies, excerpts be given to the agent in affairs: I have sent all, obeying your heavenly commands, which, in his very presence, the sanction of your venerable accounts determined, and the authority of the fathers approved. Besides, what he said before the populace, so as to summon all to the love of good times, I have added.

But the judgment of the citizens, which they held on the last day concerning his virtue and innocence, I have specifically made known to the illustrious man, master of offices, with copies of the records subjoined: although it must needs come again to the notice of your serenity by the public conveyance along with the other things which are customarily sent.

Already indeed Cyriades, an illustrious man, count and professor of mechanics, has exhibited the rescript of your divinity, lord emperor: by which your eternity had decreed that he should clear himself of the accusation of certain persons, and again press his charges, if he should accuse any of fraud. He, having begun under the examination of my predecessor to accuse Auxentius, an illustrious man, after the matter came to my cognizance, was rebuked by the voice of Auxentius, an illustrious man, concerning the immoderate expense of a basilica and a bridge. Whom Cyriades, a man of equal rank, believed ought to be stung back by a mutual accusation. It seemed fitting, therefore, that a faithful inspection should appraise the construction of both.

I gave the task to men, as I think, careful, and, with Cyriades almost refusing, I decreed that masters of the builder's art, whom he thought fairer to his adversary, be brought to the appraisal of the work: the care and administration of the works nonetheless remaining with Auxentius, since your eternity had not yet changed his office by succession. And so, after some days had passed, and the examination of the work still pending, the apparitorship which had been assigned to Auxentius made known to me through a notary, that the illustrious man had abandoned the care of the places he had undertaken, and that at the very beginning of summer, when the progress of the building might rise, nothing was being advanced. But because the flight of a senator did not seem to be lightly believed, I advised that it be inquired into more diligently. Having long nowhere been found, when he was ordered to approach the sacred retinue of your divinity, he fled.

Meanwhile Cyriades, illustrious man, count and mechanic, seeing that my decision had been evaded by his departure, much anxious lest the adversary contrive anything against him in his absence, requested that I report to your eternity both the report of the illustrious man my predecessor, and now the proceedings: to whom I could not deny a hearing; wishing by the same means, at the command of your divinity, to be informed what use was made of the appraisal of the expenses which the outlay of both had incurred: since it belongs to my office not to keep silent about the loss of public money. The accompanying records will vouch for the truth of my letter. When these have been read and have reached the sacred ears of your perpetuity, I pray and beseech that my uncertain mind be instructed by imperial responses.

It is certain indeed that your clemency, out of love of good faith and zeal for truth, often recalls matters already examined to a fresh and assiduous inquiry, most worthy emperors. But since Auxentius, a most distinguished man, and Cyriades, a count and mechanic of equal rank, disagree in a certain dispute between themselves, something is being detracted from the authority of previous judges. For long ago the most distinguished and illustrious Anthemius Bassus, having inspected the work of the new bridge, marked down in the record of proceedings the fault or negligence of each; and now his successor is said to have examined the same places anew. Then, when before me, by virtue of a rescript which Cyriades, a most distinguished man, had obtained, they sought to escape by a renewed hearing, and when, both parties being present, I had ruled that an investigation of the inquiry should determine both the expense and the construction of each, Auxentius, a most distinguished man, suddenly abandoned the judgment.

While I was about to send a report on this matter, as the concern for the interrupted work demanded, I received further decrees of your divinity, by which you joined to my examination a most distinguished and respectable vicar, so that with both presiding, the alleged faults of the bridge might be investigated. Nor was obedience to your commands lacking. Accordingly, with the tribune, a most distinguished man, and the notary Aphrodisius—to whom, after Auxentius, the most distinguished man, the charge of the new works had been entrusted—being brought in, an inquiry was held concerning those who had laid the foundations of that same bridge. And thus it was established that a short and separate section, begun at the onset of winter, had collapsed under the force of the river, the cost of which the craftsmen estimated at the fixed sum of twenty solidi.

But the collapse of that portion, being as yet separated from the rest of the structure, seems to have brought no harm to the more distant parts; and Cyriades, the most distinguished man, promises that it can be repaired with an easy construction. After this, an examination of another spot revealed a gaping joint of stones, which Cyriades the count and mechanic, by his own design and according to the principle of the art, suggested had been so laid that, once mortar were poured in afterward, the gaps would be closed up. And since he ought to have done this, it is said that he rather envied the industry of his successor, so that, to bring odium upon its author, the gaps were closed with bundles of hay and rope instead. When he asserted this by the reading of the proceedings, the craftsman skilled in drainage did not deny the deed, but claimed that this remedy had been provided according to the practice of the work, not to the dishonor of Cyriades, the most distinguished man.

Then, disturbed by this variety of answers, we restrained one who differed from his earlier statements. But he said that Cyriades had long been a source of terror to him. This does not seem credible, since the judge of that time arrived at the truth by a rigorous inquiry. Meanwhile Cyriades, the most distinguished man, suggested that the repair of the work presented an easy prospect, whose stability, as has been asserted, a third winter has not undone. He himself, moreover, disclosed by certain indications some things concerning the buildings of Auxentius, the most distinguished man, and concerning the misappropriation of an excessive amount of gold. These things it has seemed good to attach to the pages of the record, so that your eternity, having patiently heard all things in order, may deign to provide how, the rivalry of the disputants being suppressed, both the integrity of the expenditures and the firmness of the work may be secured.

As I venerate the sanctions of your divinity, so do I pay continual observance to the most salutary decrees of your deified father: for what did he establish which the public welfare could abandon? Among other things which he conferred for the public good, he also gave to the professors of medicine an order of succession, in case the fortune of one departing had left some place vacant. By this law it was provided that the leading men of that same art should judge of the knowledge of newcomers. This form, as they assert, the following age preserved and followed, most worthy emperor. Now John, a most perfect man, attempts to attain not the rank which the imperial writings assigned to those to be appointed by succession, but the one next to the highest, supported by the privilege of Palace service and by the obtaining of a special rescript, by which he obtained the post of the chief physician Epictetus, who was then still living.

But since, law and custom compelling it, it was fitting that the leading men of that same profession be summoned to the inquiry, the whole college of physicians was brought in for judgment: of whom the most eminent, not daring to judge between reverence for the law and respect for the new benefit, decided to grant to John, a most perfect man, that position bare of its privileges, which he might have held if, at the time he was assigned to service in the court, he had been enrolled among the number of chief physicians. And when the duties of his Palace honor were demanded of him, so that by the prerogative of his commission he might show what rank among the chief physicians was fitting for him, he asserted that even the documents of his rank had been stolen from him in a domestic robbery. But indeed a great part of the physicians, fortified by the imperial law, produced the examples of those who had passed from the Palace to this rank while the order was preserved.

Wherefore, moved by these uncertainties, and neither daring to break the sanction of your deified father nor to go against the special precepts, I have, by submitting the arguments of both sides, reserved the outcome of the matter to the divine judgment of your divinity, awaiting what the Augustan deliberation shall determine, to whom alone it is lawful to judge concerning imperial decrees.

I am aware of what just princes may find to blame. For in cases in which a reversal of a decision is demanded on grounds of substance, appeals ought not to be admitted. But I have now deliberately allowed the objection of an appeal, so that both the indignity of the seizure and the manner of the judgment might come under the examination of your clemency, most worthy emperor. For Scirtius, a most perfect man, having repeatedly complained by frequent petitions that a share of the Caesarian estate had been taken from him, when he had obtained the restoration of the status he had lost, the heirs of Theseus, who resisted, were summoned before him. Then indeed Artemisius, the agent of Olibrius, a most distinguished and illustrious man, opposed, as he himself declared, the officer executing the order.

And when I had ordered the inhabitants of the place to be present, in order to ascertain the state of possession, contrary to the injury of the laws, while Rufinus the official was carrying out the orders, those who were being brought were seized away. The records will show the uncivil authors of this deed. Meanwhile I postponed the vindication of the judgments, and again gave the matter to the office so that it might summon the necessary persons. Then, with the agents of the most distinguished house being absent, and the others withdrawn, the heirs of Theseus were substituted to make answer: only one being produced, who asserted that he was the freedman of the deceased. He, being questioned as to where the inhabitants of the estates had gone, replied that some had hidden themselves, but that the slaves of Scirtius had been transferred to the town house, which belongs to the most distinguished and illustrious Olibrius.

The rest, as spoken by the freedman of Theseus, I shall pass over, although that prescription does not apply to him, since he received the benefit of freedom from the father of the minors. These things being thus established, the Praenestines, within whose bounds the Caesarian possession lies, were, apparitors having been sent, produced. Then at last the procurator of the most distinguished and respectable Olibrius appeared. The defender of the minors was also present. At length, compelled by the judicial process and being summoned, the contest was set for Scirtius against two opponents: although the advocates of the most distinguished house and of the successors of Theseus differed in some appearance. The inquiry proceeds to the question of possession, which, having been debated in various contests by the parties, passed by right to the interrogation of witnesses. I order the curials to be admonished one by one as to name and rank, as is customary.

I demand answers from each one, then I inquire who are the rightful possessors of the places; next I ask who has paid the annual dues or the assessed taxes. When all the testimonies proceeded in favor of Scirtius, and it was established that he had held that possession along with Theseus, I examine when or by whom he was ejected. They agree that it happened around the second or third month, that the men of the most distinguished and illustrious house expelled him. Having heard the testimonies of the leading men, I admit again the contending defenders. The questions and answers are made known to the parties. There Tarpeius, a most distinguished man, procurator of the illustrious Olibrius, asserted that six ounces of the estate of Theseus had been acquired for him by death. On the other hand, Scirtius did not deny the six ounces which the minors, with his consent, likewise retained, nor did he say it mattered to him whether the agents of the most distinguished house or the heirs of Theseus enjoyed that same share.

Then, the pleadings being joined, they began to press Scirtius, on the ground that, according to the mandate of the most noble lady Faciana, he had restored six ounces to Theseus by letter, and had, moreover, conferred another six upon those children by his own spontaneous generosity. To this Scirtius replied that what had been transferred by letters of friendship, and by gifts to Theseus or to the little ones, had been done at his own request, so that the good faith of the records might strengthen the benefit. And indeed, since the later proceedings testify that six ounces of the estate were conferred upon them undivided, we understood that a portion of the donor was excepted. For why would he give it undivided, if nothing remained which he retained?

But when I said that this pertained to the question of ownership, the defenders read out a constitution which grants judges the option, but does not impose the necessity, that whenever they judge concerning the possession of an inheritance, they should immediately, if the case allows, also decide concerning the right. By this action they confessed that they preferred to move on to another case. Besides, it was not Scirtius alone who seemed to be pressed by the question of ownership, since they themselves also were in some manner at odds among themselves over this share. Therefore I judged concerning possession according to the documents of Scirtius and the testimony of the leading men, his adversaries being confirmed in the retention and right of the six ounces. But I reserved the principal case, the pleas of the parties being preserved, for a future examination. And presently I issued a copy of the sentence, since the procurator of the respectable man had immediately requested its publication.

Then Scirtius produced sanctions by which he sought to show that in the reversal of a matter of substance there is no room for appeals. The next day the most distinguished and illustrious procurator, and the defender of the minors, who was thought to differ in judgment, made known their agreement by joining their appeals. This is the whole sum of the contest. Now the fortune of the case awaits the oracle of your divinity. I have appended the proceedings and the supplements of each side, by which your perpetuity, being informed, may deign, by the example of one case, to lend security to all.

The body of money-changers is liable for the selling of solidi, which public need often demands, to whom the wine-treasury supplies a fixed price. To this class of men, wavering under the slight profit of the assessment, your divinity's deified brother established that so much should be paid for each solidus as the equity of that time demanded, most worthy emperor. But as the excessive rise in the price of gold gradually increased, the force of the imperial remedy was broken. And since in the market of goods for sale the solidus is reckoned at a greater sum, smaller prices are paid to the money-changers. They therefore petition your eternity, in proportion to the present circumstance, for an increase of the most just determination, since they are no longer able to bear so great a burden. This is the cause of the complaint, which the fidelity of the records will more fully make known to your divine perceptions.

If you judge this kind of petition to be admissible, I ask that a salutary remedy of your mildness's command be granted also to this party.

Amicus and Castor, palatine officers of the sacred distributions, who dig up public revenues, have, among other names which they pursue at law, summoned the heirs of Postumianus, a most distinguished man, by legal proceedings before my examination, most worthy emperor. Lucianus, who formerly handled the senator's assessment, advising that this household alone was liable for the extraordinary levies: it was suggested that part of the debt pressed upon Lolliana, and part equally upon Cattianilla and Severella. Meanwhile, the name of Lolliana, a most noble lady, having been set aside, whom the exaction binds for six ounces: a dispute arose among those whom the concern of payment troubled for each quarter of the property. The judgment having for the most part been adjourned, the matter was brought to the point that the guaranty of the treasury demanded of the most distinguished persons sureties fulfilled by turns of service, while the defense of Cattianilla and Severella was to be sent in writing to the account of the divine emperor.

For this is an old question, frequently agitated in the inquiries of the prefecture, which ran all the way up to the judgment of your renowned and ever-venerable father: who, being consulted through the report of Juventius, the prefect of the city of most distinguished and illustrious memory, indicated in a certain part of his rescript that it was established that the extraordinary dues had been paid at their proper times by Cattianilla and Severella, most noble ladies.

This has long kept me, though ready and inclined to demand documents of payment, in suspense, since the emperor's assertion seemed more forceful than all guaranties. Concerning his responses, which will remain of enduring honor, it is right that judgment belong to your clemency. We are accustomed rather to venerate than to interpret divine oracles. The records of the proceedings are at hand, and the supplements of the parties do not cease to arrive. It is fitting that human hesitation be informed by the judgment of your majesty.

It is familiar and akin to savage character to arm the spirit by the example of impunity, most worthy emperor. For why should he despair of a second escape, who has evaded the snares of an earlier charge? A sentence already pronounced fits the present case, since Valerianus, a most distinguished man, whose home is said to be in Epirus, is moved neither by veneration for rescripts, nor by the severity of the laws, nor by the good faith of agreements, nor by reverence for judgments. He, when first ordered to be summoned before the praetorian tribunal, eluded the force of the rescript of that lofty power by petitioning the most distinguished Junior. Then, summoned by proconsular edicts, he baffled the laws with equal cunning.

For when he was pressed both by a civil suit and by a criminal accusation, he resisted the statutes uncivilly, as the officers of the urban prefecture recorded, partly by notarial acts, partly by report: one of whom, an agent in affairs, since he to whom the execution of the sacred order pertained had died, indicated that he had been afflicted by Valerianus with grave injuries. Moved therefore by the indignity of such complaints, since I saw that the courts could again be mocked if I decided anything too severely, I believed it best to reserve to your eternity the judgment of this case. For to you alone belongs the right to correct the offenses of the highest rank. The truth is set forth by the coherent records of the matter: nevertheless the apparitor who returned to the senate, and who reported the contumacy of the senator and the violent assaults of his slaves, will, by his own reports, be present should occasion require it.

I beg your eternal clemency that, all things weighed with your accustomed equity, you not allow one who has baffled so many judges to wander further at large.

It is difficult for a cause to be good, whose action is transferred to another's jurisdiction out of desperation. This matter itself has proved so, most excellent Emperor. For Theodorus, as he asserted, having been appointed procurator by Anania from the heart in a certain matter of his own, some time ago, when the most illustrious and most upright man Cuprasius was presiding over the urban tribunals, sued a certain Flavianus with a suit duly announced: but he let the legal day for the case pass by. After a long interval, restoration was sought from me, and when I had brought the parties together to the necessary examination, after many pleadings, which the courts rejected as invalid, a prescription arose, which asserted that the times ought to have been renewed upon the death of the possessor. For it was established that not only Flavianus, who had first received the question as proposed by the laws, but also his successor, had made an end of living.

To this was added a reading, as if it were proved by evidence, that renewal had been decreed only for the heir of the petitioner. This, though asserted in word, was not proved by the sanctions, and was suppressed by the recitation of the contrary law. Following, therefore, manifest decrees, not emptied by any responses of the emperors, I judged that the process of the business should cease: since a suit announced against one person could not, after the times had elapsed, be held against another person. Then, when petitions of appeal as well as of renewal were offered, the sentence was suspended. Your Perpetuity will assess its merit upon reading the proceedings and the coherent refutations. I ought not to be prolix in reporting, since the case stood repulsed by the laws almost at the very threshold of the actions.

In cases of appeals I prefer to break the right of power rather than sustain the uncertainties of interpretations; especially as one conscious of a judgment not unjust, to which some honor will come, if it be strengthened by the oracle of your eternity, most excellent Emperor. I have therefore borne with Constantius Suarius rashly appealing, since by a rescript of your divine majesty I had restored the status which he had taken from the absent Theodosius. For your clemency, moved by supplications and complaints, ordered by a brief examination that inquiry be made whether, with Theodosius placed outside the conflict, and then, lest he should lose his case by appealing, Constantius had obtained possession of the bodies.

Therefore, upon the divine command being alleged, I first reserved the cognizance of the whole matter, although specifically entrusted to me by the delegation of your Tranquility, to the presence of the vicar, a man of clarissimus rank: since this case seemed to be joined to other appeals, which were said not to have been admitted by my predecessor, a man of clarissimus rank, and he had taken another as co-examiner with me. Thereafter, when you retained for your own examination that part which pertained to the judge of that time, the inquiry of the appeal being separated, since I no longer had a partner in the judgment, I heard, in obedience to the rescript, the complaint of disturbed possession.

And because it was established that Theodosius had not been present at the judgment by which he complained that his property had been taken from him, nor did Constantius reveal any falsehoods in his petitions: I carried out, in respect of the brother-heir of the petitioner, the heavenly judgment, the status being restored, which it became clear was soon after defended by the appeal that was lodged: although the one subjected to the inquiry, having been made a defendant, recalled that the petitions which Theodosius had published had remained with him. Nevertheless, obedient to the commands, I decreed that a faithful copy of the previous proceedings be sent to the Augustan bureaus. From this arose the appeal, whose justice or contumacy will be weighed by the sacred judgment. Meanwhile, mindful of the constitution, I ordered that the movable goods and the fruits be sequestered, lest the usurpation of the intervening time should abuse what is not owed.

Faithful documents of all the proceedings, together with the supplements of the parties as is customary, have been joined to this report, so that you may at last, by your divine utterance, set a stable end to a case that has long fluctuated.

All of us who are advanced to the most ample grades of honors by the judgment or favor of your clemency ought to strive with the utmost zeal to protect the reputation of the age by the truth of our reports, most excellent Emperor. For what kind of gratitude, to be repaid for the benefits of princes, will fortune find equal to the task, if it abandons the good faith which alone fortifies the empire? Considering, then, the rescript of your divine majesty, by which you decreed that debts owed to the wine-treasury be extracted from the prefect of that time in which they are said to have been contracted, it was not right for me to keep silent as to what befits the equity of your times.

First of all, I confess I am amazed that to your heavenly mildness, occupied with the affairs of the whole world, the letters of the deified Constantius were represented in such a way that a threat expressed under a condition should be taken as a kind of debt; then that, by some chance, that part of the rescript which held for the office was passed over in silence, so that the person of the judge, as though of lesser worth, should be burdened by the impunity of his subordinates; thirdly, that this sum of solidi, which the inquiry and the report of the illustrious man my predecessor proved to have been for the greater part paid, is demanded from the treasury as though owed and untouched. And so, among many cares, some things must be treated summarily.

For that 11,446 solidi accrued to the sacred treasuries from that year which follows the consulship of Sergius and Nigrinianus, both the inquiry of the prefecture and the letters of the auditors and the writings of my predecessor, a clarissimus man, have shown. Amid these so many valid considerations, therefore, I could not by silence violate the good faith owed to your clemency: since I observed that your majesty also, with its accustomed caution, did not sign the rescript with the name of the judge, and reckoned that the one to be summoned enjoyed the light of life. For how could your clemency have extended the force of an old threat against a dead man, since the penalty even of grave offenses is dissolved by the end of life? But indeed this terror, contained in the letters of the deified prince, could not press even upon the living man. For you often threaten grave things against your subjects, more from a desire to sharpen than to harm.

This also your deified father, who will ever live in the minds and mouths of all, established by a pious law: he who emptied of effect and execution even a sentence pronounced under threat. But this condition, which the deified Constantius added to his letters, many things which were afterward seen have undermined. For while that same prince still governed the world, the exaction passed to Tertullus, prefect of the City, a memorable man, which, if it had been within the power of any man, could have clung to the person of the earlier judge. Nor much later did the care of this title fall upon Clytholius Maximus, then invested with equal honor. Also under the deified father of your majesty, while he governed Roman law and destiny, the province was entrusted to prefects and auditors, and the exaction of the public debt fell to those administering it in turn.

Most recently your clemency's brother, now taken up into heaven, though he had at hand one who did not spare the persons of judges, made the chief clerks of the urban office, whose diligence had taken care to exact it by successive terms, liable either for paying the sum or for rendering account. Thus both the inquiry frequently held by the clarissimus and most approved Anicius Bassus, and by Aventius, a man of spectabilis rank, found that the greater part of the debt had been paid, and discovered the pledge of the provincial judges: by which they professed that, if the urban office should cease, the integrity of this title could be made good by themselves. These things, therefore, if compared with the laws, your eternity will pronounce to be true in the matter of the bond, but a mere threat in the matter of the menace. What of the fact that a recent summons for compelling the provincial judges is reported to have raised hope of extracting the debts? It is not for me to pursue uncertain rumors.

Your divine majesty will discover why continual care was lacking for this exaction. For this scheme seeks out my father-in-law, a man of most illustrious memory, Orfitus: whose heirs the illustrious man, master of the offices, has named in his letters, since the modesty of your mildness expressed no name in the sacred oracle. What then should I think was rightly done by him, who, greater in honors than in resources, ended his life almost fifteen years ago? That a threat, often read, always omitted, and buried beneath later decrees—one which the divine law does not admit, and which the payment of the greater part has excluded—should rise again against a dead man, which it was not even against him living? Or should I rather think that, for the sake of insulting me, the order of so many and such great statutes, and the recent decree of the deified Gratian, and the diligence of the auditors, and the inquiries of the prefects, and the good faith of the report, are being wounded by new suggestions?

I call to witness God, the guardian of your majesty, that there is nothing for which I should be judged deserving of injury. You granted me this prefecture in tranquility, without any partiality. If envy perhaps gnaws at someone, if we have not yielded to anyone's desires out of love for the republic, let him consider that private hatreds ought not to be exercised against the laws. Finally, let him know, whoever he is, that I and mine began the succession of the clarissimus and most illustrious man Orfitus neither by right of law nor by addition of goods. I beg, therefore, that no fraud be prepared, to the insult of your judgment, against both law and innocence. For when have proceedings conducted among others ever harmed the absent and the ignorant? Who has ever received a sentence of your majesty unheard? When has a threat been extended even to heirs?

Certainly, to speak of the case itself, which touches me and my family, with your favor, by no right, it is shown that the greater part of the debt has been paid: in the case of evident debts a part remains. By whose zeal are debtors to be absolved, so that the innocent may be entangled? Wherefore I beg the justice innate in your divine feelings, that you not suffer, against the ruling of the deified Gratian, against the rescripts of so many emperors who ordered that debts be extracted by the prefects, against the report which showed that the greater sum was paid, and that the remainder was to be exacted from those liable according to the letters of the governors—that you not suffer those ignorant of the matter and strangers to their father's inheritance to be pursued by an incongruous summons; nor that you, a pious emperor, introduce a new precedent, that the succession of nobles who have presided over the republic should not pass securely to their children.

This example will restrain many, and, as I think, more justly, those who perhaps have abused your provinces badly. But indeed the posterity of the illustrious man Orfitus has sought nothing else from him except the distinction of his lineage. Yet this suggestion is an injury to me. For to his frequently exhausted slender means, no one succeeded by testament, no one of us by addition of goods. Whence your clemency understands that I am troubled not by fear for a family matter, which is safe under the laws, but by love of the times, lest an unprofitable envy should recoil merely upon the innocence of your treasury. And these things indeed cursorily, lest the delay of the entrusted business be prolonged by adjournment, have been sought only on behalf of the share of my wife Rusticiana, a woman of clarissimus rank: whose sister, much narrower in means, has been ordered to be present from the distant parts of Etruria.

But we all pray your saving majesty, that what, from so many provinces, has for the greater part already been rendered, may not be hoped to be paid still by the unexpected ruin of a senatorial house through a difficult exaction. This condition would harm many who have presided over the republic. For it would not be right that one family alone be crushed by a new precedent. I ask, therefore, that you deign to hear the proceedings, which assert the good faith of the report, and to review the laws: whose harshness you have often, in your clemency, tempered by decrees for the governors.

Your felicity indeed promises unwearied supplies to the Roman People, most excellent Emperor. But the caution of judges does not fail to suggest that diligence should fortify what better fortune promises. The daily use of grain is a matter easy enough; but only the supply of oil, brought in scantily, troubles the sustenance of the common people. Of this matter the clarissimus prefect of the grain-supply, a diligent executor of his own duties, has, as he himself asserts, long since given indication to the most ample praetorian prefecture, having sent, as is customary, brief reports which lay bare the scarcities of the storehouses. But as the shortage grows worse, care for the fatherland ought not to be kept silent before your clemency, whose hopes and resources are increased by the favor of good emperors. Wherefore we all beg as suppliants—if you wait for prayers, you who by your benefits anticipate the wishes of all—that as soon as possible your divine word instruct the African judges concerning the bringing of this commodity into the Roman granaries.

For haste is needed, before the continued issuing exhausts what remains. Add, therefore, this gift to the others which you are accustomed to bestow, so that all the goods of the age may flow together with equal bounty.

Day and night I am anxious to advance, with prompt obedience, the commands of your divine clemency: since it is not permitted that decrees favorable to justice and to the laws be delayed by long adjournment, most excellent Emperor. Hence there is need of caution, lest a tardiness brought about by others should mar my reputation in the carrying out of your instructions. For whereas your Perpetuity long ago entrusted to me the judgment concerning Macedonius, deservedly ill-regarded in respect of the republic, and likewise concerning Ammianus, I have learned, through the testimony of the guardsmen, since he happened to be near the City, that Ammianus has been consumed by illness. Concerning Macedonius various things are being bandied about, whom the diligence of his guards ought long ago to have brought forth.

I beg, therefore, your mildness, that delay contracted by another's zeal or sluggishness not be held against me as fraud: and at the same time I entreat that your venerable eternity distinguish point by point what is to be inquired, in case the care of those pursuing him should have handed over the appointed defendant to my cognizance.

You alone of all men, most sacred Emperor, are able to protect the expenses of the eternal City from a failure of funds. But powers subject to your Majesty are able to bring healing only to moderate causes; they are overwhelmed by the mass of great affairs. To you, therefore, do we flee, saving deities, and we implore abundant help for the treasury of the Roman People, to which for a long time now the appointed provinces have contributed nothing of the customary revenues. And therefore there is just fear lest, subsidies ceasing, necessary things be abandoned, which up to now persons of slender means have borne, at another's expense, as they complain. Beyond this, the reverend order also, being consulted, since it could not by itself remedy the afflicted state of affairs, has begged the help of your Eternity. An account has been drawn up of the revenues which the shipments from Spain and Alexandria ought to bring in. The care of the office has also arranged the fitting headings of the expenditures.

I beg that, all connected matters having been graciously examined, you extend a swift remedy to the public advantage; for, the causes being urgent, the customary contribution of expense cannot be denied. Wherefore, be propitious with your help, as is your custom, and you who with pious minds bestow new benefits upon the Roman People, preserve also the old ones; and deign to grant to your City both what past neglect has held in suspense, and what future use happily awaits.

In matters finished by time and adjudication, it is right that the excursion of a long speech should cease, lest a more prolix discourse burden the wholesome acts of your Divinity, and lest tedious loquacity, without matter of substance, give offense, most sacred Emperor. When, in the court of the governor of Apulia, a case of violence was being pleaded between Marcellus, who complained that he had been ejected from possession, and likewise Venantius the strator, as he himself affirms, and his sister Batrachia, an appeal was lodged by the defendants without due deliberation, on the ground that the provincial judge, having sent letters ahead to the vicarial power, retained the examination he had undertaken. Then the judge of the sacred court, having been consulted by the governor's communication concerning the appeal, both determined that the prejudicial fine ought to be imposed for appeals, and delivered the very examiner over to the charge, along with execution of the penalty.

After this, through certain surreptitious maneuvers of the parties, some proceedings were conducted so that the completed judgment was dragged out. For my predecessor also, a man of spectable rank, when he learned that the fine had been exacted which the decree of the sacred court had recognized as due for the prejudicial appeal, decreed that the criminal case ought to be transferred to himself. And I, following the same course, summoned the parties to examination. But since both the time for reparation had elapsed, and the treasury either was awaiting or had already exacted the penalty for the appeal, and moreover the confession of Venantius and Batrachia, together with the capital condemnation of certain persons, had settled the matter of violence, I pronounced that the cognizance belonged to the sacred court, and I decided that Venantius, whom the illustrious and honorable master of offices had ordered to be produced, should be restored to Decentius, the agens in rebus, under whose escort he had come.

But since Marcellus had charged that the military service of Venantius the strator was unlawful and usurped—because, being enrolled on the register of the decurions, he had, as the proceedings showed, contrary to the laws, passed over to the palatine guards—I ought not to remain silent about the charges, so that in a matter which exceeded the bounds of my examination, your Eternity might judge, more august than the very laws it protects.

It often happens, whether through reason or the fortune of causes, that in disputes one party relies on equity, the other on law. Then, human judgment faltering, the deliberation of the examiner has recourse to the oracle of your clemency, most sacred Emperor. This the quality of the present business also demands. For Musa, having passed beyond her legal years, when she complained that Syntrophius had been admitted to a share of her paternal property—whom the deceit of Acholius the curator had adopted as her brother, though she was already grown—obtained, by the judgment of the law, full restitution. But, drawn out through many appeals and various judgments, she was unable, within the bounds of the lawful time, to prosecute the actions she had proposed. As the matter required, she restored the lost benefit by the remedy of a petition.

But the same misfortune of the woman also cheated her of the humanity of the rescript: for, the matter having been postponed for a course of four months, on the very last day of the time granted, the examiner died, and his successor, arriving, having issued an interdict beforehand, had deprived her of the power to act. After this, when she wished to repair the unfortunate lapse of her case by restoration, she was rebuffed by the objection of the Constantinian law, which denied any longer extension for matters conducted extra ordinem within the times allowed. An appeal against the judgment followed. When the matter came to the examination of the sacred seat, the same statute was again brought forward by Faustinus, heir of Acholius the curator; the side of the procurator, to whom Musa had entrusted the actions, maintained that the case had not lapsed through her own fault of timing.

To this she added the sanctions of the divine emperors, your Majesty's parents, which, among other exceptions, grant restoration to litigants if the case is lost through the fault of the examiner. Since, therefore, in the Constantinian law, by which restoration is denied for times allowed extra ordinem, this case of a defaulting judge is not excepted, and the more recent decrees of the divine Emperors have provided restoration for all cases, if by chance they are abandoned by the judge, I could not easily incline to either side, but, as is fitting in doubtful matters, I have reserved the outcome of this careful inquiry to the most august judgment of the laws, all the proceedings being appended as usual, so that their reading may confirm the truth of my report.

Since the struggles of cities and peoples are greater than private ones, they ought to be judged by a more august tribunal, most sacred Emperor. Rightly, therefore, have I reserved for the judgment of your Majesty the case of the Puteolans and the Terracinians, which, after examination by the governor of Campania, passed by appeal to the sacred court, since I perceived it to be balanced in equal scale. The matter at issue is as follows. The deified Constantine granted to the municipality of Puteoli 150,000 modii for the sustenance of the city. This sum was reduced by half under the rule of the deified Constans. After him, Constantius, likewise numbered among the deified, upon a petition being presented, increased the grain allowance of the people of Puteoli by an addition of 25,000 modii. And thus it came about that the same people received 100,000 modii for their sustenance.

But under the rule of the deified Julian, when Lupus, governing Campania with consular authority, considered the straits of the Terracinians—since the towns long ago assigned to them contributed no assistance—lest the city so useful to the Roman People, which supplies wood for the public baths and lime for the repair of the walls, should collapse, suddenly exhausted by failure of supply, he set apart 7,700 modii taken from the municipality of Puteoli for the use of the Terracinians, and reported the matter as settled and determined at the seat of the most eminent praetorian prefecture. Mamertinus at that time held the honor of the prefecture. When he had confirmed the arrangements, he nevertheless consulted the imperial judgment, but received no reply, since at that time the ruler of the empire was occupied with the Persian war.

And from this, the provision ran on for several years, until an embassy from Capua, before the deified and renowned Gratian, brother of your Majesty, lamenting only its own losses, obtained the restoration to all of that quantity of grain which Cerealis had claimed from many cities for the Roman State. But, taking occasion from the rescript, when the provincials had recovered as sustenance only the 38,000 modii which had accrued to the granaries of the eternal City, the municipality of Puteoli also refused to the Terracinians the 7,700 modii. When, therefore, this case came to provincial judgment, the man of spectable rank, without regard to the sum contained in the rescript of the deified emperor, decreed by a general judgment that everything should be restored to the Puteolans.

But after the appeal, the examination of the sacred court, perceiving that that measure of grain which had been restored to the Campanians had been decreed apart from the 7,700 modii which the city of Terracina had received for the necessities of the eternal City, while the decree of the divine oracle remained intact, could neither confirm those subsidies which the Terracinians received by the judgment of Lupus and by the confirmation of the prefect Mamertinus, since there existed no authority of a sacred rescript for it; nor could it take them away from the city, lest the people, being bound to the advantage of the eternal City, should lack their just resources. Therefore, as is customary in doubtful matters, we take refuge in the wholesome judgment of your clemency; although the defense of Puteoli, after the promised report, believed it useless to appeal. The record of the proceedings is at hand, which can fortify your Eternity's judgment.

I beg and beseech that a stable remedy be at last granted to a matter that has wavered through a long age.

As soon as the most eminent Senate, ever yours, learned that abuses had been subdued by the laws, and saw that the reputation of recent times had been cleansed by pious princes, following the authority of a good age, it poured forth the grief it had long suppressed, and again ordered me to be the envoy of its complaints. To this envoy audience was denied by the wicked under the divine prince, for the reason that justice would not be lacking, O our sovereigns. Discharging therefore a twofold office, both as your prefect I follow up public business, and as envoy I commend the mandates of the citizens. There is no dissension of wills here; for men have already ceased to believe that they win favor with the court by disagreeing. To be loved, cherished, esteemed, is greater than empire. Who could bear that private contests should have harmed the state? Justly does the Senate pursue those who have preferred their own power to the reputation of the prince. But our labor keeps watch for your clemency.

For to whom is it more advantageous that we defend the institutions of our forefathers, the laws and destiny of the fatherland, than to the glory of the times? Which glory is then the greater, when you understand that nothing is permitted to you against the custom of your ancestors. We ask therefore for the restoration of the condition of religion which for so long benefited the state. Let the emperors of both persuasions surely be reckoned: the more recent of them honored the ceremonies of the fathers, the latest did not remove them. If the example of the ancients' religion carries no weight, let the toleration of the most recent do so. Who is so intimate with the barbarians as not to miss the altar of Victory? We shall be cautious hereafter, and shall avoid ill omens of sad events: let honor only be restored to the name, which has been denied to the divine power. Your eternity owes much to Victory, and will owe still more.

Let those turn away from this power to whom it has been of no benefit. Do not you abandon a patronage friendly to triumphs. This power is the object of all men's vows. Let no one deny that what he confesses ought to be wished for ought also to be worshipped. But if there were no just reason to avoid this omen, it would still have been fitting to abstain from the ornaments of the Senate-house. Grant, I beg you, that what we received as boys we may as old men leave to posterity. Great is the love of custom. Rightly the act of the deified Constans did not long stand. All examples are to be shunned by you which you have learned were soon removed. We are concerned for the eternity of your fame and of your divine power, lest a future age find something to correct. Where shall we swear by your laws and your words? By what religious sanction shall a false mind be terrified, lest it lie in testimony?

All things indeed are full of God, nor is any place safe for the perfidious; but it avails much toward the fear of transgressing that the very presence of religion press upon one. That altar preserves the concord of all, that altar unites the good faith of individuals, nor does anything give more authority to our decrees than that the whole order decrees all things as it were under oath. Shall a profane seat, then, lie open to perjuries, and will illustrious princes approve this, who themselves are protected by public oath? But it is said the deified Constantius did the same thing. Let us rather emulate that prince's other acts; he would have attempted nothing of that sort, had anyone before him gone astray in the same way. For the fall of the earlier corrects the one who follows, and from the censure of a prior example emendation is born. It may have happened that that parent of your clemency, in a matter still novel, did not guard against envy.

Can the same defense possibly suit us also, if we imitate what our own mind disapproves? Let your eternity accept other deeds of that same prince, which it may more worthily draw into use. He took nothing away from the privileges of the sacred virgins, he assigned priesthoods to the nobles, he did not deny the expenses of Roman ceremonies: and going through all the streets of the eternal City in company with the rejoicing Senate, he beheld with calm countenance the shrines, he read the names of the gods inscribed upon the pediments, he inquired into the origins of the temples, he admired their founders. And though he himself followed other religions, he preserved these for the empire. For each has his own custom, each his own rite. The divine mind has allotted to all cities their various guardians. As souls are assigned to those being born, so to peoples are birth-geniuses allotted. There is added the argument of utility, which most of all commends the gods to man.

For since all reason lies hidden, whence does knowledge of the divine come more rightly than from the memory and the records of prosperous events? Now if long age gives authority to religion, we must keep faith through so many centuries, and we must follow our ancestors, who followed their own with good fortune. Let us now imagine that Rome is present, and pleads thus with you: “Best of princes, fathers of the fatherland, revere my years, to which pious rite has brought me, that I may use my ancestral ceremonies: for I do not repent of them. Let me live after my own manner, for I am free. This worship brought the world under my laws; these rites drove Hannibal from the walls, the Senones from the Capitol. Have I been preserved for this, that in my old age I should be reproached? I shall see what sort of thing it is thought should be established.

But the correction of old age is late and full of insult.” We ask therefore for peace for the gods of our country, the gods of our native land. It is fair that whatever all worship should be considered as one. We look up at the same stars, the sky is common to us, the same universe surrounds us. What does it matter by what kind of wisdom each seeks the truth? By one road alone one cannot arrive at so great a secret. But this is a dispute for the leisured. Now we offer prayers, not contests. With what advantage to your sacred treasury has the prerogative of the vestal virgins been taken away? Under the most generous of emperors that is denied which the most frugal provided. Honor alone lies in that, as it were, stipend of chastity. As their fillets are an adornment to their head, so it is reckoned a mark of distinction for the priesthood to have been exempt from public burdens.

They ask, in a manner, only the bare name of immunity, since by their poverty they are safe from loss. Thus those who take away some part of their substance heap the greater praise upon them: since virginity dedicated to the public welfare grows the more meritorious the more it lacks reward. Let such gains be absent from the purity of your treasury. Let the treasury of good princes be enriched not by the losses of priests, but by the spoils of enemies. Does any gain compensate for ill will? And because avarice does not fall within your character, the more wretched are those from whom the old subsidies have been stripped away. For indeed under emperors who abstain from what belongs to another, who resist cupidity, it comes down to nothing but the injury of him who loses, since no desire moves him who takes it away. The treasury also withholds lands bequeathed by the will of the dying to virgins and ministers.

I beg you, priests of justice, that to your City a private succession may be restored to sacred things. Let men make their wills in security, and know that under princes who are not avaricious, what they have written stands firm. May this happiness of the human race delight you. This case's example has already begun to trouble the dying. Are Roman religious rites, then, not subject to Roman law? What name shall be given to the confiscation of properties which no law, no chance has made forfeit? Freedmen receive their legacies, slaves are not denied the just benefits of wills. Only noble virgins and the ministers of the eternal rites are excluded from estates acquired by inheritance. What does it profit to dedicate a chaste body to the public welfare, and to prop the eternity of empire with heavenly protections; to attach friendly virtues to your arms and to your eagles, to undertake efficacious vows on behalf of all, and yet to have no legal standing with all? Thus servitude which is rendered to men is better.

We wrong the state, for whom it is never expedient to be ungrateful. Let no one think that I defend only the cause of religion. From deeds of this kind have arisen all the misfortunes of the human race. The law of our ancestors had honored the vestal virgins and the ministers of the gods with modest sustenance and just privileges. The integrity of this benefit stood firm down to degenerate money-changers, who turned the sustenance of sacred chastity into wages for base porters. There followed a public famine, and a sickly harvest disappointed the hope of all the provinces. These are not the faults of the land. We impute nothing to the south winds: neither did blight harm the crops, nor did wild oats destroy the grain. The year withered from sacrilege. For it was necessary that all should perish of what was denied to religion. Certainly if there is any precedent for this evil, let us attribute so great a famine to the vicissitudes of the years. A heavy blight bound this barrenness.

Life was prolonged by forest fruits, and again the poverty of the rustic populace fled for refuge to the trees of Dodona. What such thing did our ancestors endure, when public honor fed the ministers of religion? When was the oak shaken for the use of men? When were the roots of herbs plucked up? When did the alternating failures of regions abandon their mutual fruitfulness, since the grain-supply was common to the people and to the sacred virgins? For the sustenance of the priests commended the produce of the land, and it was a remedy rather than a largess. Is it doubtful that what is now claimed by the want of all was always given in proportion to the abundance of all? Someone will say that public expense was denied to the outlays of a foreign religion. Far be it from good princes to hold that opinion, that what has been contributed from the common store to certain persons should be considered to remain in the right of the treasury.

For since the state consists of individuals, what proceeds from it becomes again the property of individuals. You rule over all things, but you preserve to each his own, and with you justice prevails more than license. Consider indeed, in your munificence, whether you wish these to be regarded as public which you have transferred to others. Once resources have been conferred upon the honor of the City, they cease to belong to those who conferred them; and what was at the beginning a benefaction becomes, by use and by lapse of time, a debt. It is therefore an empty fear which someone tries to instill into your divine mind, if he asserts that you bear the guilt of those who grant, unless you also incur the odium of those who take away. May the hidden guardianships of all sects favor your clemency, and may these especially, which once aided your ancestors, defend you, and be cultivated by us.

We ask for that condition of religion which preserved the empire for the deified father of your Highness, which furnished legitimate heirs to a fortunate prince. That elder deified one looks down from the starry citadel upon the tears of the priests, and thinks himself blamed by the violation of a custom which he himself gladly preserved. Grant also to your deified brother the correction of another's counsel; cover over an act which he did not know had displeased the Senate: since indeed it is agreed that the embassy was for that reason shut out, lest public judgment should reach him. It is for the good repute of former times that you should not hesitate to abolish what it is to be proved was not the prince's own doing.

It is certain and clear that nothing is so closely bound to the laws as your decrees, Lord Emperor. But the perverse interpretation of those who carry them out, while it favors petitioners, generally corrupts what has been commanded. The brother of your Godhead, received into heaven, had decreed, when Martianus, formerly protector of Aggaria, had long since claimed his goods as vacant, that if that inheritance had no written or legitimate successor, it should be granted, bare, to the right of the treasury as to its lord; and that then, after the matter had been reported through the rationalis of the patrimony, the petitioner should wait to see what the sacred clemency would grant him. It is now nearly the second year that, through the defenders and rationales of the most august household, with the justice of the solemn decree, the written heirs are being harassed, although the sixth year is now counted since the reading of the will. Most recently the fortune of the case ran upon an unavoidable rock of a shameful investigation.

For when, before the most perfect man the rationalis Bassianus, first the informer of the goods, then the sacred decrees, were sought, the established rule was trampled upon by a new audacity. Then, when the reading made known the good faith of a will duly executed, an empty calumny was raised, alleging that the witnesses had received some legacy or other from the same testator's will. There were also added divine rescripts by which the corroboration of a certain person was set aside, who was said to have supported his own case by testimony: as if it were a similar case, that the slight honor with which the deceased had sprinkled the subscribing witnesses out of friendship could annul a legitimate judgment. For if we lived under such laws, we should more safely employ witnesses who were enemies, whose displeasure would demand nothing of humanity from the testator. It is shameful to say that the legacy to the chief witness amounted to no more than five solidi.

For to the others rather an honorable remembrance than a gain of money accrued. Therefore either the inheritance was of the utmost poverty, if so slight an honor is thought to have wounded the good faith of a legitimate judgment; or if the inherited estate is reckoned rather ample, then the small sum of the legacy is far from raising suspicion. Who does not employ his closest friends as witnesses when final testaments are drawn up? What wonder is it, then, if one who has deserved to be summoned should also deserve some token of religious regard, being set before the eyes of the testator? I would not tolerate a witness to whom a great part of the goods is bequeathed. For even though his conscience remain intact, still his reputation is not enriched with unblemished honor. But these slight tokens are left either out of affection or out of the testator's sense of modesty. Nothing has been taken away from this observance by new laws.

This custom remains, and, so long as we keep to the laws, it will always remain. One single rationalis, after the memory of man, has arisen to introduce the precedent of a new kind of judgment. From this the appeal arose. When this appeal, by the decree even of your law, had entered the sacred court, again, for the sake of evading judgment, an empty contrivance was proposed, namely that the inquiry should be said to have been delegated by the illustrious count of the privy purse to the examination of the rationalis, and that therefore it ought again to be transferred to the judgment of that same official; whereas the whole question, arising from the petitions of Martianus, formerly protector, and from the bounty of your clemency, properly belonged rather to the sacred court by way of appeal: the more so since a recent enactment has, by ancient right, committed such indiscriminate appeals of this kind to the see which guards the place of the emperors.

Having therefore examined everything, I pronounced that the goods were not liable to the rescript: since the eternal justice of your Godhead had decreed that the treasury should be admitted only if the inheritance were without written or legitimate successors: but these estates Marcellus, Bizias, and Heliodorus had received according to the will of the deceased. Now the defender of the venerable household has suspended my sentence by an unusual appeal. But since he could allege no precedent of judicial procedure for this matter, I nevertheless willingly admitted the appeal as raised, and, having summarized the whole matter in my report, I have also appended documents from the official records, presuming that what I have judged according to the laws, for the honor of the times, will be pleasing to good emperors.

Petronianus, formerly a soldier of the urban cohorts, having been advanced to the rank of corniculary through the long duration of blameless service, has, according to the custom and institution of our forebears, earned the testimonial of military diligence, which the judgments of the officers have also conferred upon others after an honorable course of service, Lord Emperor. It is fitting, therefore, given the divine felicity of your times, that his service, completed without offense, should, if the pious countenance of your Perpetuity shall smile upon it, be adorned with the customary prerogative.

It is my care that you, who are alike in spirit and majesty, may rejoice in mutual honor. It is fitting, therefore, Lord Emperor, that the decree of the senate should reach the most invincible brothers of your Godhead, if it so please you, through the mediation of your clemency. Their author and parent—as I recall having already written to the illustrious master of offices, a man of clarissimus rank—has been honored with equestrian statues, which the venerable order decreed to him in memory of the African and British wars: to this end, namely, that by the just titles of former commanders the devotion of those now present toward you might be provoked to emulation.

Since the tax-farmers of the salt-works, reduced from a great number to a few, could not bear the weight of public necessity, they obtained, by a petition presented, that those who had formerly been assigned and then excused should be restored, and that they should without delay receive just reinforcements from other bodies, whether vacant or otherwise, Lord Emperor. Having therefore cited the divine ordinance, when they found that many had previously been enrolled in fellowship with them by the favor of Macedonius, they obtained a report concerning these enrollments; for it belongs to your clemency alone to rescind rescripts unjustly obtained. Then, as the shortage pressed, they began to summon the shipmasters, equally liable to the burden of timber, to an equal share of the concern, so that the joint care of both bodies might recognize an undivided duty. But the shipmasters preferred to hand over some of their own company rather than join in partnership in so great a burden.

And so it came about that, with the consent of both, certain men were joined to the tax-farmers. Now the public interest demands the stable ruling of your Perpetuity, lest, by surreptitious petitions, the resources of the reconstituted body be withdrawn. I have appended to the report the official records, both of the proceedings held concerning those whom the intervention of Macedonius had released, and of those drawn up under my own examination: by which, without favor shown to anyone, the will of the shipmasters assigned certain men to the tax-farmers. It will now belong to your most sacred Godhead either to annul the favors of those whom intrigue is shown to have freed, and to bar the way of petition to those whom the consent of their own body has adjudged.

Prompted by devotion and by custom, I bring to the notice of your Eternity, Lord Emperor, the names of the magistrates to whom the most ample order has assigned various duties at the time of designation, so that the imperial cognizance may receive those appointed either to discharge these offices or to undertake the fasces. To these are joined those whom recent birth has added to your senate. In such matters I ought not to be prolix, since the good faith of a public decree demands rather the presentation of the official record than an ample eloquence on the part of the reporter.

Even if ancient institution had not given a fixed course or order to the sending of census reports to your clemency, Lord Emperor, still the diligence of a good age would demand the trustworthiness of public instruction: since it is fitting that the princes and parents of the human race be informed what the entry of new senators adds to, or what exemption takes away from, the venerable order. Of these matters the evidence of the quarterly report, drawn up in the customary manner from the census office, which I have appended to the pages of this relation, will furnish proof to your Eternity: so that your majesty may know what number of colleagues has flowed into the most ample senate-house, and what either the new professions have added by way of increase, or the old exemptions have cut away, from the senatorial assessments.

Indeed, rumor does not conceal the glorious outcomes of your wars, but greater is the assurance of victory that is confirmed by the eyes, Lord Emperor. Long ago the Roman people had heard by report of the slaughter of the Sarmatians. But now the joyful news has been confirmed by the spectacle of triumph. We are no longer inferior to the examples of antiquity. We have seen, and marvel at, what was done: the chained column of the conquered nation led in; and those faces, once so fierce, now changed to a wretched pallor. He who stood in the midst of the arena, subjected to pleasure, who once was an object of dread; hands accustomed to the weapons of their own nation held the instruments of the gladiator. Too fortunate the leader of this war, who, relying on the auspices of your divine clemency, utterly destroyed some of the number of the enemy for the security of the provinces, and reserved others for the delight of the Roman populace.

Deservedly your judgments answer to his merit; rightly is he often celebrated in the imperial letters. Nor indeed could such devotion find a worthier herald. May you have frequent and easy occasion for laurels, and may the might of the soldiers seize those who by chance have raised impious daring against the Roman name, and the arena of the city exact its price from them. May you grant these things perpetually, as though a tribute, to citizens devoted to your virtue.

Fixed duties belong to every office. It is the particular business of the urban prefecture to guard the rights of senators, Lord Emperor. Wherefore, by the necessity of my office, I could not fail the assembly of clarissimi men demanding what was just in their allegations. From these Eusebius, an official of the palace, having been ordered to extract a great number of slaves, so that the inquiry concerning the estate of Catulus, of clarissimus memory, though already settled by judgments and sacred rescripts, might be reopened, has stirred up the complaints of the leading men who have long enjoyed a share of that estate. It came, therefore, to the laws, the executor desiring it, whom opposition repelled: and the sanctions of your Godhead were invoked, which have forbidden the transfer of senators' controversies from the urban forum to foreign ones.

But when it was asserted that the same privilege did not apply to slaves, for whose petitions your Perpetuity had assigned a particular judge, the answer was given that the petition had subtly touched upon the fortunes of clarissimi persons. Meanwhile, when Donatus was present, joined with the other petitioners before the sacred tribunal, I asked, as is customary, whether another might be substituted under the same name, what condition the man held, and whether he himself had petitioned concerning the judgment of Catulus. Then he, declaring himself the slave of Hilarianus, a clarissimus man, steadfastly asserted that he had no part in the knowledge of those petitions which he was said to have presented along with the others. And so the credibility of the petition seemed to waver even as to its author. Another point was added, full of law and reason: namely, that after frequent hearings and numerous rescripts issued upon reports, those who again petitioned contrary to what was forbidden had incurred the penalty of the law.

For there exist sentences which, when an appeal attempted to hinder them, the divine father of your clemency, having been consulted by report, put an end to the controversy. To this victory the treasury was joined, having, as was asserted, obtained a certain share of the profit from the goods of Catulus, of clarissimus memory. Since, therefore, the allegation of the senator rested upon rescripts and laws, they preferred to lay open their case to your justice through me, rather than to vindicate it by ordinary judgment, secure in the decrees which you will maintain both by the necessity of law and out of veneration for your divine father. And so they have handed over the slaves in good confidence, whom, to the prejudice of the absent, after the completion of the business, the equity of the times will not, as we presume, allow to be heard.

What the character of a formal charge involves, you, above all others, know well, as the founders of public law, Lord Emperors. For it has been provided that no one should rashly rush into peril of another man's life unless he first bound himself by the pledge of the same penalty. In accordance with these statutes of the laws, Africanus, an agent in affairs, having entered a formal accusation, charged Companus and Higinus, clarissimi men, with the crime of violence. Immediately, as the severity of the case demanded, he surrounded the accused with military custody, their dignity notwithstanding. But when the parties came to trial, the hearing, dragged out through much struggle of the advocates, abounded more in oratory than in proofs. As the case was drawn out through a long series of words, we summoned the leading men of the city of Aricia, whom the accuser had cited as accomplices, to the inquiry, and questioned them as to the order of events. The assertion of all agreed that no disturbance whatever had occurred.

Then, to evade judgment, the presence of a certain person began to be demanded, whom the formal charge did not include. In the end matters came to such a pass that the abandonment of the accusation was sought, out of desperation, by the party of Africanus. It remained that, the crime not being proved, the penalty feared for the accused should pass over to the accuser. But since the military service of Africanus, together with his incautious youth, moved me, I preferred to reserve judgment concerning him for your clemency. For the condition of magistrates is one thing, whose sentences are held to be corrupt if they are milder than the laws; the power of sovereign princes is another, whom it becomes to soften the sharpness of severe law. I have appended the official records to my report, and I have joined also the supplementary statements of the parties. I beg your most august Perpetuity that, having weighed everything, you order what should be followed.

It is not fitting for me to keep silent about whatever is done in the City, in discharge of the service which I always show to your Majesty. When Bishop Zosimus had long been laboring under a grave illness, to such a degree that he was frequently rumored to be dead, it happened that on the second day after my entry into office he departed this life. At once (as had been agreed) I addressed the people, admonishing them that everything should be settled by the peaceful deliberation of the clergy, and that popular disturbance should not intrude itself into the arrangement of affairs; since it was certain that in the election of a bishop the judgment of Almighty God must be awaited, my lords the Emperors (Honorius and Theodosius, pious, fortunate and renowned victors, ever Augusti). I also admonished the corporations, threatened the officials as well, and deterred the leading men of the districts, lest anyone should attempt to disturb the peace of your City. This was so carefully observed that everything was concluded without disturbance.

But when the holy man Eulalius had been brought by the people and the clergy to the Lateran church for the funeral rites of the former bishop, he remained there for two days with a very great multitude and with many priests, so that the customary day might be awaited on which he could be solemnly ordained. While matters stood thus, suddenly certain presbyters, along with Boniface of the same order, hastened to the church of Theodora, having gathered the people, and there, a discussion having been held, began to wish to have him ordained bishop. When I learned of this, I demanded that all the presbyters who were together there come to me; and sitting with the most illustrious tribune Serenianus, I admonished them not to allow anything to be done rashly, nor to act against the order of the sacred law, nor against the reasoning of custom. But they resisted with such stubbornness that they did not hesitate to do whatever had been forbidden.

For they even resolved that the presbyter Boniface should be ordained in the church of Marcellus, and they proceeded with him to the basilica of St. Peter. And since it is for your Piety to render judgment on this matter, I believed I should at once, with due solicitude, consult your Majesty, so that whatever your Piety decrees may be clearly made known by a rescript of your divine authority. Given the fourth day before the Kalends of January.

Having reviewed all the proceedings, it has become clear, from the report of your praiseworthy Highness, that in the ordination of the venerable priest the ancient peace was attempted to be disturbed by the insolence of a few. For when, after the departure of the venerable man Zosimus, a fitting multitude, agreeing in common judgment, had spoken in favor of Eulalius as the one to be substituted in order, and the confirmation of the successor kept everything, as regards itself, full and complete as the rule of Catholic discipline demanded, we marvel greatly that there were some who, having despised the solemn procedure, hastened toward the ordination of another. Against whose deed our clemency ought rightly to rise up in chastisement, unless we resolve to grant only this much—that they pertain to pardon, because, recognizing their own downfall, they have relapsed into begging for indulgence, asking that pardon be granted them for that concerning which they complained of having suffered violence.

Let your Highness, then, know by this present authority of our clemency that our wish and purpose agree concerning Eulalius as the bishop of the sacred law; to whom a sufficient number of ordainers, the solemnity of the lawful time, and the character of the place have rightly conferred the summit of a name to be venerated. But since it is established that everything was lacking in the case of Boniface, we perceived that our judgment was superfluously awaited, since those who had themselves presumed upon the act appear to have condemned their own deed by the entreaties they have since brought forward. We therefore decree by this final command, all extraordinary presumption having been removed, that Boniface be forthwith forbidden the City by interdict (it will be to his credit if, complying with the heavenly ordinances, he withdraws of his own accord); but if he persists in resisting, we command that he be expelled against his will.

As for the authors of the plebeian sedition, let your Highness, dearest and most beloved parent Symmachus, see that they, together with their associates, be apprehended, and that due vengeance be taken upon them, so that a deed rashly presumed may not pass unpunished. In this matter it has pleased our clemency to send Aphrodisius, a man of most distinguished rank, tribune and notary, so that, in his presence, what we have determined may be more quickly carried out, to the end that the peace of the people be vexed by no disturbance, and that the whole community, at peace, may venerate him whom, according to ancient custom, they received after the mysteries of the sacred law had been duly observed. Given the third day before the Nones of January, at Ravenna.

As soon as the sacred word of your Piety, by its swiftness, forestalled the expectation of the people, it removed everything which the diversity of wills had usurped to itself concerning the election of bishops, and by divine foresight cut off at the outset what, through the slowness of an unlearned multitude and the growth of factions, could scarcely have been removed afterward, Lord Emperor. For this reason I hastened at once, in due service, to fulfil what had been commanded; and—what must be ascribed to the good fortune of your clemency—a matter of unprecedented example, of the greatest contention and mightiest struggle, although begun without warning to the people, was nevertheless, your clemency being safe, concluded with the peace of the whole multitude preserved.

For when the sacred rescript was brought to me at the time when the solemnity of the holy day was to be celebrated, I at once (as was proper), having sent the chief secretary, admonished Boniface to come to me, so that he might learn what had been commanded—namely, that he should abstain from the procession which he had learned was forbidden him. But he, disregarding the summons, went in procession, and gave over to the people, to be beaten, the man whom I had named. When this was reported, having held counsel with the illustrious tribune Serenianus, I sent also, as a precaution, sacred copies of the decree to St. Paul's, where the assembly had gathered, lest the assembled multitude should venture anything to the public injury contrary to what had been commanded; and I likewise dispatched a detachment of officials.

But he, allowing neither to be effective, when he wished to return to the City together with the people, was met at once at the gates both by the household guards and by the officers, who (as had been decreed) barred him from entering your City. But he thought that these too were to be despised, and having entered by force, was repelled by many who met him in a certain part of the City, and was not permitted to accomplish what he intended. When the crowd that accompanied him saw this, it dispersed without any tumult. He himself, however, having been conducted outside the wall, remains not far from the City; and lest, entering the City secretly by night, he should rush to the church and again stir up the zeal of the people, I arranged, by common counsel and with due solicitude, that household guards and four officers should there keep watch without doing him injury, awaiting what your Piety may decree, so that the peace which has thus far been preserved may continue.

As for the party of the venerable bishop Eulalius, who on that same day was celebrating the solemn rites with almost the whole multitude at the basilica of St. Peter the Apostle, as soon as the commands of your Piety were made public, there was rejoicing throughout the whole city. Hence I believed that these things—which the Roman people, giving thanks to your Majesty with public rejoicing and various acclamations, bore witness to—should be made public, and I have subjoined all of them to my report, so that your Piety might know with how great tranquillity of the whole City those things were set right which had been wrongly permitted by the rashness of a few; and with how great gratitude were received the things which your clemency believed should be decreed by divine indication and out of reverence for the perseverance of religion, and which it has established to be observed forever for the peace of the Roman people. Given the sixth day before the Ides of January.

We beseech your clemency, most pious and most clement Emperors Honorius and Theodosius, ever Augusti: after the departure of St. Zosimus, Pope of the Catholic Church of the city of Rome, (as custom required and as the very discipline of religion dictated) we, a number of priests, assembled together, that we might deliberate by common judgment concerning the appointment of a successor. But since the archdeacon Eulalius, having wickedly disregarded the funeral rites of the chief priest, was occupying the Lateran church—almost all its entrances having been blocked—along with the deacons and a very few presbyters and a multitude of the disturbed populace, we, on the next day, hastened to the same church where it had earlier been agreed by all it should be held; and there, having taken counsel together with the Christian people, we chose him whom God commanded.

For we declared the venerable man Boniface, an old presbyter, most learned in the law, and approved by good character, and (what adorned him the more) unwilling, to have been consecrated according to the order of divine institution, by the acclamation of the whole people and the consent of the better sort of the city. For with about seventy presbyters subscribing, and nine bishops of various provinces standing by, it is established that the blessing was celebrated at the proper time. And everything that the solemnity required was performed beforehand.

But when the aforesaid Eulalius (who had earlier, through three of our fellow-priests, been warned by the authority of many not to presume anything rashly without the knowledge of the greater part of the clergy), having circumvented a very few presbyters, and having ill-treated those who had come with letters to forbid him, and consigned them to various custody, and having also produced, along with others, the bishop of Ostia—whom it is established was fetched nearly dead (for the sick old man's infirmity testifies that he was dragged there against his will)—burst by intrigue into a place not owed to him, the order of religion being unguarded, he began indecently to defend his pretense through men ignorant of discipline and religion, supposing that he could confound the divine sentence by human disturbances.

And since it is established that your clemency was deceived by a mendacious report, so that you sanctioned something, I know not what, to the injury of the divine majesty (for whatever the election of so many confirms is divine), we beg your Piety to order that the earlier decrees be revoked, and that Eulalius, who has crept into another's place, be brought, together with his instigators, to the court of your Serenity. For we profess that the holy Pope Boniface will be present with our priests: leaving their several titular churches, all the presbyters will attend, who will declare their will—that is, the judgment of God. Let your clemency also order that all whom the case concerns be present, and that those unwilling be expelled from the city, who will not suffer themselves to be brought.

You will find, when the uncertain inquiry begins to be examined, something that is abhorrent to all divine laws, but which may even be displeasing to human ones: that, having obtained this, we may render the greatest and most abundant thanks to your eternal rule.

After the report of your Highness had been delivered to the ears of our clemency, the embassy of the presbyters cast upon us a matter of no unprofitable deliberation. It is therefore fitting, ambiguity being set aside, to examine the faithful order of events at close hand; and to have that side approved, by the judgment of many present, whose case the record of the events, when neglected, condemns, and whose the observed order sanctions—so that, the quality of each act being weighed together, what has been rightly determined concerning the one may stand firm, and what has been rashly assumed concerning the other may not remain, dearest and most beloved parent Symmachus.

For this reason let your illustrious and exalted Greatness, all that has been decreed above being suspended, and no prejudice meanwhile established, summon both—that is, Boniface and Eulalius, most devout men—with fitting insistence, by the authority of this present decree, that within the sixth day before the Ides of February they delay not to hasten their presence to the city of Ravenna; all and each being warned who are the authors of either ordination, that, excuse being set aside, they fail not to appear, and that each, having done his own part with regard to the other, and having produced examples of ecclesiastical institution, may stand forth as his own defender; and, having cleared himself, may prove that the other has offended more against the Catholic law by a presumptuous election unworthy of him: each one being liable, should he neglect to appear, to a judgment concerning his own status; understanding, doubtless, that he has acted improvidently, nay unlawfully, if he does not dare to defend it in person.

We also have summoned by letters of our Serenity a sufficient number of bishops from various provinces, so that the discussion of many, held in our presence, may resolve the matter that has been brought into doubt. But since all things are reserved whole for the future judgment, it is not fitting that anyone flatter himself concerning what has already passed. The example of the present judgment will also teach what ought to be observed in future in matters of this kind. Given the eighteenth day before the Kalends of February, through Aphtonius.

When the most illustrious Aphtonius, decurion of your sacred palace, had come to the venerable City with the heavenly command, I hastened by every means to render obedience to the commands of your divine Majesty. For at once, the leading men having been assembled, the sacred order was published, and a summons was sent to the devout men Boniface and Eulalius, Lord Emperor: I also ordered that their clergy likewise be summoned, so that nothing might be lacking to the future examination, once your Piety takes cognizance of it. Wherefore I have appended below all these things, comprised in the sequence of the proceedings, for your full information. But after both parties of the people began to be agitated by various seditions, I met with each separately, having sent an admonition, that they should not gather at one church, and that (which was not permitted to happen) the multitude should not clash among themselves. But this, I believe, appeared suspicious to them, since I believed that peace ought to be urged upon men who wished to disturb the city.

For this reason both sides believed, most maliciously, that they should resort to depositions, so as to excuse their error by fabricated falsehoods. Lest this in any way escape your clemency, I have sent the very statements they submitted, inserted into the record, lest they complain that anything has been suppressed. It remains that, in the eyes of your clemency, your servant's absence should not be attacked by the zeal of either party—your servant, who, ever approved to your Majesty by pure service, believed he ought, as was fitting, to refrain equally from attacking or favoring either side. Given the eighth day before the Kalends of February.

Of great deliberations judgment ought not to be hasty, nor should things be rashly brought forth which are sanctioned to be observed in perpetuity. Often, in an altercation of parties concerning the bishops of the Eternal City, the examination has been granted to the cognizance of the priests. But lest anything be brought forth hastily through the speed of judgment, this has settled in the resolve of our clemency. But since the nearness of the holy days demanded the presence of a bishop, and it is not lawful in the most sacred city, especially on the day of Easter, to celebrate without a priest, therefore, Symmachus, dearest and most beloved father, let your illustrious magnificence know that we have chosen Achilleus, who is known to be a stranger to the favor of the parties, to fulfill the sacred mysteries of the observance. But when the festal days have passed, we shall treat with a more mature council, upon the judgment of the priests, what ought to be observed.

We admonish you, indeed, that having summoned the leading men of the districts, you look to public discipline and quiet: to whom you shall order that the precepts of our decrees be made known, so that no one may dare to stir up any tumult or sedition: and if anyone, by insane persuasion, shall seek to do so, let him know that vengeance shall be exacted not only upon those who are found in the disturbance, but also upon the chief men of the districts. For we know that public quiet is easily preserved if the desires and incitements of agitators cease.

Whatever things arise suddenly, with no one expecting them, cannot be charged to the fault of the judge, and they disturb a people ignorant of the reason, by unexpected novelty. For the religious man Eulalius, on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of April, without my knowledge, entered the City at the midday hours: whom I believed to have brought with him some order. But on the same day, toward evening, the bishop of Spoleto, having sent letters, thought I should be informed that he had been ordered to celebrate in the City, on the holy day of Easter, the sacred rites belonging to him. Of this order I was previously entirely ignorant, Lord ever illustrious and magnificent in all things, and deservedly exalted and most eminent patron. When the arrival of Eulalius had first become known to me, I believed I must at once obey the commands of the most unconquered prince.

But meanwhile, on the appointed day, when St. Achilleus had entered the City, a commotion of the people arose, so that on one side an armed multitude, with iron and weapons, gathered at the forum in military array. And when I had come forth, having summoned the leading men, so that, after holding a discussion for the peace of the City, I might restrain the people by addressing them, they first came to the assembly; then, when the presence of St. Achilleus was awaited, so that he might publish what had been ordered, he could not come, the multitude resisting.

And when both I and the honorable vicar had entered the forum of Vespasian, the people pressing upon us, so as to persuade the multitude of both parties to keep the peace, suddenly armed slaves with weapons and stones, some even with iron, attacked the people of Eulalius’ party, who had come unarmed, in order to learn what had been ordered concerning the bishop of Spoleto: and they wounded them so severely—those coming prepared against the unprepared—that they believed I too and the honorable vicar were being sought after, while in their seditious fury they admit no reason at all; and had not the divine power been present to free us, and had we not gone out by a more secret way to avoid the blow of stones and the onset of the conspiring multitude, we could by no means have escaped: the greater part of whom is known to have been slaves, of whom some were recognized and seized, to be examined.

Wherefore I have hastened to report to your excellency what part was mine in this matter, so that, the facts of what was done being known, your greatness may decree a definite end to these things. Since St. Eulalius had thus entered, and on the third day the bishop of Spoleto had followed, and no commands from your virtues had come to me to follow, a disturbance of the whole populace arose, raging against itself and to the peril of the judges: and unless you order by a swift response, before the venerable day of Easter, what ought to be done, the peoples threaten that they will fight one another, since each side thinks the other is to be excluded from the Lateran basilica. Lest therefore anything adverse (which may the good fortune of your sublimity avert) should happen, I beg that you decree, by a clear order, that the dangerous obstinacy of this frenzied contention be excluded. Given the twelfth day before the Kalends of April.

So that we may be able to learn everything with certainty, and the authors of factions may not escape a faithful messenger and observer, we have sent our chancellor Vitulus, that he might convey with speedy haste the words and judgment of our most unconquered lord prince to your excellency and to the people. And we admonish this, that whatever is contained in the sacred authorities be violated by no rashness, and that what has been commanded be carried out with prompt urgency; lest the clemency of the Augustus, having now recognized that he has delayed what ought to be corrected, should not delay to correct it once the vigor of his majesty is roused.

While our clemency, desirous of restoring peace, had devised this kind of plan for healing the error of the first disturbance—that until a definitive sentence should be issued concerning the confirmation of the urban priesthood, each of those on whose account the tumult had previously arisen should be separated in residence from the most sacred City, and remain in suspense awaiting the future judgment, the space within which each should be confined being clearly expressed—we cannot with equanimity disregard that against the beginnings of our clemency almost a public war has been declared, by which they might be trampled underfoot; that the instigator of this, Eulalius, who transgressed the commands, has, according to the order of the precepts, been unwilling to remain absent even for a short time, Symmachus, dearest father.

Wherefore let your sublimity know that we have determined this, that both the salutary earlier order of the precept and the moderate ordinance of the synod ought to be preserved, which we judge cannot otherwise be done unless Eulalius be urged in every way, that, departing from the City with all speed, he not, by his presence, furnish incitements to an insolent populace, nor become the cause of death to the innocent; let him have no doubt that, if he persists in this obstinacy of presumption, not only has judgment already been pronounced concerning his status, but judgment concerning the peril of his safety is also to be pronounced. For a fault already foretold merits no pardon, if, once foretold, it is not avoided. He shall have no excuse from this, that he might claim to be detained by the people against his will.

But if anyone from the number of the clergy shall have decided that communion is to be given to Eulalius while the judgment is pending, let him know that he is to be condemned by an equal sentence. As for the laity who, after our clemency's prohibition, shall have thought the communion of Eulalius is to be sought, let those of more honorable rank suffer the penalty of proscription, and slaves the penalty of death, nor shall their masters be delivered from this peril. As for the chief men of the districts, unless they subdue and restrain the spirit of the disorderly populace, let them know that, once seized, they shall be subjected to the ultimate judgment. The bishop of Spoleto, however (as had already been determined), shall fulfill the order of the festal solemnity on the holy days of Easter, for whom alone we decree that the Lateran church shall be open for the celebration of the mysteries, all others who might wish to presume this being driven away.

Indeed we admonish that the aforesaid priest of the city of Spoleto ought to be received in his place, to complete the order of the sacred mysteries. But throughout all the parish churches and places which are frequented by a crowded assembly, let these things which we have decreed be publicly posted, so that it may be clear to all both that we have not wished to bring about any disturbance, and that we still await that the things disturbed should be settled. Let your sublimity know that the chief of the office staff and the rest of the officials who serve under your acts shall be liable not only to the penalty of a most severe fine, but shall incur capital punishment, unless he has hastened, with utmost effort, to bring the effect of our clemency's ordinances to completion. Given the eighteenth day before the Kalends of April, at Ravenna.

As soon as the sacred commands of our most unconquered lord prince were delivered, immediately (as had been agreed) the due service was rendered. But Eulalius, with that same obstinacy with which he entered the City without a sacred order, likewise resisted being compelled to leave, through all the authorities, with equal stubbornness. For at the evening hours, through the urban office, it is known that what the most unconquered emperor had commanded became known to him on the very day it was delivered, Lord ever most illustrious, most sacred, magnificent, and deservedly sublime and most eminent patron. When he had read it, he sent word that he would deal with it more carefully, yet, though urgently admonished, he took no care to leave. On another day again, admonished through all the officers even at the hours of night, having gathered a multitude, he believed, by a rash attempt, that he could invade the Lateran basilica. But after a discussion held with the leading men, all the officers being dispatched, it was ordered that he be driven out.

For the honorable vicar also had decided to go to the same basilica, but at first he could not approach it, from excessive terror. I, however, though I sent both the corporati and the whole office, could not myself go there, lest anyone should make against me the odium of favoring one religion. Nevertheless, saving your excellency, with a good many of the corporati and the elders of the districts rushing in, who serve the imperial precepts, Eulalius was put to flight from that church, and expelled from the City, and, with attendants attached, was sent to the place where he had been ordered to reside. It was also commanded that the religious man, the holy bishop Achilleus, with the quiet that had been ordered, once the other was expelled, should celebrate without any tumult of the people, out of reverence for the holy days. For I placed attendants to guard the Lateran basilica, lest it be given over to anyone else.

Some of the clergy of Eulalius’ party, instigators of the sedition, were also seized, concerning whom I await what may be ordered. And since I have thought it right to report to your virtues all that has been done up to this point, whatever shall be reported in the following days for the peace of the City, which your good fortune governs, I shall announce individually, according to the truth and order of events, by better indications.

Our serenity acted with especial moderation, that presumption might not find a place. For by the judgment of God the examination was deferred to the venerable priests: so that whatever religion, whatever truth demanded, a tranquil disputation might decide this without any disturbance. But the text of the report has taught that Eulalius, through usurpation contrary to the sentence of the venerable synod, committed many things unlawfully, who, by his own presence supplying the people with cause for fury, wished everything which our moderation preserves to perish entirely. For since, by our ordinance and the judgment of the bishops (of whom a greater number had gathered in synod), with the consent also of the parties and by their own declaration, it had been determined that whoever should have entered the City to incite the people should know himself specially condemned: by the fact of his own presence he has proved what sort of beginning his conduct is shown to have had.

Since therefore it is rightly established that this man, after so many offenses, has been driven from the City, to which the judgment of our clemency and of the bishops has decreed that he ought not to approach, let your sublimity know that we have determined that the venerable man Bonifacius, bishop (to whose moderation we have rightly judged our authority should be joined), Symmachus, dearest and most beloved father, ought to enter the City; so that under his governance the reverence of the religious law may be fulfilled with solid moderation. Given the third day before the Nones of April, received the Ides of April.

Whatever things are done under God's authorship are rightly confirmed by the divine judgment of your piety. For recently, when your sacred authority had explained to me, your servant, through the clemency, as if all ambiguity had been removed, your majesty confirmed the priesthood of the venerable man Bonifacius the bishop. So welcome to all were the things that were commanded, that both the most ample order and the Roman people approved this, Lord Emperor. For when the heavenly ordinances were recited by me to the people, and made public through edicts issued out of affection, so great was the fervor and joy of the whole city, that all, with fitting rejoicing, testified both that religion had been restored, and that the security of peace had been granted. And so, after an interval of two days, the aforementioned venerable bishop entered the City, with all the people running to meet him, just as your serenity had ordained: nor was the service due from my office lacking.

And now no dissension remains among the people, and all have acquiesced in the divine judgment and the will of your majesty. Rivalries having therefore ceased, all have begun to feel what you, admonished by God's precept, have decreed, and the Roman people have testified, by the acclamations subjoined, the causes of their joy, and do not cease to give thanks to your serenity every single day; whose provision, just as it guards the peace of the world, so it has restored the quiet of the City, and concord to the people.