Variae & Works 6 part 3/4

But when these periods had repeatedly elapsed, forgetful of his promise he always appeared unprepared at the appointed times—unable indeed to flee, yet unmindful of his own pledge, neglectful when left alone, trembling when held fast. He changes his words, varies his agreements, and not content with one consistent quality in what he has said, he is transformed into divers shapes. He deserves rightly to be compared with the chameleon, a beast similar in form to small serpents, distinguished only by its golden head, while its remaining members are marked with a faded leek-green colour. As often as this creature comes within human sight, since swiftness of flight is denied it, confounded with excessive timidity it changes its colours into manifold hues, so that it can be found now sea-blue, now purple, now leek-green, now azure.

Hence it is marvellous to behold so many different colours upon a single surface. We say, not without reason, that it is like the pandian gem, in which a single brilliance cannot contain itself: it fluctuates with trembling reflections, while the stone is held motionless. For what you see at one moment, presently you perceive to be something else there, if you gaze longer: thus you believe to be changed what you know has snatched itself from no one. When these mutations are weighed, the mind of Frontosus is found most like them: it has no faith in its own speech, it contains as many varieties as the words it has uttered. He deserves to be joined by right to the fables of Proteus, who, suddenly seized, by no means kept the form of his own substance; for, that he might conceal the man, either he gnashed as a lion, or hissed as a serpent, or dissolved into flowing waves.

And since he is thus known, when he comes face to face before your tribunal, see to it first that he make no promise, beware lest he fix an agreement, since it is the way of a most fickle mind to promise readily what it does not intend to fulfil. But whatever, by considered equity, he is able to pay, let him now repay, bound fast and without any delay; for after so many falsehoods he will be able to count it among his subtleties that he knows he has often deluded himself. Since, in the uncertain event of the time, want with chastened countenance was beating upon the houses of Rome, and though thinly peopled the city, nonetheless so beautiful, seemed most foul, we have judged it fair to furnish her with the supplies of Spanish wheat, so that under us a happier Rome might recover her ancient tribute.

Our commands were indeed served by the praiseworthy diligence of the honourable Marcianus; but those things were carried out with too little care which, it is agreed, had been most excellently provided for. For those who had undertaken to transport it, unable to bear the wearisomeness of the delays, are said to have sold the destined grain in the regions of Africa for their own profit.

Although this ought by no means to have passed unavenged—that love of private gain should hold in suspense the hungry hopes of so many peoples—yet, because it is ingrained in us to remit faults which we are able to correct by prudent ordinance, we have judged that Catellus and Servandus, vigorous men, should be dispatched, so that, since the shipmasters are reported to have received two hundred and eighty solidi for wheat and seven hundred and fifty-eight solidi for freight, if the truth of the matter is made known before you, the sum being gathered up by reckoning, a quantity of one thousand and thirty-eight solidi may be exacted from them; that we who have remitted vengeance may in no way feel the loss. In this matter let Your Sublimity so diligently apply yourselves that you may be seen to have satisfied both justice and the public interests.

You plead that your body, worn out by continual labours, has brought upon you a debility of limbs, so that you who were formerly fit for the insignia of war are now scarcely proved suitable even for a life of leisure: requesting that you may not be compelled to the most fortunate expeditions, from which you are withdrawn not by your own wish but by necessity. And therefore, your allegations having been thoroughly examined and brought to the proof of the facts, we grant you by the present command a leisure that is not without honour; for there is no fault of cowardice in him whom a pitiable calamity excuses. But just as we concede you a life of repose, so we deprive you by present authority of your donative; for it is not just that, since you are known to be sufficient of your own means, you should idly receive what belongs to those who toil.

Enjoy therefore a secure life, freed by our protection from the snares of divers men. Nor shall anyone impute to you the reproach of a deserter, since those whom it has befallen to be relieved from military service on account of illness are, on the ground of their former deeds, rightly to be held in reverence. For he is not worthy to be reproved by anyone who by our judgment deserves to be acquitted. We willingly grant what is requested without injury to the laws, especially since, for the preservation of civility, the benefits of justice are not to be denied even to those who are still known to err in the faith. And therefore let them learn the sweetest savour of good things, so that those who strive to seek human justice may begin more anxiously to ponder the divine judgments.

Accordingly, since you frequently complain that you are harassed by the presumption of certain persons and assert that the rights pertaining to your synagogue are being annulled, the protection of our clemency, as petitioned, shall aid you, to the end that no ecclesiastic may, by interposing violence, encroach upon what by right belongs to your synagogue, nor mingle himself in your affairs with importunate harshness, but that as in the cult of religion, so also in the conduct of their actions they may be kept distinct: yet granting this benefit of our princely aid with this moderation, that you too may not attempt to lay hands uncivilly upon whatever shall be found by the laws to pertain to the right of the aforesaid Church or assuredly to religious persons.

Moreover, the thirty-year prescription, the patroness of the human race, shall by right be preserved for you, even as for all; nor do we command you to bear unreasonably the losses pertaining to charges, so that, fortified by this defence of our piety, your petition may rejoice to have been freed from unlawful disadvantages. We grant indeed, according to the custom of our clemency, what you have asked: but what avails it, O Jew, that as a suppliant you seek temporal quiet, if you cannot find eternal rest? The chief care of aqueducts admonishes us that whatever can grow harmfully we ought the more swiftly to cut away, so that both the soundness of the aqueduct may, by God's help, be preserved uncorrupted, and the work may be light for you which is applied to young trees.

For what are now mere shoots will become, if neglected, even oaks. For these things which now are severed by an easy plucking, will afterwards scarcely yield though struck by axes. And therefore you ought to strive with united haste, so that by present diligence you may escape the disadvantages of future labour. For this is a civil overthrow, a ruin without assault, a battering-ram, so to speak, of buildings. Wherefore we order every wood that rises hostile to the walls to be cut away by the roots from the Ravenna aqueduct, so that the rebuilt construction of the cement channel may bring us such water as it was able to receive in purity from the springs. Then there will be a fair display of the baths, then the fishponds will flow with glassy fountains:

Then there will be water that cleanses, not defiles, after which there will be no need to bathe again at once. It is added also that, if a sweet wave flow in for drinking, all things are restored agreeable to our sustenance, since no food becomes pleasing to human life where the clearness of sweet waters is not to be had. For if we desire to be washed with the purest liquids, how much more do we hasten to be satisfied with such? And if these future things be now attended to, the labour brings weariness to no one, since it is undertaken for the delight of all. It befits the provinces, subject by God's help to our kingdom, to be ordered by laws and good morals, for that is truly the life of men which is contained within the order of law. For it is the manner of beasts to live by chance:

for while they are carried away by the eagerness to seize, they succumb to unforeseen rashness. The skilled husbandman at last clears his field of bushy brambles, since it is the praise of the cultivator if the wild soil be made pleasant with the sweetest fruits. Thus the sweetest peace of the people and the tranquil disposition of regions is proved to be the renown of rulers. And so, from the complaint of many, we have learned that in the province of Spain—what is the highest crime among mortals—the lives of men are plundered with roving presumption, and many undergo destruction on occasion of trivial causes. Thus by an evil peace, as if in sport, more men fall than could scarcely have fallen under the necessity of wars.

Furthermore, they are made subject to fortune not by the public registers, as is the custom, but by the arbitrary will of the collectors of the provincials. This is a kind of manifest plunder—to give according to his will who hastens to exact the more for his own profit. Desiring to remedy this matter by royal providence, we have thought that Your Sublimity ought to be appointed throughout all Spain in the place of an office, so that under the novelty of your ordering nothing may be permitted to inveterate custom. But that, after the manner of physicians, we may apply hastened remedies to the more savage diseases, let the beginning of our cure be made there where the greater danger is known to be. We order the crime of homicide to be cut off by the authority of the laws:

but in proportion as the penalty is more vehement, so much the more must the inquiry into the matter be pursued, lest from love of vengeance the innocent seem to suffer perils of life. Let the guilty alone therefore perish for the correction of the many, since this too is a kind of piety—to check the infancy of crime, lest it grow strong by increase. But those exacting the public revenue are said to oppress the patrimonies of the proprietors by the burdensome weights of the scales, so that it seems to be not so much an exaction as plunder. But that all occasion of fraud may be abolished, we order all public dues to be brought in according to the standard-weight of our chamber, which has at present been given to you.

For what is so wicked as that presumptuous men should be permitted to cheat even in the very quality of the balance, so that what is properly given to justice should be known to be corrupted through frauds? The lessees of the royal estate, of whatever nation they be born, we decree, the truth being clearly sifted, to pay only as much as it shall be established that our estates render. And lest his labour seem to anyone thankless, we wish a remuneration to be fixed for them by your equity according to the quality of the property leased. For they are to be called not our fields but theirs, if the measure of the rent turn out according to the will of the lessee.

Therefore the levy on overseas goods, where no small fraud is reported to be done against the public interests, we order you attentively to investigate and to fix the appointed amount according to the quality of resources, since against frauds it is a useful remedy to know what they bring in. The moneyers, moreover, who are known to have been established especially for public use, we have learned to have passed over into the profit of private persons. This presumption being removed, let them be applied to public functions according to the quality of their resources. The levy of the toll, too, suffer not to be confounded by any usurpation, but imposing the measure most useful to the matter which it ought to furnish, recall the licence of trading by an equable reckoning, lest the ambitious enormity of those exacting it should extend itself into the boundless.

The conduct, moreover, of Laetus, whose conscience is assailed by the highest odium, we judge should be investigated with our accustomed equity, so that neither fraud may be hidden by cunning machinations nor innocence be burdened by false accusations. But whomsoever you find to have been engaged in thievish dealings, let them, by your estimation, restore the suppressed money according to the amount of their fortunes. And if it be established that this has been dispersed through others, let those also be held no less liable who, knowingly, allowed themselves to be mingled in such a transaction: for they have proved themselves accomplices of the crime who did not expose the deeds of the robber.

The fixed scale of allowances which our humanity bestows on divers persons is reported to the provincials to be an intolerable cause of losses, since it is both exacted in kind and its price impudently demanded. These are the proper documents of detestable greed—to sell off the things due to oneself, and presently to return to the impudence of exacting. Which seems exceedingly base, exceedingly absurd, that they should both pass by our ordinances and seem to have afflicted the substance of the taxpayers, who ought to be cherished. Let them therefore be content with the appointed measure, whether stationed in that very place or nonetheless dispatched from here: let them have free leave to demand only one of the two, provided that by a doubled exaction they do not burden the fortunes of others.

The licence of the tax-collectors, too, is reported to extort from the provincials more than is established to be brought into our chamber. This, sifted by diligent examination, we decree that you recall the public functions to that measure which it is agreed was brought in during the times of Alaric and Euric. We have learned by the complaint of the provincials that those who have post-horses assigned to them exact the conveyances of relay-horses. This permit none at all to presume upon, since by most shameful gains both the proprietor is worn down and the swiftness of travellers is hindered. The class of bailiffs, too, which they complain was devised for ruinous protection, we wish to be utterly removed both from private possession and from public, since that is no defence which is furnished to the unwilling:

what unwilling men endure is suspect. For this is in truth a benefit, if it be received and borne without murmuring. The services therefore which were superfluously rendered to the Goths stationed in the city, we decree to be removed. For it does not befit to seek servitude from free men, whom we have sent to fight for liberty. Although we frequently rejoice to have bestowed benefits beyond the desires of suppliants, and—what is most difficult—at times to surpass the wishes of human ambition, yet these things we embrace the more gladly which we boast to have done deservedly. For he must long be weighed in the balance to whom examinations are entrusted, and such a one ought to be chosen by the prince as could be dictated by the law itself.

The rich veins of gems are made precious by the splendour of gold and receive a grace of beauty, since they are sullied by no degenerate neighbourhood. So good deserts, allied to splendid dignities, are aided by mutual commendations, and the appearance of the one thing grows beautiful from the loveliness joined to it: for we have entrusted nothing about you to redeemed praise or talkative fame, you who have often pleased us while we looked on. For you used to relate the confused complaints of petitioners in a most distinct and lucid report, and those who could not set forth their own griefs, commended by your allegations, obtained their suit; and lest it should be thought an excess of any favour, you used to convey the desires of the suppliants in their very presence.

The desires of the contending parties met upon your mouth and—what is the most difficult kind of grace—you pleased the opposing side too with impartial praise, a thing which sets even the orators themselves below you. For while their proposal is to plead the long-deliberated wishes of one party, it was always necessary for you to declare a sudden matter on both sides. There is added too the most genial weight of the royal presence, beneath which it so easily befell you to be at ease, that what those men can scarcely obtain from judges by artificial figures, you were proved to obtain from the prince by plain allegations. Our Serenity's sentence was indeed ready for the public good, since it brooked no tardiness in cognizance of a matter.

For as soon as the cause was related by you, it was beheld; and why should the end of the business be delayed, when you concluded your statement with lucid brevity? You have learned, as we believe, to judge by serving in our judgments: thus, by what is the most effectual kind of discipleship, you have been instructed rather by acting than by reading. Instructed therefore by such trainings, you took up the office of an Eastern embassy, sent to men of the highest skill indeed: yet you were confounded among them by no trepidation, since after us nothing could be marvellous to you. For, instructed in three languages, Greece found nothing new to display to you, nor did that very subtlety, in which she overmuch prevails, surpass you.

There has accrued to all your merits a faith more precious than all praises, which divine things love and mortal things venerate. For amid the surging tempests of the world, whence would human frailty restrain itself, if firmness of mind were not present in our acts? This preserves friendship among companions, this serves masters with pure integrity, this renders to the supernal Majesty the reverence of pious belief; and, if you seek the benefit of so great a thing more widely, of unchangeable faith is all that is well lived. Take therefore, by the third indiction, the dignity of the Sacred Largesses, God favouring. Use the arrangements suited to your birth. You have hitherto deserved that we should yield to you the heights of honours: act now, so that we may nonetheless confer upon you yet loftier marks of our grace.

Although princely munificence has frequently begotten candidates for you, and our fruitful indulgence has become for you a second nature, you have now indeed a man whom it befits us to have chosen and you to have received. As it was fortunate for him to be raised by us, so it will be praiseworthy for him to be joined to your assembly by the law of honours. Yet this falls out the more happily for the curia, in that for us even an unpolished recruit serves, whereas she receives none but such as could already be found worthy of honours. Fittingly therefore your order is esteemed excellent, which is ever gathered from the most approved. For there entrance is not unbarred to the profane, but such are permitted to approach thither as are seen even to come forth from thence.

Receive therefore as a colleague one whom our palace has proved by long examination: who served the royal addresses so intrepidly that he often set forth our commands while we ourselves looked on and approved. You surely recognize of whom we speak. For which of you has been kept away from Cyprianus's devotion? For he who sought his aid presently received our benefits. He obtained more often in our journeyings what was wont to be transacted of old in the consistories. For whenever it pleased us to relieve a mind wearied with the care of the commonwealth, we used to seek the exercises of horsemanship, so that by that very variety of things the soundness and vigour of the body might be restored.

Then a delightful narrator would press upon us the manifold causes, and his suggestion was unwearying beneath a judge's tedious mind. Thus, while the kindly craftsman pressed upon us causes for granting favours, the mind was refreshed, kindled with eagerness for beneficence. To these services therefore the candidate adhered, who so served before our mind that no offence weighed him down. We were often angered at wicked causes, yet the tongue of the narrator could not displease; we condemned at times the business whose advocate pleased us; and frequently he sustained the impulse of our mind who possessed the moments of grace. He glories, too, in no obscure light of birth.

For his father, as you remember, was Opilio, a man of mean times indeed, yet chosen for the palace watches. He could have risen much higher, had not his fidelity lain prostrate beneath the most grasping barrenness of a recompenser. For what could a niggardly bestower confer? Who, if indeed he did not enrich, yet made known—since it is an abundance of great praise, amid the poverty of the commonwealth, to have deserved even moderate rewards. This man surpassed his forefathers by the felicity of the ages, and that he has been more highly advanced is to be ascribed to our times. For such is the measure of advancements among subjects as has been the difference among masters.

Wherefore, conscript fathers, the aforesaid Cyprianus, shining with his own merits and with the splendour of his birth, we have raised to the summit of the Sacred Largesses, so that both your number may be increased and the devotion of those who serve may be stirred up. Estimate, most reverend fathers, what we have felt concerning your order, when we proclaim with manifold commendation those whom we believe ought to be joined to you. If they who wrestle with anointed and supple bodies provoke consular munificence: if a return of rewards is rendered to those who sing to the organ: if a delightful song comes to a price: with what reward is the hunter to be filled, who, that he may please the spectators, labours by his own deaths?

He affords pleasure with his own blood, and bound fast by an unhappy lot, he hastens to please a people that does not wish him to escape. A detestable act, an unhappy contest—to wish to strive with wild beasts which he does not doubt to find stronger than himself. The only presumption therefore is in deceiving, the only solace in deception. And if he should not deserve to escape the beast, sometimes he will not even be able to find a burial: while the man is yet living, his body perishes, and before it becomes a corpse, it is savagely consumed. Caught, he becomes food for his foe, and—O grief!—he satiates the one whom he sighs to be able to slay. A spectacle famous only for its constructions, but most vile in its action, devised in honour of Scythian Diana, who rejoiced in the shedding of blood.

O the error of wretched deception, to have desired to worship her who was appeased by the death of men! First, throughout the groves and woods, the vows of rustic peoples given to huntings fashioned this triple goddess by a false imagination, affirming her to be the same as the Moon in heaven, the same as the mistress in the woods, the same as Proserpina among the dead. But not without reason perhaps did they reckon her powerful only over Erebus, since, deceived by such falsehood, they entered alive into the deep darkness with their errors.

This cruel sport, this bloodthirsty pleasure, this impious religion, this human—so to speak—savagery, the Athenians first brought to the culture of their city, divine justice permitting it, so that what the ambition of a false religion had devised should come to the mockery of a spectacle. This, the princely power of Titus, with a lavish flood of riches, thought to make a building whence it might become the head of cities. And since a theatre, which is a hemisphere, is called so in Greek, the amphitheatre is rightly held to be named as if two viewing-places joined into one: enclosing its arena in the shape of an egg, so that both a fit space might be given to the runners, and the spectators might more easily see all things, while a certain extended roundness had gathered the whole together.

Men go therefore to such things as humanity ought to shun. The first, trusting to a fragile piece of wood, runs to the very jaws of the beasts, and that which he desires to escape, he seems with great impulse to seek out. In equal course towards each other hasten both predator and prey, nor can he otherwise be safe unless he meet the very one he desires to avoid. Then, his body lifted up by a leap into the air, his upturned limbs are flung like the lightest garments, and a certain bodily arch, poised above the beast while it makes delay in departing, beneath it the savage swiftness slips away. So it comes to pass that he can seem the gentler who is proved to be mocked:

Another, with corners composed in a fourfold distribution of the world, presuming on his ability to rotate easily, flees not by departing, withdraws not by removing himself further, follows his pursuer, rendering himself near by his hams, that he may avoid the jaws of the bears: another, suspended by the belly upon a slender rod, invites the deadly beast, and unless he have been imperilled, gains nothing whereby he may live: another, received behind a portable wall of reeds against the most savage animal, encloses himself after the example of the hedgehog, which, suddenly fleeing back into its own hide, gathered within itself is hidden, and, since it has departed nowhere, its little body is not seen.

For just as the hedgehog, when its adversary comes, rolled into a sphere is defended by its natural spines, so this man, girt about with a sewn-together wickerwork, is rendered more secure by the very fragility of the reeds. Others, with three little doorways, so to speak, disposed, presume to provoke the prepared fury upon themselves, hiding themselves with latticed posts in the open arena, now showing their faces, now their backs, so that it is a marvel that those escape whom you thus behold flitting among the claws and teeth of the lions. Another is offered to the beasts by a slipping wheel: by the same another is raised up, that he may be borne away from the perils. Thus this machine, fashioned to the quality of the faithless world, cherishes these with hope, torments those with fear: yet to all in turn it smiles, that it may be able to deceive.

It would be long to roam in words through so many chances of perils. But fitly is to be joined what the Mantuan says of the nether regions: who could comprehend the forms of crimes, who could run through all the names of punishments? But you, to whom it is necessary to exhibit such things to the peoples, pour forth rewards with a liberal hand, that you may make these things matters of vow to the wretched. Otherwise it is a violent compulsion to withhold the solemn gifts and to command detestable deaths. And therefore whatever has passed by ancient liberality into long custom, concede without any delay to the suppliant, since it is the guilt of homicide to be tenacious towards those whom your exhibition has invited to death. Alas, the lamentable error of the world!

If there were any regard for equity, as great riches ought to be given for the life of mortals as are seen to be poured out upon the deaths of men. Although, sought by divers kings for the strengthening of concord, we have either given our nieces or, God inspiring us, joined our daughters in marriage, yet we deem that we have bestowed upon none anything similar to this—that we have made our own sister, the singular glory of the Amal race, to be your spouse: a woman equal to your prudence, who can be not so much reverend to the kingdom as marvellous in counsel.

But I am astonished that you, bound by these benefits, received Gesalecus—who, while he was cherished by us, was joined to our enemies—into your protection in such a way that, although he had come to you destitute of strength and bereft of fortunes, filled by a sudden abundance of money he is proved to have been sent over to foreign peoples: who, although by God's help he can do no harm, yet has laid bare the mind of your thinking. What can the laws of strangers expect, if kinship deserves thus? For if he was received in your kingdom out of a motive of mercy, he ought to have been kept; if he was expelled on our account, he ought not to have been sent with riches to alien realms—riches which our struggles brought about utterly, lest they should be turned against you in enmity.