Variae & Works 9 part 3/4

Let men give thanks for your character as greatly as they denounce the bitterness of his administration. Take heart, then, from the disgrace of your predecessor, since after that man of professed malice you are worthy of praise merely for having refrained from evil. For how splendid it will be if you grant to the provinces benefits which until now they did not enjoy? An unaccustomed good is loved the more, and sorrow that has gone before lends sweetness to the times through the joy that follows. And therefore, with God's help, we confer upon you the fasces of the prefecture, happily for the sixth indiction; and just as that office has hitherto been terrible in its capacity to harm, so now it ought to possess as many benefits of gentleness, since wounds are to be soothed by your care. Let no one be burdened either by your hands or by another's.

For it surpasses all impiety to injure the wounded, when one is believed to heal the stricken. Let that prefecture of the praetorium, praiseworthy throughout the whole world, return to its ancient repute: for if we seek its origin, it began with Joseph as a dispenser of benefits. And not undeservedly is the father of the provinces also proclaimed by our laws the father of the empire, since they willed that affairs be conducted so justly and so providently that they imposed upon him not the stern title of judge but the name of piety. Through just and lawful gains let our treasury grow by your hand. We refuse the profits which the safeguards of the laws condemn as unholy: we desire those moneys by which the scale of justice is upheld. We do not suffer iniquity to enter our halls, since we cannot admit privately what we condemn with public voice.

Hear, O judges, what we love, and do not suspect anything else to the public harm. For to whom do you believe you will be pleasing by unjust exactions, when you know that we love those things alone which can accord with the precepts of justice? You sin against your own character already, if after these things you transgress. But perhaps those men committed such deeds who attained to dignities unknown to their forebears: you, after your father's praiseworthy prefecture, add something that may be praised as still better, for he who follows ought always to be the more diligent, since we both desire to imitate the good deeds of our parents in a way deserving approval and hasten to surpass them. It is added too to your praises that you are proved to be steeped in the sayings of the wise. It is grievous to a wise man to give offence, when he finds that another has fallen.

Let him perhaps overlook the law who has not known the laws: from you everything lawful is required, whose origin is not known to have been unschooled. The books of the ancients and the deeds of your parents are alike yours. Live up to your reputation, live up to our judgement, that you may not be unequal to the merits of those whose dignities you have equalled through our benefits. Although you have often been praised for the honours of your own and for the dignity of your brother, nevertheless, because the nature of good things is not spent when it is recounted, we return as it were to a familiar theme, of which many praises have already resounded. There has been attested of you whatever ought to be reckoned of the faithful, whatever of the well-deserving. But he who has fulfilled himself by the uprightness of his conduct, when he wills, sends forth fresh occasions worthy of praise.

The nature of glory is an ever-flowing spring, a vein that keeps welling forth: for just as that spring is not spent by flowing, so neither is glory dried up by frequent speech. And even if past deeds be passed over in silence, you are proved to supply new ones to be spoken of, you who ever grow both in age and in merits. The course of the years procures you an increase of praise. You grow old indeed in body, but in praise you grow young again. Deservedly a longer life is wished for you, in whom fame is ever found more robust. Under our grandfather of divine memory you kept watch, always praised, on both sides. The still-heathen Danube saw you as a warrior: the host of the Bulgar did not terrify you, who was about to stand in the way even of our own men by his presumption of battle.

It was peculiar to you both to assail the barbarians while they yet resisted and to pursue them with terror once they had turned to flight. Thus you aided the victory of the Goths not so much by numbers as by toil. Afterwards indeed—which was no less than the battles themselves—you discharged the office of referendary amid laborious disputes. For with that man of every virtue there were services both warlike and peaceful. For who would not wage war, who could furnish him a fitting answer? He who always demanded such firmness of mind, such constancy of words in asserting the truth, that he rightly said he had vanquished an enemy who, in his presence, had been able to avoid error.

Hence it was that his attendants rendered men prudent, since caution always applied raises up the understanding, and while a man dreads to incur fault, he strives to join himself to the wise. He also conferred upon you the dignity of the sacred largesses—that is, a gift most fitting to your labours—which you administered with a mind so chaste, so moderate, that you made greater things to be owed to you, although you had received it as a great reward. Through these your flourishing youth exercised you, but our times have preserved you to a mature age. In counsel indeed you are of the greatest worth, yet you are not perceived to be broken by age: for you have so attained the goods of old age that you do not undergo its discomforts.

These are the things which we judge ought to be increased in you, that, as you are endowed with a good conscience, you may also be rendered worthy of reverence by honour. For agreeing with our benefits there are in you also the judgements from on high, since, having been made the father of such sons, you seem by nature itself to be patrician. Their flourishing good qualities it is not absurd to recount, since the praise of those who rear children is the happier for being praised on account of the uprightness of the sons. First—which affords a beginning of no small praise—their infancy is known to the palace. Thus your offspring, proving themselves after the manner of the eagle, have endured the royal gaze almost from the very cradle. They shine also with their native grace and do not cease to be steeped in the brave institutions of arms.

The boys of the Roman stock speak our tongue, signally showing that they will display future loyalty to us, since they already appear to have affected its speech. We have, O happy father, that for which a reward ought to be rendered to you, who have offered us the very hearts of your sons. Wherefore, having been approved by many labours and by much fidelity and constancy, we confer upon you, with God as our sponsor, the dignity of the patriciate—an exalted honour indeed, yet one that may be proved equal to your merits. Enjoy, then, your most approved endowments, that, when you have doubled your good things, you may again be increased by our benefits.

If he is worthy of your favour who could but once obtain a royal judgement, what, conscript fathers, will the magnificent man Cyprianus deserve, who ought to become the more pleasing to you as often as he has received dignities from us? In the stadium a more abundant crown glorifies the contestants; the frequent palm ennobles the Olympic chariots: so even in trifling matters he is rendered the more glorious upon whom rewards are frequently conferred. About a first advancement, in fine, there can be hesitation, since many deceive the prince's mind, when it is easy to delude one whose constant wish is to have bestowed: but he displayed such constancy of mind, he held so great a purpose of good things, that he ever called forth upon himself the royal bounty.

This is sure glory, this an undoubted verdict, to have been able frequently to merit, by which it is established that men are adorned. It is fitting that such men too should enter your senate-house, who at their first honours do not exhaust their merit, but, when they have received great things, again earn greater. Such men also adorn our judgements, since he is rightly believed to have been well chosen at first who is more often approved. The very nature of the good is prized when perseverance is applied to it, since it is less praiseworthy to begin than to guard a resolve of good things. You once had men like him, conscript fathers—the Decii; antiquity proclaims that the Corvini were like him. For this man, of whom we speak, has not won over to himself our judgement alone.

To be advanced by a single prince might perhaps seem a matter of favour: but to have merited advancement under another as well makes it plain that the judgement of both was unbiased. He therefore has all men as his followers who decrees anything in accordance with the truth. He deserved that one as the author of his advancement, so that he might most worthily find us as augmenters. That one laid in him the foundations of honours; we have built the summit of dignities. And therefore, conscript fathers, to the illustrious man Cyprianus, made famous by so many labours, by so many praises, we have added also the rank of the patriciate, lest he should be greater in his own merits than in our honours. Favour now as a colleague him whom you have often adorned as a stranger. He returns secure to you, who has already deposited his honours in the hall of Liberty.

He has also that by which he may be rendered the more acceptable to you, since he has brought forth such nurslings for your senate-house that, although an eager father, he nevertheless surpassed his own prayers: not timid in infancy, not ignorant of how to answer, as was permitted: they speak excellently in various tongues, they mingle in fellowship with grown men. Thus, while they are known to us, in the very dawn of their age they have passed through their youth. May the divine Majesty grant that, just as we have extolled the name of munificence in the case of their father, so in them too we may increase the titles of our piety.

Although it befits the munificence of a king to shine daily with the sun and continually to do something whereby the prince's liberality may appear, yet hereby the debt of conscience is discharged, as often as it is bestowed upon kinsmen under equity. Princes gain by their own gifts, and we truly lay up in our treasuries that which we apply to the advantages of good repute. For far be it that we should deny to a relative what we are wont to keep for our subjects: since he who is joined to us by blood deserves more, nor can he be defrauded of his own desire, who serves under a gracious judge.

And therefore we command that there be restored to you, illustrious greatness, on behalf of the most exalted and most ample man Theodahad, the estates listed below, yielding so many solidi, out of the patrimony of his mother, a lady once magnificent, to be most fully claimed as his rightful possession; for we grant the entire right of the succession in the part which we ordain. Concerning his good faith and sincerity we presume that in time to come he may deserve the remainder of the aforesaid patrimony with an added amount. For what could we deny to such a man, who could obtain even better things by his services, even were he not proved to be our kinsman?

A man whom no pride of his nobility puffs up, humble in modesty, ever even in prudence—consider what he deserves from us, since we draw to our own glory the fact that we acknowledge him as a near kinsman. Wherefore devote your efforts diligently to this most equitable command, and through the chosen registrars of your office hand over the designated estates to his agents without any delay, so that, he being united to us in the greatest affection, the grace of the present gift may be rendered the more acceptable. The more we receive from divinity, the more we owe to it, the greater the things we accept beyond other mortals: for what comparable return can he make to God who possesses empire? But although nothing can be worthily compensated for so great a gift, yet thanks is rendered to Him when He is honoured in those who serve.

And so you plead in a tearful petition that this was an institution of long custom: that if anyone believed a servant of the most holy Roman Church liable to be sued in any action, he should present himself to lay his suit before the bishop of the aforesaid city, lest your clergy, profaned by forensic lawsuits, be occupied rather with secular affairs; adding that your deacon too, to the contempt of religion, was compelled with such harshness of execution that the saio thought he should be consigned to his own custody. You assert moreover that a presbyter of the Roman Church was criminally prosecuted for trifling causes.

And this, out of the inborn reverence which we owe to our Author, we profess to have displeased us: that those who had long before deserved to serve the sacred mysteries, being irreverently exposed to summonses, should lie subject to wicked injuries. But the punishable wrongful seizure of others has conferred upon us the outcome of fullest praise, that there should arise an occasion of granting that which might commend us to the aids of heaven.

And therefore, considering both the honour of the apostolic see and consulting the desire of the petitioners, by the present authority we define, with moderate order, that if anyone shall believe someone belonging to the Roman clergy liable to be sued in any plausible action, he shall first come to the judgement of the most blessed pope to be heard, so that either the pope himself may, after the manner of his sanctity, take cognizance between the two parties, or delegate the case to be concluded with zeal for equity; and if perchance—which it is impious to believe—the petitioner's just desire should be frustrated, then let him come to the secular courts to litigate, when he has proved that his petitions were scorned by the prelate of the aforesaid see.

But if there should arise any litigant so shameless, and condemned in the judgement of all with sacrilegious mind, who should scorn to show reverence to so great a see and should believe that anything is to be gained from our discourses before the outcome of any summons, let him be struck with the loss of ten pounds of gold, which, being forthwith exacted by the palatine officers of the sacred largesses, shall be distributed to the poor through the hands of the oft-mentioned bishop; and being without what he sought, let him be fined also by the loss of his very suit. For he deserves to be smitten with a double penalty who has violated both divine reverence and our commands. But you in turn, whom our judgements venerate, live by the ecclesiastical statutes.

It is a great crime for them to commit an offence whom it does not even befit to hold secular intercourse: your profession is a heavenly life. Do not descend to the errors and lowly desires of mortals. Let the worldly be restrained by human law; do you obey holy morals. It is very fitting to preserve in them what belongs to others, upon whom it behoves us to confer our own gifts. For what could you doubt concerning that munificence, when you understand that you receive from us what you received from our predecessors? We profess therefore that the gift is indeed another's, but the judgement is ours, and that the most swift liberality has anticipated the present mind of the prince.

Hence it is that our grandfather of divine memory, provoked by the assiduity of your services, is established to have willed to bestow upon the household of our clemency the house situated in the castle of Lucullanum. Following his disposition, the patrician Tuluin, after it had been granted to him by our liberality, transmitted the aforesaid house by a lawful act most excellently into your rightful possession.

Wherefore our Serenity confirms by the present authority both the desire of the intention thus begun and the effect of Tuluin's most complete donation, that the oft-mentioned house of patrician memory, of Agnellus, situated in the castle of Lucullanum, with all things belonging to it, may remain in the possession of you or of your heirs; and whatever you shall prefer to do with it, you shall have free power, removing thereafter the disturbance of any name whatever, whether private or public: wherein, even if there were anything by any chance ambiguous through any inquiry, it is established to be cast out by the judgement of this our authority. Enjoy, with God's help, your own property, made firm by our authority also.

For others have furnished you with lawful titles; we confer the quietude of possession and a security firm for all ages. But lest perchance any envious violator of our most excellent will should arise, we command that he who at any time shall attempt to stir up any question concerning this matter, whether in the name of the fisc or of a private person, shall give to you, or to him to whom you shall have wished the house designated above to belong, by way of penalty so many pounds of gold, and shall depart frustrated in his presumptions and disgraced. For he deserves to find this fruit of his will who is seen to have sought something against our judgement. Our glorious lord and grandfather, learning of your desires, was indeed disposing to make Quidila, son of Sibia, your headman:

but because, the mortal condition intervening, he could not accomplish what he had purposed, it is necessary for us to fulfil his wishes, lest so great a man should be vainly judged to have been able to entertain good designs concerning anyone. And therefore by the present authority we command that you ought happily to have him as your headman, and that in all things you ought to obey what he shall ordain for the keeping of discipline, wherein especially our advantage is contained; for you have been so trained in the morals of our lord and grandfather that you gladly hearken both to the laws and to the judges. For this is what adorns our empire, what magnifies your repute among the nations, if you do such things as can be both acceptable to us and most pleasing to divinity.

For our enemies are more robustly vanquished by good morals, since those whom the powers above protect cannot have fortunate adversaries. For you fight effectively abroad while you strive to cherish justice in your own dwellings. For thus do two things join themselves in mutual embrace: he who has cultivated equity will possess the fruit of victory. For what necessity compels to unjust deeds, when both your own allotments nourish you and our gifts, with the Lord's help, enrich you? For even if anything is to be sought by anyone, let him hope from the munificence of the prince rather than from the presumption of force, since it profits you that the Romans are at peace, who, while they enrich our treasuries, multiply your donatives.

Public severity, just as it is free from the innocent, so it is necessary that upon the wicked it should expend the labour of its rigour, since the differing merits of persons do not always deserve one and the same judgement. The diseases themselves are healed by the dissimilar juices of herbs: for some, food, for others, the knife, recalls the longed-for health, and according to the quality of the suffering they merit the physician's prescription.

And therefore let your devotion run without delay through the territory of Faventia, and if it shall find that any of the Goths and Romans have involved themselves in the plunderings of landholders, let them be afflicted both with losses and with penalties according to the estimation of the deed; for they are to be more grievously punished who have believed that obedience was due neither to just admonitions nor to the beginnings of the prince, since it is a greater ambition to be willing to serve new masters, so that, commended by good beginnings, they may enjoy the rest of their life in the gift of security.

The grievous complaint of Constantius and Venerius has moved our Serenity, in which they plead that a small farm of their own right, called Fabricula, together with its appurtenances, has been taken from them by Tanca; adding that, lest they should press the recovery of their property, the condition of the utmost servitude is imposed upon them, free men. And therefore let your greatness, complying with the present decrees, order the aforesaid man to present himself to your court, where, all truth between the parties having been examined, set forth a justice consonant with the law and friendly to your morals: for just as it is grievous for masters to depart from their own right, so in our times it is hateful to press down free necks under the yoke of servitude.

If they are entitled by the law of present possession, let the things seized be first restored, yet in such wise that the lawful party does not desist from the disputes. Let violent presumption cease, that the case may be tried by the judge's arbitration, and let him either possess the slaves, once convicted, together with the property belonging to them, or leave the men, once proved free, unharmed and entire. For it is enough that we remit the penalty for him who presumed to do the wrong. It is fitting that you should do with a willing mind what you know to be commanded for the advantage of your city: for what it would have befitted you to undertake at your own expense is established to be offered to you at a saving. For our lord and grandfather, with God's help, watered with most healthful water your city, which was labouring under long-continued drought.

For which now, by your zeal, let the mouths of the sewers be opened, lest, hindered by the obstruction of filth, the refluent water dash against your buildings and be compelled to bring upon you the very things which it ought to have washed away. To which work, although civic love ought to urge you, we command the respectable man Genesius to attend, that you may provoke us to better things if you gladly accomplish what we have commanded. For love of your city, our lord and grandfather indeed constructed with royal liberality the structure of the ancient work. But it profits nothing to have sent abundance of water into the cities, unless now a fitting discharge of the sewers is provided: after the manner of human life, in which this healthfulness is contained, if what one takes in by the mouth he pours out, relieved, by another part of the body.

And therefore let your sublimity make the municipal citizens of Parma diligently apply themselves to this work, so that they carefully repair the ancient channels, whether underground or those joined to the edges of the streets, that when the longed-for liquid solemnly flows in to you, it may be hindered by no obstruction of cast-off filth: for water has no charm save that which flows continually and, once seen, always passes away. For that water which, beautifully exercised in its streams, laughs—how unsightly it is in stagnant pools: for a marsh is neither pleasing to the sight nor suited to draught-animals. A most beautiful element indeed, but when it is preserved in its natural purity.

Without it the fields lie squalid, the cities are wearied with panting drought, so that ancient prudence deservedly punished with the interdiction of water those whom it judged ought to be separated from civic intercourse. Wherefore the consent of all ought to strive for so most useful a matter, since he has not the heart of a citizen who is not held by love for the grace of his city. Since we believe that you, praiseworthily cleaving to the counsels of the prefects, have learned all things which pertain to the composing of the state's condition, you have especially come to know, being learned in letters, that the face of cities is beautiful which are proved to have an assembly of peoples. For thus both in them shines the adornment of liberty, and a necessary effect serves our ordinances.

To beasts it is given to seek out fields and forests, but to men to love above all things their ancestral hearths. The very birds fly in flocks, which grow gentle with harmless will: the tuneful thrushes love the density of their own kind: the chattering starlings follow their companions in unceasing companies: the murmuring wood-pigeons love their own cohorts, and whatever pertains to the simple life does not refuse the grace of union. Against this, the spirited hawks, the hunting eagles, and—seeing more keenly than all winged things—desire solitary flights, since rapacious ambushes do not seek out harmless gatherings. For they wish to do something alone, who do not desire to find prey along with another.

Thus the will of mortals is for the most part detestable which is proved to flee the sight of men, nor can anything good be truly believed of him for whose life no witness can be found. Let the landholders and curials of Bruttium return: in their own cities they are settlers who continually till the fields. Let them endure to be separated from rusticity, those to whom we have both given honours and committed public offices with creditable estimation, especially in that region where unwrought delights come in abundance: there Ceres luxuriates with much fertility: Pallas too rejoices with no slight bounty: the plains laugh with fruitful pastures, the heights with vineyards: it abounds with manifold herds of animals, but glories most in herds of horses:

deservedly, since in the burning season the spring-time of its woods is such that the animals are neither wearied by the stings of flies and are sated with the abundance of ever-verdant herbs. You may see most pure streams running through the mountain peaks, and, as though they flowed from on high, so they run down through the summits of the Alps. It is added that on either side it possesses, through frequent visitation, abundant maritime commerce, so that it both overflows with its own fruits in abundance and is filled with foreign provision through the nearness of the shores. There the rustics live on the feasts of city-folk, and the middling sort on the abundance of the powerful, so that not even the smallest fortune there is proved to be excluded from plenty. This province, then, do they refuse to inhabit by its cities, which they confess they altogether love even in its fields?

What does it profit that such men, refined by letters, should lie hidden? Boys seek the assembly of the liberal schools, and as soon as they could have been worthy of the forum, they straightway begin to be unknown in rustic dwelling: they advance in order to unlearn: they are educated in order to neglect it, and while they love the fields, they know not how to love themselves. Let the learned man seek where he can become glorious: let the prudent not spurn the throng of men, in which he knows he is to be praised. Otherwise fame is taken away from the virtues, if their merits are not known among men. For what kind of desire is it to desert the throng of citizens, when they see that some birds too are willing to mingle with human society?

For the nightingale confidently hangs its nests among the dwellings of mortals and, fearless, nourishes its young amid the throngs of those who live together. It is therefore exceedingly base for a noble to rear his sons in desolate places, when he sees that birds have entrusted their pledges to human resort. Let the cities, then, return to their former dignity: let no one prefer the pleasantness of the countryside to the walls of the ancients. How can that be fled from in peace, for which war ought to be undertaken lest it be laid waste? For to whom would the meeting of nobles seem less pleasing?

To whom would it not be a thing of affection to mingle conversation with his equals, to seek the forum, to visit the honourable arts, to dispatch his own cases by the laws, at times to be occupied with the counters of Palamedes, to go to the baths with companions, to furnish banquets by mutual provisions? Assuredly he lacks all these things who wishes always to have his life among his servants. But lest hereafter the mind, otherwise imbued, should relapse into the same custom, let both landholders and curials, sureties being given, under estimation of their means and a penalty interposed, promise that they will remain for the greater part of the year in the cities which they shall have chosen to inhabit. Thus it comes about that neither is the adornment of citizens lacking to them, nor is the delight of the fields denied. When Nymphadius, a man of spectabilis rank,

for his own affairs was hastening to the most sacred court, worn out by the length of the journey and striving to restore his wearied animals, he chose to make his lodging at the fountain of Arethusa, situated in the territory of Scyllacium, because those very places are both fertile with the richness of pastures and grow beautiful with the inundation of waters. For there is, as it is said, at the foot of the hills, above the sand of the sea, a fertile plain, where a vast fountain issuing forth, with surrounding reeds, weaves over the mouths of its banks in the likeness of a crown, exceedingly pleasant both with its reedy shades and marvellous by the very virtue of its waters.