eading, 'suscipiunt.']

[Footnote 205: 'Quia in vobis singulare aliquid inesse cognoscunt.']

'Often have you exhorted me to love the Senate, to accept cordially
the laws of past Emperors, to join together in one all the members of
Italy. How can you separate from your august alliance one whose
character you thus try to make conformable to your own? There is
moreover that noble sentiment, love for the City of Rome, from which
two princes, both of whom govern in her name, should never be
disjoined.

'We have thought fit therefore to send A and B[206] as ambassadors to
your most serene Piety, that Peace, which has been broken, through a
variety of causes, may, by the removal of all matters of dispute, be
firmly restored between us. For we think you will not suffer that any
discord should remain between two Republics, which are declared to
have ever formed one body under their ancient princes[207], and which
ought not to be joined by a mere sentiment of love, but actively to
aid one another with all their powers. Let there be always one will,
one purpose in the Roman Kingdom. Therefore, while greeting you with
our respectful salutations, we humbly beg that you will not remove
from us the high honour of your Mildness's affection[208], which we
have a right to hope for if it were never granted to any others.

[Footnote 206: 'Illum atque illum.' I shall always render this phrase
(which shows that Cassiodorus had not preserved the names of the
ambassadors) as above.]

[Footnote 207: 'Quia pati vos non credimus, inter utrasque
Respublicas, quarum semper unum corpus sub antiquis principibus fuisse
declaratur, aliquid discordiae permanere.']

[Footnote 208: 'Poma meute deposcimus ne suspendatis a nobis
mansuetudinis vestrae gloriosissimam caritatem.']

'The rest of their commission will be verbally conveyed to your Piety
by the bearers of these letters[209].'

[Footnote 209: For some remarks on the date of this letter, see
Introduction, p. 23. The mention of interrupted peace, which evidently
requires not mere estrangement but an actual state of war, points to
the year 505, when Sabinian, the general of Anastasius, was defeated
by the Ostrogoths and their allies at Horrea Margi; or to 508, when
the Imperial fleet made a raid on the coast of Apulia, as probable
dates for the composition of the letter. Its place at the beginning of
the Variae does not at all imply priority in date to the letters which
follow it. It was ev