ere exalted high over your
fellow-citizens on purpose that you might attend to this very thing,
what sacrilegious negligence is this which you are manifesting in
reference to the sacred vesture? If you have any care for your own
safety come at once with the purple[212], which you have hitherto been
accustomed to render up every year. If not, if you think to mock us by
delay, we shall send you not a constrainer but an avenger.

[Footnote 210: Otranto.]

[Footnote 211: Vernans.]

[Footnote 212: Blatta.]

'How easy was the discovery of this great branch of manufacture! A
dog, keen with hunger, bounding along the Tyrian shore, crunched the
shells which were cast up there. The purple gore dyed his jaws with a
marvellous colour; and the men who saw it, after the sudden fashion of
inventors, conceived the idea of making therewith a noble adornment
for their kings. What Tyre is for the East, Hydron[213] is for
Italy--the great cloth-factory of Courts, not keeping its old art
(merely), but ever transmitting new improvements.'

[Footnote 213: I presume the same as Hydruntum (Otranto).]

3. KING THEODORIC TO CASSIODORUS, VIR ILLUSTRIS AND PATRICIAN[214].

[Footnote 214: Father of the Author.]

[Sidenote: Praises of the father of Cassiodorus.]

Extols in high-flown language the merits of the minister who in the
early and troublous days of Theodoric's reign conciliated the wavering
affections of the suspicious Sicilians[215], governed them so justly
that not even they (addicted as they are, according to Cicero, to
grumbling) could complain; then displayed equal rectitude in the
government of his own native Province of Bruttii and Lucania (hard as
it is to be perfectly just in the government of one's own native
place); then administered the Praefecture in such a way as to earn the
thanks of all Italy, even the taxes not being felt to be burdensome
under his rule, because so justly levied; and now, finally, as a
reward for all these services, is raised to the distinguished honour
of the Patriciate.

[Footnote 215: 'In ipso quippe imperii nostri devotus exordio, cum
adhuc fluctuantibus rebus provinciarum corda vagarentur, et negligi
rudem dominum novitas ipsa pateretur.']

4. KING THEODORIC TO THE SENATE OF THE CITY OF ROME.

[Introducing Cassiodorus (Senior) on his accession to the honours of
the Patriciate.]

[Sidenote: Great deeds of the ancestors of Cassiodorus for three
generations.]

Compliments to the Sena