r of justice, to be publicly
vanquished in a suit of this kind.'

[Footnote 257: 'Quod si eos vel ad honores transire jura vetuerunt,
quam videtur esse contrarium, Curialem Reipublicae, amissa turpiter
libertate, servire? et usque ad conditionem pervenisse postremam quem
vocavit antiquitas _Minorem Senatum_.']

[Did the alleged Curials, in such a case, wish to have their curiality
or their quasi-ecclesiastical character established? Who can say?]

19. KING THEODORIC TO ALL THE GOTHS AND ROMANS, AND THOSE WHO KEEP THE
HARBOURS AND MOUNTAIN-FORTRESSES (CLUSURAS).

[Sidenote: Domestic treachery and murder.]

'We hate all crime, but domestic bloodshed and treachery most of all.
Therefore we command you to act with the utmost severity of the law
against the servants of Stephanus, who have killed their master and
left him unburied. They might have learned pity even from birds. Even
the vulture, who lives on the corpses of other creatures, protects
little birds from the attacks of the hawk. Yet men are found cruel
enough to slay him who has fed them. To the gallows with them! Let
_him_ become the food of the pious vulture, who has cruelly contrived
the death of his provider. That is the fitting sepulchre for the man
who has left his lord unburied.'

20. KING THEODORIC TO THE SAJO UNIGILIS (OR WILIGIS).

[Sidenote: Provision-ships to follow movements of Theodoric's Court.]

'Let any provision-ships [_sulcatoriae?_] which may be now lying at
Ravenna be ordered round to Liguria (which in ordinary times supplies
the needs of Ravenna herself).

'Our presence and that of our Court (Comitatus) attracts many
spectators and petitioners to those parts, for whose maintenance an
extra effort must be made.' [See Dahn, 'Koenige der Germanen' iii.
282.]

21. KING THEODORIC TO JOANNES THE APPARITOR.

[Sidenote: A concession too timidly acted upon.]

'The King has conceded to the Spectabiles Spes and Domitius a certain
tract of land which was laid waste by wide and muddy streams, and
which neither showed a pure expanse of water nor had preserved the
comeliness of solid earth, for them to reclaim and cultivate.

'The petition of the _Actores_ of Spes sets forth that the operation
is put in jeopardy by the ill-timed parsimony of Domitius, which
throws back the labourers to the point from which they set out at
first[258]. Therefore let Domitius be stirred up to finish his part of
the work, or if he thinks that too expensive,