'The framework of the timbers of the ships gaped under the violence of
the winds and waves, and from all that overabundance of water nothing
remains to them but their tears.

'Let your Sublimity therefore promptly refund to them the proportion
(modiatio) which each of them can prove that he has thus lost. It
would be cruel to punish them for having merely suffered shipwreck.'

8. KING THEODORIC TO THE HONOURED POSSESSORES AND CURIALES OF FORUM
LIVII (FORLI).

[Sidenote: Transport of timber ordered for Alsuanum.]

'You must not think anything which we order hard; for our commands are
reasonable, and we know what you ought to do. Your Devotion is
therefore to cut timber and transport it to Alsuanum[336], where you
will be paid the proper price for it.'

[Footnote 336: Where is this?]

9. KING THEODORIC TO OSUIN, VIR ILLUSTRIS AND COMES.

[Sidenote: Tuitio regii nominis.]

[This letter is quoted by Dahn ('Koenige der Germanen' iii. 117) as an
illustration of '_tuitio regii nominis_.']

'Maurentius and Paula, who are left orphans, inform us that their
youth and helplessness expose them to the attacks of many unscrupulous
persons.

'Let your Sublimity therefore cause it to be known that any suits
against them must be prosecuted in our Comitatus, the place of succour
for the distressed and of sharp punishment for tricksters.'

10. KING THEODORIC TO JOANNES, SENATOR AND CONSULARIS OF CAMPANIA.

[Sidenote: The lawless custom of Pignoratio is to be repressed.]

[A custom had apparently grown up during the lawless years of the
Fifth Century, of litigants helping themselves, during the slow
progress of the suit, to a 'material guarantee' from the fields of
their opponents. This custom, unknown apparently at the time of the
Theodosian Code, was called 'Pignoratio,' and was especially rife in
the Provinces of Campania and Samnium.]

'How does peace differ from the confusion of war, if law-suits are to
be settled by violence? We hear with displeasure from our Provincials
in Campania and Samnium that certain persons there are giving
themselves up to the practice of _pignoratio_. And so far has this
gone that neighbours club together and transfer their claims to some
one person who "pignorates" for the whole of them, thus in fact
compelling a man to pay a debt to an entire stranger--a monstrous
perversion of all the rules of law, which separates so delicately
between the rights even of near relations, and will