ay interfere with public convenience
or the beauty of the city. Evidently he was a man of wealth and high
position, one of the great nobles of Rome, but perhaps one who, up to
this time, had not taken any very prominent part in public affairs. His
accuser, Cyprian, still apparently a young man, was also a Roman
nobleman. His father had been consul, and he himself held at this time
the post of Referendarius (or, as I have translated it, Reporter) in the
King's Court of Appeal. His ordinary duty was to ascertain from the
suitor what was the nature of his plea, to state it to the king, and
then to draw up the document, which contained the king's judgment. It
was an arduous office to ascertain from the flurried and often trembling
suitor, in the midst of the hubbub of the court, the precise nature of
his complaint, and a responsible one to express the king's judgment,
neither less nor more, in the written decree. There was evidently great
scope for corrupt conduct in both capacities, if the Referendarius was
open to bribes; and in the "Formula", by which these officers were
appointed, some stress is laid on the necessity of their keeping a pure
conscience in the exercise of their functions. Cyprian seems to have
been a man of nimble and subtle intellect, who excelled in his statement
of a case. So well was this done by him, from the two opposite points of
view, that plaintiff and defendant in turn were charmed to hear each his
own version of the case so admirably presented to the king. Of later
years, Theodoric, weary of sitting in state in the crowded hall of
justice, had often tried his cases on horseback. Riding forth into the
forest he had ordered Cyprian to accompany him, and to state in his own
lively and pleasing style the "for" and "against" of the various causes
that came before him on appeal. Even, we are told, when Theodoric was
roused to anger by the manifest injustice of the plea that was thus
presented, he could not help being charmed by the graceful manner in
which the young Referendarius, the temporary asserter of the claim,
brought it under his notice. Thus trained to subtle eloquence, Cyprian
had been recently sent on an embassy to Constantinople, and had there
shown himself in the word-fence a match for the keenest of the Greeks.
Lately returned, as it should seem, from this embassy, he came forward
in the Roman Senate and accused the Patrician Albinus of outstepping the
bounds of loyalty to the Ostrogothic