Part 59 (2/2)
526).
[Footnote 508: Baronius says (vii. 121): 'Cujusnam Ecclesiae Antistes fuerit Victorinus ignoratur.' From the tone of the letter one may conjecture that Victorinus was a Bishop in Gaul.]
[Sidenote: To Bishop Victorinus.]
'Saluting you with all the veneration due to your character and office, we inform you with grief of the death of our lord and grandfather. But your sadness will be moderated when you hear that his kingdom is continued in us. Favour us with your prayers, that the King of Heaven may confirm to us the kingdom, subdue foreign nations before us, forgive us our sins, and propitiously preserve all that He was pleased to bestow on our ancestors. Let your Holiness exhort all the Provincials to concord.'
9. KING ATHALARIC TO TULUM, PATRICIAN.
[Sidenote: Praises of Tulum, who is raised to the Patriciate.]
'As our grandfather used to refresh his mind and strengthen his judgment by intercourse with you, so, _a fortiori_, may we in our tender years do the same. We therefore make you, by this present letter, Patrician, that the counsels which you give us may not seem to proceed from any unknown and obscure source.
'Greece adorned our hero [Tulum] with the chlamys and the painted silken buskin; and the Eastern peoples yearned to see him, because for some reason civic virtues are most prized in him who is believed to be of warlike disposition[509]. Contented with this repayment of honour he laboured with unwearied devotion for foreign countries (?), and with his relations (or parents) he deigned to offer his obedience to the Sovereign, who was begotten of the stock of so many Kings[510].
[Footnote 509: Probably Tulum had gone on some emba.s.sy to Constantinople.]
[Footnote 510: 'Hac igitur honoris remuneratione contentus, pro exteris partibus indefessa devotione laboravit: et praestare com suis parentibus principi dignabatur obsequium, qui tantorum regum fuerat stirpe procreatus.' This sentence is full of difficulties. What can he mean by the labour 'pro exteris partibus?' Who is the 'Princeps' whom Tulum deigns to serve: the Eastern Emperor or Theodoric? Above all, who is 'tantorum regum stirpe procreatus?' I think the turn of the sentence requires that it should be Tulum; but Dahn has evidently not so understood it, for in his Konige der Germanen (iii. 29, 30) he makes Tulum a conspicuous example of a man not of n.o.ble birth raised to high dignity, and says that the two long letters about him in the Variae contain no allusion to ill.u.s.trious descent.]
[After some very obscure sentences, in which the writer appears to be celebrating the praises of Theodoric, he turns to Tulum, of whom he has. .h.i.therto spoken in the third person, and addresses him as _you_.]
'His toil so formed your character that we have the less need to labour. With you he discussed the sure blessings of peace, the doubtful gains of war; and--rare boon from a wise King--to you, in his anxiety, he confidently opened all the secrets of his breast. You, however, responded fully to his trust. You never put him off with doubtful answers. Ever patient and truthful, you won the entire confidence of your King, and dared even, hardest of all tasks, to argue against him for his own good.
'Thus did your n.o.ble deeds justify your alliance with the Amal race [apparently he has received an Amal princess in marriage], and thus did you become worthy to be joined in common fame with Gensemund, a man whose praises the whole world should sing, a man only made son by adoption in arms to the King, yet who exhibited such fidelity to the Amals that he transferred it even to their heirs, although he was himself sought for to be crowned[511]. Therefore will his fame live for ever, so long as the Gothic name endures.
[Footnote 511: 'Exstat gentis Gothicae hujus probitatis exemplum: Gensemundus ille toto orbe cantabilis, solum armis filius factus, tanta se Amalis devotione conjunxit ut haeredibus eorum curiosum exhibuerit famulatum, quamvis ipse peteretur ad regnum.' Dahn (ii. 61 and iii. 309) and Kopke (p. 142) refer this mysterious affair of Gensemund's renunciation to the interval after the death of Thorismund (A.D. 416). But this is mere conjecture. See Italy and her Invaders iii. 8-10.]
'We look for even n.o.bler things from you, because you are allied to us by race.'
[A singularly obscure, vapid, and ill-written letter. The allusion to Gensemund seems introduced on purpose to bewilder the reader.]
10. KING ATHALARIC TO THE SENATE OF THE CITY OF ROME.
[On the elevation of Tulum to the Patriciate.]
[Sidenote: The same subject.]
'We are conferring new l.u.s.tre on your body by the promotion of Tulum.
A man sprung from the n.o.blest stock[512] he early undertook the duties of attendance in the King's bedchamber[513], a difficult post, where the knowledge that you share the secret counsels of royalty itself exposes you to enmity.
[Footnote 512: 'Primum, quod inter nationes eximium est, Gothorum n.o.bilissima stirpe gloriatur.']
[Footnote 513: 'Statim rudes annos ad sacri cubiculi secreta portavit.']
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