Part 87 (1/2)

'Your whole attention is concentrated on your salt-works. Instead of driving the plough or wielding the sickle, you roll your cylinders.

Thence arises your whole crop, when you find in them that product which you have not manufactured[884]. There it may be said is your subsistence-money coined[885]. Of this art of yours every wave is a bondservant. In the quest for gold a man may be lukewarm: but salt every one desires to find; and deservedly so, since to it every kind of meat owes its savour.

[Footnote 884: 'Inde vobis fructus omnis enascitur, quando in ipsis, et quae non facitis possidetis.']

[Footnote 885: 'Moneta illic quodammodo percut.i.tur victualis.' Some have supposed that these words point to a currency in salt; but I think they are only a Ca.s.siodorian way of saying 'By this craft ye have your wealth.']

'Therefore let your s.h.i.+ps, which you have tethered, like so many beasts of burden, to your walls, be repaired with diligent care: so that when the most experienced Laurentius attempts to bring you his instructions, you may hasten forth to greet him. Do not by any hindrance on your part delay the necessary purchases which he has to make; since you, on account of the character of your winds, are able to choose the shortest sea-track[886].'

[Footnote 886: This is the only translation I can suggest of 'quatenus expensas necessarias nulla difficultate tardetis, qui pro qualitate aeris compendium vobis eligere potestis itineris.']

25. SENATOR, PRAETORIAN PRAEFECT, TO HIS DEPUTY[887] AMBROSIUS, AN ILl.u.s.tRIS.

[Footnote 887: 'Agenti vices.' See note on xi. 4.]

[This letter appears to have been written in the early autumn of 538, about a year after the three last letters, and also after Letters 27 and 28, which precede it in order of date, though they follow it in this collection. For an account of the terrible famine in Italy, the beginning of which is here described, see Procopius, De Bello Gotthico ii. 20.]

[Sidenote: Famine in Italy.]

'Since the world is not governed by chance, but by a Divine Ruler who does not change His purposes at random, men are alarmed, and naturally alarmed, at the extraordinary signs in the heavens, and ask with anxious hearts what events these may portend. The Sun, first of stars, seems to have lost his wonted light, and appears of a bluish colour.

We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon, to feel the mighty vigour of his heat wasted into feebleness, and the phenomena which accompany a transitory eclipse prolonged through a whole year.

'The Moon too, even when her orb is full, is empty of her natural splendour. Strange has been the course of the year thus far. We have had a winter without storms, a spring without mildness, and a summer without heat. Whence can we look for harvest, since the months which should have been maturing the corn have been chilled by Boreas? How can the blade open if rain, the mother of all fertility, is denied to it? These two influences, prolonged frost and unseasonable drought, must be adverse to all things that grow. The seasons seem to be all jumbled up together, and the fruits, which were wont to be formed by gentle showers, cannot be looked for from the parched earth. But as last year was one that boasted of an exceptionally abundant harvest, you are to collect all of its fruits that you can, and store them up for the coming months of scarcity, for which it is well able to provide. And that you may not be too much distressed by the signs in the heavens of which I have spoken, return to the consideration of Nature, and apprehend the reason of that which makes the vulgar gape with wonder.

'The middle air is thickened by the rigour of snow and rarefied by the beams of the Sun. This is the great Inane, roaming between the heavens and the earth. When it happens to be pure and lighted up by the rays of the sun it opens out its true aspect[888]; but when alien elements are blended with it, it is stretched like a hide across the sky, and suffers neither the true colours of the heavenly bodies to appear nor their proper warmth to penetrate. This often happens in cloudy weather for a time; it is only its extraordinary prolongation which has produced these disastrous effects, causing the reaper to fear a new frost in harvest, making the apples to harden when they should grow ripe, souring the old age of the grape-cl.u.s.ter.

[Footnote 888: 'Vestros (?) veraciter pandit aspectus.']

'All this, however, though it would be wrong to construe it as an omen of Divine wrath, cannot but have an injurious effect on the fruits of the earth. Let it be your care to see that the scarcity of this one year does not bring ruin on us all. Even thus was it ordained by the first occupant of our present dignity[889], that the preceding plenty should avail to mitigate the present penury.'

[Footnote 889: Joseph, Praetorian Praefect of Egypt under Pharaoh.]

26. SENATOR, PRAETORIAN PRAEFECT, TO PAULUS, VIR STRENUUS[890].

[Footnote 890: Paulas was probably a Sajo.]

[Sidenote: Remission of taxes for Province of Venetia in consequence of the famine.]

'We are glad when we can reconcile the claims of the public service with the suggestions of pity. The Venerable Augustin, a man ill.u.s.trious by his life and name, has brought under our notice the lamentable pet.i.tion of the Venetians, to the effect that there have been in their Province no crops of wine, wheat, or millet, and that they must be ruined unless the Royal pity succours them.

'In these circ.u.mstances it would be cruel to exact the customary supplies from them, and we therefore remit the contributions of wine and wheat for the use of the army which we had ordered from the cities of Concordia, Aquileia, and Forojulii[891], exacting only the meat, as shown by the accompanying letter[892].

[Footnote 891: Now Cividale in Friuli. Notice the terminations of these names: 'ex Concordiense, Aquileiense, et Forojuliense civitatibus' ('e,' not 'i').]

[Footnote 892: The letter here alluded to does not appear to be preserved.]

'We shall send from hence a sufficient supply of wheat when the time comes; and as we are told that there is a plentiful crop of wine in Istria, you can buy there the wine that would have been furnished by the three cities. Be sure that you ask for no fee in this matter.

This remission of taxes is absolutely gratuitous on our part.'

27. SENATOR, PRAETORIAN PRAEFECT, TO DATIUS[893], BISHOP OF MILAN.