Letter 2024: It is well established that the Senate set the standard for how people should live -- everything that brings honor...

24. King Theoderic to the Senate of the City of Rome. [1] It is established that the Senate has furnished peoples with a rule of living: for whatever adorns the name of Roman is read to have been instituted by you. To this end the Fathers were so named in that beginning, that through you, as it were, the life of sons might be ordered. For you have decreed devotion to the provinces and laws to private persons, and you have taught those subject to you to obey gladly in all the parts of justice. And therefore it is not fitting that a sign of resistance should issue from that very source from which an example of moderation was able to shine forth. This our clemency, which has it at heart to maintain measure in all things, has believed must be brought to your notice, lest excess be the more nourished by ignorance, under whose knowledge error cannot be perpetual. [2] Therefore, from the report of the provincial judges directed to the magnificent man the praetorian prefect, we have learned that the time of the first remittance has so elapsed that nothing, or but little, is established to have been paid in by the senatorial houses: they allege that through this difficulty the men of slender means are pressed down, who ought rather to have been raised up (for it will come about that the excess of the tax-collectors, while it is scorned by the powerful, turns upon the humble and runs riot, and he rather pays the debts of others who is devoted to his own obligations); and besides they add things much more bitter, that each man, according to his own pleasure, deigns to throw something to those who demand it, all of which losses are nevertheless said to be inflicted upon the curials, and those things which by our provision had been restored for public uses are torn away by the wrongs of the defiant. [3] And therefore, conscript fathers, you who owe an effort toward the commonwealth equal to ours, so arrange matters evenhandedly that whatever each senatorial house declares it shall pay in full, through the appointed procurators across the provinces, in a threefold instalment. [4] Or else, what you used to seek in place of a benefit, fill up entirely the coffers of the office of the vicar, if you prefer this, lest it be necessary for the curial, through the manifold and ineffectual labor of summoning, to take upon himself his own losses rather over your scanty payments, and there come about that detestable mischance, that he who, devoted, could scarcely sustain his own function should, in his weakness, be crushed by the burdens of others. [5] This we cannot, with civic order preserved, overlook, that the oppressed should without the bitterness of war be stripped of their goods, and that those should the more perish who hasten to obey the commonwealth. This too you shall know that we have brought to the notice of all the provincials by an edictal proclamation, that whoever knows himself oppressed by the weight of another's function may freely break forth into public view: those who will carry back from us the fruit of justice, since we know how to grant protection to the weary.

XXIIII. SENATUI URBIS ROMAE THEODERICUS REX. [1] Constat senatum populis vivendi regulam praestitisse: nam quod ornat nomen Romanum, a vobis legitur institutum. ad hoc patres in illo principio nominati, ut quasi filiorum per vos possit vita componi. vos enim devotionem provinciis, vos privatis iura decrevistis et ad omnes iustitiae partes subiectos libenter parere docuistis. et ideo non decet inde signum resultationis exire, unde exemplum potuit moderationis effulgere. quod nostra clementia, cui cordi est rerum omnium tenere mensuram, in vestram notitiam credidit perferendum, ne magis ignorantia nutriatur excessus, sub quorum conscientia error non potest esse perpetuus. [2] Igitur provinciarum iudicum relatione ad magnificum virum praefectum praetorii directa comperimus sic primae transmissionis tempus exemptum, ut nihil aut parum a senatoriis domibus constet illatum: allegantes per hanc difficultatem tenues deprimi, quos decuerat sublevari (fiet enim, ut exactorum nimietas, dum a potentibus contemnitur, in tenues conversa grassetur et ille potius solvat aliena, qui est devotus ad propria), praeterea multo acerbiora iungentes, quod pro sua quisque voluntate aliquid exigentibus dignetur abicere, quae tamen omnia detrimenta curialibus dicuntur infligi, et qui in usus publicos fuerant nostra provisione reparati contumacibus distrahantur iniuriis. [3] Atque ideo, patres conscripti, qui parem nobiscum rei publicae debetis adnisum, sic aequabiliter ordinate, ut quicquid unaquaeque domus senatoria profitetur, destinatis procuratoribus per provincias trina illatione persolvat. [4] Aut certe, quod in locum beneficii solebatis expetere, arcae vicarianae sedis, si id diligitis, universa complete, ne necesse sit curiali per multiplicem et inefficacem conventionis laborem in exiguis vestris illationibus sua potius damna suscipere eveniatque detestabilis casus, ut qui functionem propriam vix poterat sustinere devotus, alienis oneribus prematur infirmus. [5] Quod nos salva civilitate dissimulare non possumus, ut sine acerbitate belli rebus suis exuantur oppressi et illi magis pereant, qui rei publicae parere festinant. hoc etiam nos edictali programmate in cunctorum noveritis provincialium notitiam pertulisse, ut libere prorumpat in publicum, qui se alienae functionis pondere novit oppressum: relaturi a nobis iustitiae fructum, qui fessis novimus donare praesidium.