Letter 8029: We wish you to know that the welfare of your city is always in our thoughts.

29. King Athalaric to the honored landholders and town councilors of the city of Parma. [1] It is fitting that you should carry out with a willing spirit those things which you know are commanded for the benefit of your city: for what it would have been proper to undertake at your own expense is, as you see, offered to you at a saving. For your city, laboring under prolonged drought, our lord and grandfather [Theodoric], with God's help, watered with a most wholesome stream. [2] Let the mouths of the sewers now be opened by your effort, lest, hindered by an obstruction of filth, the water flow back and dash against your dwellings, and be compelled to bring upon you the very things which it ought to have washed away. To this work, although civic love ought to spur you on, we have directed the respectable man Genesius to attend, so that you may summon us to better things, if you carry out gladly what we have commanded.

XXVIIII. HONORATIS POSSESSORIBUS ET CURIALIBUS PARMENSIS CIVITATIS ATHALARICUS REX. [1] Dignum est, ut libenti animo faciatis quae iuberi pro urbis vestrae utilitate cognoscitis: nam quod proprio sumptu decuit aggredi, compendiose vobis constat offerri. civitatem siquidem vestram diutina siccitate laborantem iuvante deo domnus avus noster saluberrima unda rigavit. [2] Cui nunc studio vestro cloacarum ora pandantur, ne, sordium obiectione tardata, reciprocans unda vestris aedibus illidatur et quas debuit abluere, easdem vobis cogatur inferre. cui operi, quamquam vos urgere debeat civicus amor, virum spectabilem Genesium praecipimus imminere, ut nos ad meliora provocetis, si quae iussimus gratanter efficitis.