Letter 9005: King Athalaric to Bishops and Local Notables.

5. KING ATHALARIC TO THE BISHOPS AND HONORED CITIZENS [honorati, men of senatorial standing]. [1] From the complaint of the landholders of your territory we have learned that they are enduring, beyond the necessity imposed by the times, the execrable cruelty of certain of their own fellow citizens, since in the first season these men bought up a quantity of millet and stored it away into their own possessions, regarding the high cost as grievous to people of modest means, so that they might inflict a detestable destitution upon those who lay things by too sparingly, at the moment when men placed in the danger of famine, when they beg, offer up the very things by which they know they can be stripped bare. For indeed in the necessity of want there is no haggling over the price, since a man suffers himself to be led wherever, lest he be struck down by any delay. [2] Therefore, condemning these designs, we have dispatched the present bearers, so that, whether on the threshing-floor or in other places they shall have been able to find stores of grain, each owner should retain for himself or for his household only so much as he knows he is able to spend, and should sell the remainder to those in peril, in the presence, of course, of the bearers of these letters, who are known to have been appointed for this very purpose, yet at a moderate amount of price, that at which it shall be established that he had purchased it from his own provincials, so that neither is he who buys burdened too heavily, nor is he who sells without being supported by some small gain. [3] Wherefore with willing minds fulfill what has been commanded, because in this matter you ought to take counsel for one another in turn, lest, while you seek excessive dearness, you rather wish upon yourselves something wicked, which God forbid. Let no one therefore complain of the sale imposed upon him: let him know that liberty is not to be sought in committing a crime, but that it is rather the mark of a good disposition, if he does not hasten to go to excess. Let him therefore who sells sell according to a just reckoning. If he consents, he works his own praise; if he disagrees, he makes the proclamation of approval ours, since the good belongs to him who commands, if justice be imposed upon the unwilling.

V. EPISCOPIS ET HONORATIS ATHALARICUS REX. [1] Possessorum territorii vestri querella comperimus supra temporis necessitatem quorundam civium suorum execrabilem sustinere saevitiam, dum primo tempore panicii speciem coemptam in propriam recondidere substantiam spectantes caritatem mediocribus gravem, ut parcius reponentibus detestabilem inferant nuditatem, quando homines in famis periculo constituti rogantes offerunt quos se spoliare posse cognoscunt. in necessitate siquidem penuriae pretii nulla contentio est, dum patitur quis induci, ne possit aliqua tarditate percelli. [2] Haec igitur vota damnantes praesentes direximus portitores, ut sive in gradu sive in aliis locis frumentorum condita potuerint invenire, tantum sibi unusquisque dominus vel familiae suae retineat, quantum se expendere posse cognoscit, reliquum periclitantibus vendat, praesentibus scilicet harum gerulis, qui ad eam rem destinati esse noscuntur, moderata tamen pretii quantitate, qua eum constiterit a suis provincialibus comparasse, ut nec nimium gravetur qui emit et aliquo compendio foveatur ille qui distrahit. [3] Quapropter libentibus animis implete quae iussa sunt, quia vobis debetis invicem in hac parte consulere, ne, dum caritatem nimiam quaeritis, scelestum vobis aliquid potius, quod absit, optetis. ne quis ergo venditionem sibi inpositam conqueratur, sciat libertatem in crimine non requiri, sed illud boni ingenii magis esse, si non festinet excedere. vendat itaque sub iusta ratione qui distrahit. si consentit, operatur laudem suam: si discrepat, nostrum facit esse praeconium, quando bonum est iubentis, si iustitia imponatur invitis.