hand it over to the _Cartarii_ who are
charged with this business.

'And this point is not to be forgotten, that it is to be served up in
goblets of a milky whiteness. Lilies and roses thus unite their
charms, and a pleasure is ministered to the eye, far beyond the mere
commonplace facts that the wine has a pleasant taste, and that it
restores the strength of the drinker.

'We rely on you to provide both the wine and the drinking vessels[813]
with all despatch.'

[Footnote 813: We might have expected to find wine-bottles rather than
wine-glasses thus requisitioned; but I think the words of Cassiodorus,
'quod lacteo poculo relucescit,' oblige us to adopt the latter
translation.]

5. SENATOR, PRAETORIAN PRAEFECT, TO VALERIAN, VIR SUBLIMIS.

[Written probably in the autumn or winter of 535, when Belisarius was
in Sicily threatening the Southern Provinces of Italy.]

[Sidenote: Measures for relief of Lucania and Bruttii.]

'The ruler's anxiety for the common good of all over whom he is
placed, may allowably show itself in an especial manner towards the
dwellers in his own home, and that pre-eminently at a time when they
need his succour from peril.

'The numerous army which was destined for the defence of the Republic
is said to have laid waste the cultivated parts of Lucania and
Bruttii, and to have diminished the abundance of those regions by its
love of rapine.

'Now since they must take and you must give, and since the cultivator
must not be robbed nor the army starved, know that the prices of
provisions are fixed by the order of the Lord of the State at a much
lower figure than you have been wont to sell at[814].

[Footnote 814: 'Pretia quae antiquus ordo constituit ex jussione rerum
Domini cognoscite temperata, ut multo arctius quam vendere solebatis
in assem publicum praebita debeant imputari.']

'Be not therefore anxious. You have escaped the hands of the
tax-collector. The present instrument takes away from you the
liability to tribute. In order that your knowledge may be made more
complete, we have thought it better that the amounts of the provisions
for which you are held responsible should be expressed in the
below-written letters[815], that no one may sell you a benefit which
you know to be conferred by the public generosity.

[Footnote 815: 'Sed quo facilius instrueretur vestra notitia,
_imputationum summas infra scriptis brevibus credidimus exprimendas._'
Apparently the ordinary taxes for th