e two Provinces are remitted, but
a certain quantity of provisions has to be furnished to the army,
perhaps by each township; and besides this, the commissariat officers
have a right of pre-emption at prices considerably below the market
rate.]

'Repress, therefore, the unruly movements of the cultivators[816].
While the Gothic army is fighting, let the Roman peasant enjoy in
quiet the peace for which he sighs. According to the King's command,
admonish the several tenants on the farms, and the better sort of
peasants, not to mingle in the barbarism of the strife, lest the
danger to public tranquillity be greater than any service they can
render in the wars[817]. Let them lay hands to the iron, but only to
cultivate their fields; let them grasp the pointed steel, but only to
goad their oxen.

[Footnote 816: 'Continete ergo possessorum intemperantes motus.']

[Footnote 817: 'Ex Regia jussione singulos conductores massarum et
possessores validos admonete, ut nullam contrahant in concertatione
barbariem: ne non tantum festinent bellis prodesse quantum quiete
confundere.' Evidently the rustics are dissuaded from taking up arms
lest they should use them on the side of Belisarius.]

'Let the Judges be active: let the tribunals echo with their
denunciations of crime. Let the robber, the adulterer, the forger, the
thief, find that the arm of the State is still strong to punish their
crimes. True freedom rejoices when these men are made sad. Here, in
this civil battle, is full scope for your energies: attend to this,
and enjoy the thought that others are fighting the battle with the
foreign foe for you.

'Exercise great care in calculating the rations of the soldiers, that
no trickery may succeed in defrauding the soldier of his due.

'The officers of the army are by the rulers of the State placed under
my authority, and you are therefore to admonish them if they go wrong,
while redressing all their real grievances. They, in their turn, must
uphold discipline, which is the most powerful weapon of an army. Rise
to the dignity of the occasion, and show that you are able to govern a
Province in a disturbed condition of public affairs, since anyone can
govern it while all things are quiet.

'The royal household is specially ordered to pay the same obedience to
this rescript as all the rest of the Province; and as for my own
dependants, I say expressly that, though I wish them well, I ask for
no favour for them which I would