'Your whole attention is concentrated on your salt-works. Instead of
driving the plough or wielding the sickle, you roll your cylinders.
Thence arises your whole crop, when you find in them that product
which you have not manufactured[884]. There it may be said is your
subsistence-money coined[885]. Of this art of yours every wave is a
bondservant. In the quest for gold a man may be lukewarm: but salt
every one desires to find; and deservedly so, since to it every kind
of meat owes its savour.

[Footnote 884: 'Inde vobis fructus omnis enascitur, quando in ipsis,
et quae non facitis possidetis.']

[Footnote 885: 'Moneta illic quodammodo percutitur victualis.' Some
have supposed that these words point to a currency in salt; but I
think they are only a Cassiodorian way of saying 'By this craft ye
have your wealth.']

'Therefore let your ships, which you have tethered, like so many
beasts of burden, to your walls, be repaired with diligent care: so
that when the most experienced Laurentius attempts to bring you his
instructions, you may hasten forth to greet him. Do not by any
hindrance on your part delay the necessary purchases which he has to
make; since you, on account of the character of your winds, are able
to choose the shortest sea-track[886].'

[Footnote 886: This is the only translation I can suggest of 'quatenus
expensas necessarias nulla difficultate tardetis, qui pro qualitate
aeris compendium vobis eligere potestis itineris.']

25. SENATOR, PRAETORIAN PRAEFECT, TO HIS DEPUTY[887] AMBROSIUS, AN
ILLUSTRIS.

[Footnote 887: 'Agenti vices.' See note on xi. 4.]

[This letter appears to have been written in the early autumn of 538,
about a year after the three last letters, and also after Letters 27
and 28, which precede it in order of date, though they follow it in
this collection. For an account of the terrible famine in Italy, the
beginning of which is here described, see Procopius, De Bello Gotthico
ii. 20.]

[Sidenote: Famine in Italy.]

'Since the world is not governed by chance, but by a Divine Ruler who
does not change His purposes at random, men are alarmed, and naturally
alarmed, at the extraordinary signs in the heavens, and ask with
anxious hearts what events these may portend. The Sun, first of stars,
seems to have lost his wonted light, and appears of a bluish colour.
We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon, to feel the mighty
vigour of his heat wasted into feebleness, and the ph