unhonoured. If it be so, send these slabs of marble[285]
and columns[286] by all means to Ravenna, that they may be again made
beautiful and take their place in a building there.'

[Footnote 284: 'Moderna sine priorum imminutione desideramus
erigere.']

[Footnote 285: 'Platonias.' This, which is the spelling found in
Nivellius' edition, seems to be a more correct form than the
'platomas' of Garet. Ducange, who has a long article on the subject,
refers the word to the Greek [Greek: platunion].]

[Footnote 286: Possibly the columns in S. Apollinare Deutro may have
been some of those here mentioned.]

10. KING THEODORIC TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS FESTUS, PATRICIAN.

[Sidenote: The same subject.]

A similar order, for the transport of marbles from the Pincian Hill to
Ravenna, by Catabulenses[287]. 'We have ordered a "subvectus"
[assistance from the public postal-service?], that the labourers may
set to work at once.'

[Footnote 287: 'Catabulenses,' or 'Catabolenses'--freighters,
contractors, who effected the transport of heavy goods by means of
draught-horses and mules.]

11. KING THEODORIC TO ARGOLICUS, VIR ILLUSTRIS [A.D. 510].

[Sidenote: Argolicus appointed Praefect of the City.]

Announces to this young man his nomination to the Praefecture of the
City (for the 4th Indiction). Enlarges on the dignity of the office,
especially as involving the Presidency of the Senate, and calls upon
him by a righteous and sober life to show himself worthy of the
choice.

Argolicus is a great student [perhaps a literary friend of
Cassiodorus], and he is exhorted to keep himself in the right path by
musing on the great examples of antiquity.

[There is a sort of tone of apology for the appointment of Argolicus,
which is perhaps accounted for by the fact, which comes out in the
next letter, that his father was a comparatively poor man.

See a sharp rebuke of Argolicus for venal procrastination, iv. 29.]

12. KING THEODORIC TO THE SENATE OF THE CITY OF ROME.

[Sidenote: The same subject.]

Rehearses the usual sentiments about the dignity of the Senate and
Theodoric's care in the choice of officials.

'It is easier, if one may say so, for Nature herself to err, than that
a Sovereign should make a State unlike to himself.'

Recounts the ancestry of Argolicus. The older Senators will remember
his eloquent and purely-living grandfather, a man of perfectly
orthodox reputation, who filled the offices of Comes Sacrarum
Larg