s with due severity, will cut off
murderers, condemn thieves, and render you, who are now torn by
presumptuous iniquity, safe from the daring attempts of villains. Live
like a settled people; live like men who have learned the lessons of
morality; let neither nationality nor rank be alleged as an excuse
from these duties. If any man gives himself up to wicked courses, he
must needs undergo chastisement.'

50. KING THEODORIC TO FAUSTUS, PRAETORIAN PRAEFECT.

[Sidenote: Remission of taxes for Campanians who have suffered from an
eruption of Vesuvius.]

'The Campanians complain that their fields have been devastated by an
eruption of Vesuvius, and ask in consequence for a remission of
tribute. [This eruption is assigned--I do not know on what
authority--to the year 512[366].]

[Footnote 366: The passage in Marcellinus Comes, s.a. 512, which at
first sight seems to describe an eruption taking place in that year,
really describes the _commemoration_ of the eruption of 472. See
following note.]

'Let your Greatness send men of proved integrity to the territories of
Neapolis and Nola, who may examine the ravaged lands for themselves,
and proportion the relief granted, to the amount of damage done in
each case.

'That Province is visited at intervals by this terrible calamity, as
if to mar its otherwise perfect happiness. There is one favourable
feature in the visitation. It does not come wholly unawares. For some
time before, the mountain groans with the strife of Nature going on
inside it, and it seems as if an angry spirit within would terrify all
the neighbourhood by his mighty roar. Then the air is darkened by its
foul exhalations; hot ashes scudding along the sea, a shower of drops
of dust upon the land, tell to all Italy, to the transmarine
Provinces, to the world, from what calamity Campania is
suffering[367].

[Footnote 367: In the eruption of 472 (apparently the last great
eruption previous to 512), the ashes were carried as far as Byzantium,
the inhabitants of which city instituted a yearly religious service in
memory of the event: 'Vesuvius mons Campaniae torridus intestinis
ignibus aestuans exusta evomuit viscera, nocturnisque in die tenebris
incumbentibus, _omnem Europae faciem minuto contexit pulvere_. Hujus
metuendi memoriam cineris Byzantii annue celebrant VIII Idus
Novembris.' The eruption was accompanied by widespread earthquake: 'In
Asia aliquantae civitates vel oppida terrae motu collapsa sunt'