had in the previous letters.]

8. KING ATHALARIC TO VICTORINUS, VIR VENERABILIS AND BISHOP[508] (A.D.
526).

[Footnote 508: Baronius says (vii. 121): 'Cujusnam Ecclesiae Antistes
fuerit Victorinus ignoratur.' From the tone of the letter one may
conjecture that Victorinus was a Bishop in Gaul.]

[Sidenote: To Bishop Victorinus.]

'Saluting you with all the veneration due to your character and
office, we inform you with grief of the death of our lord and
grandfather. But your sadness will be moderated when you hear that his
kingdom is continued in us. Favour us with your prayers, that the King
of Heaven may confirm to us the kingdom, subdue foreign nations before
us, forgive us our sins, and propitiously preserve all that He was
pleased to bestow on our ancestors. Let your Holiness exhort all the
Provincials to concord.'

9. KING ATHALARIC TO TULUM, PATRICIAN.

[Sidenote: Praises of Tulum, who is raised to the Patriciate.]

'As our grandfather used to refresh his mind and strengthen his
judgment by intercourse with you, so, _a fortiori_, may we in our
tender years do the same. We therefore make you, by this present
letter, Patrician, that the counsels which you give us may not seem to
proceed from any unknown and obscure source.

'Greece adorned our hero [Tulum] with the chlamys and the painted
silken buskin; and the Eastern peoples yearned to see him, because
for some reason civic virtues are most prized in him who is believed
to be of warlike disposition[509]. Contented with this repayment of
honour he laboured with unwearied devotion for foreign countries (?),
and with his relations (or parents) he deigned to offer his obedience
to the Sovereign, who was begotten of the stock of so many Kings[510].

[Footnote 509: Probably Tulum had gone on some embassy to
Constantinople.]

[Footnote 510: 'Hac igitur honoris remuneratione contentus, pro
exteris partibus indefessa devotione laboravit: et praestare com suis
parentibus principi dignabatur obsequium, qui tantorum regum fuerat
stirpe procreatus.' This sentence is full of difficulties. What can he
mean by the labour 'pro exteris partibus?' Who is the 'Princeps' whom
Tulum deigns to serve: the Eastern Emperor or Theodoric? Above all,
who is 'tantorum regum stirpe procreatus?' I think the turn of the
sentence requires that it should be Tulum; but Dahn has evidently not
so understood it, for in his Koenige der Germanen (iii. 29, 30) he
makes Tulum a conspicuou