s this, when
you exhort us to do that which will profit for our own salvation and
recommend us to the Divine Power. We hear that it has been brought to
the knowledge of your Glory that a monastery of God's servants is too
heavily oppressed with tribute, and we point out that this is owing to
an inundation which has smitten their land with the curse of
barrenness. However, we have given orders to the most eminent
Senator[678] to appoint a careful inspector to visit the farm in
question, weigh the matter carefully, and make such reasonable
reduction as may leave a sufficient profit to the owners of the soil.
We consider that anything which we thus concede to the desire of your
Mildness will be to us the most precious of all gains.

[Footnote 678: Cassiodorus.]

[Sidenote: Alleged losses of a convert from Arianism.]

'In the matter of Veranilda, too, about which your Serenity has
deigned to admonish me, though it happened long ago under the reign of
my relations, I thought it right to make good her loss by my own
generosity, that she might not repent her change of religion[679]. For
seeing that the Deity suffers many religions, we should not seek to
impose one on all our subjects. He who tries to do otherwise flies in
the face of the Divine commands. Your Piety, therefore, fittingly
invites me to these acts of obedience to God.'

[Footnote 679: Apparently Veranilda had in the reign of Theodoric
become a convert from Arianism to Orthodoxy, and had suffered some
pecuniary losses in consequence, which Theodahad now proposes to make
up to her. See Dahn, Koenige der Germanen iii. 199, _n._ 4.]

27. KING THEODAHAD TO SENATOR[680], PRAEFECTUS PRAETORIO.

[Footnote 680: Cassiodorus.]

[Sidenote: Corn distributions in Liguria and Venetia.]

'In succouring his subjects, the payers of tribute, the King does not
seem to give, so much as to restore what he has received. The
cultivator of the soil is abandoned to future famine, unless he is
helped in the day of his necessity. Therefore let the corn which has
been received by the government from industrious Liguria and loyal
Venetia, though it has been taken from their fields, be born again to
them in our granaries, since it is too outrageous that the cultivator
should starve while our barns are full. Therefore let your Illustrious
Greatness (whose office is said to have been instituted for the
express purpose of feeding the people from the accumulated stores of
the State[681