35. KING WITIGIS TO THE PRAEFECT OF THESSALONICA.

[Sidenote: The same subject.]

'We are sending two ambassadors to the most serene Emperor, who will
salute your Greatness. We earnestly hope that your Excellency will
speed them on their journey.'

BOOK XI.

PREFACE.

'The necessity for a Preface often arises from some contrariety in an
Author's position which prevents him from writing as he would wish to
write. It is admitted that it is not fair to expect the same degree of
excellence from a busy man which we may reasonably look for in a man
of leisure. But a man in high official position cannot be a man of
leisure. It would be the highest disgrace to him if he were, since
even his so-called privy-chamber[708] resounds with the noise of
clamorous litigants.

[Footnote 708: 'Secretum.']

'I can well understand that a man of few occupations will object
against me, here that a word has been thrown out with ill-considered
haste, there that a commonplace sentiment has not been dressed up in
sufficiently ornamental language, or there that I have not complied
with the rules of the Ancients by making my persons speak "in
character." But the busy man, hurried from one cause to another, and
constantly under the necessity of dictating to one man and replying to
another, will not make these objections, because the consciousness of
his own literary perils will make him tender in his judgments. And yet
there is something even in the pressure of business which sometimes
promotes briskness of mind, since the art of speaking is one which is
placed very much in our own power[709].

[Footnote 709: Here follows a sentence which I do not understand:
'Remanet itaque ad excusandum brevitas insperata librorum, quam nemo
purgat diutius, nisi qui bene creditur esse dicturus.']

'If anyone objects that I, placed in the height of the Praetorian
dignity, should have dictated so few decisions of a legal kind, let
him know that this was the result of my associating with myself that
most prudent man Felix[710], whose advice I have followed in every
case. He is a man of absolute purity of character, of surpassing
knowledge of the law, of distinguished accuracy of speech; a young man
with the gravity of age, a sweet pleader, a measured orator; one who
by his graceful discharge of his official duties has earned the
favourable opinion of the public.

[Footnote 710: This can hardly be the Consul of A.D. 511, since he is
called i