elves up against the
authority of your _fasces_, send us at once a messenger with your
report; or, if you cannot spare such an one, send the report alone, as
you have authority to use the public postal-service[755]. Thus all
excuse for remissness on your part is taken away, since you can either
wield your power or explain to us the hindrances which beset you.'

[Footnote 755: 'Quando et evectiones publicas accepistis et nobis
gratum sit audire de talibus.']

10. SENATOR, PRAETORIAN PRAEFECT, TO BEATUS, VIR CLARISSIMUS AND
CANCELLARIUS.

[Sidenote: Davus is invalided to the Mons Lactarius.]

'Our lord the King[756] (whose prayer it is that he may ever rejoice
in the welfare of all his subjects), when he reflected upon the
impaired health of his servant Davus[757], ordered him to seek to the
healing properties of the Mons Lactarius[758], for the cure which
medical aid seemed powerless to bestow. A frequent cough resounded
from his panting chest, his limbs were becoming emaciated, and the
food which he took seemed to have lost all power to nourish his frame.
Persons in this state can neither feed nor endure to fast, and their
bodies seem like leaky casks, from which all strength must soon
dribble away.

[Footnote 756: 'Rerum Domini clementia.']

[Footnote 757: Or David, according to some MSS.]

[Footnote 758: This is no doubt the mountain on whose skirts was
fought the decisive battle between Narses and Teias in 553, now known
as Monte Lettere. It is a spur of the range reaching from Sorrento to
Salerno, which attains its highest elevation in Monte San Angelo
(4,690 feet high). It rises opposite to Mount Vesuvius on the
south-east, the ruins of Pompeii and the valley of the Sarno (formerly
the Draco) lying between the two.]

[Sidenote: The milk-cure, a remedy for consumption.]

'As an antidote to this cruel malady Heaven has given us the Mons
Lactarius, where the salubrious air working together with the fatness
of the soil has produced a herbage of extraordinary sweetness. The
cows which are fed on this herbage give a milk which seems to be the
only remedy for consumptive patients who have been quite given over by
their physicians. As sleep refreshes the weary limbs of toil, so does
this milk fill up the wasted limbs and restore the vanished strength.
Strange is it to see the herds feeding on this abundant pasture. They
look as if it did not profit them at all. Thin and scraggy, as they
wander through the thi