13. The Senate of the City of Rome to the Emperor Justinian.

Supplications of the Senate to Justinian.

'It seems a right and proper thing that we should address our prayers for the safety of the Roman Republic to a dutiful Sovereign[761], who can only desire what will benefit our freedom. We therefore beseech you, most clement Emperor, and from the bosom of the Curia we stretch forth our two hands to you in prayer, that you will grant a most enduring peace to our King. Spurn not us, who ever seemed certain of your love. It is in truth the Roman name that you are commending, if you grant gracious terms to our lords. May your league with them assure the peace of Italy; and if our prayers be not sufficient to accomplish this thing, imagine that you hear our country break forth with these words of supplication: "If ever I was acceptable to thee, love, oh most dutiful Sovereign, love my defenders! They who rule me ought to be in harmony with thee, lest otherwise they begin to do such deeds towards me as thou least of all men wouldest desire. Be not to me a cause of death, thou who hast ever ministered unto me the joys of life. Lo, while at peace with thee I have doubled the number of my children, I have been decked with the glory of my citizens. If thou sufferest me to be wounded, where is thy dutiful name of Son? What couldest even thou do more for me [than these rulers], seeing that my religion and thine thus flourish under their rule?

'"My Senate grows in honour and is incessantly increasing in wealth. Do not dissipate in quarrels what thou oughtest rather to defend with the sword. I have had many Kings; but none so trained in letters as this one. I have had foreseeing statesmen, but none so powerful in learning and religion. I love the Amal, bred up as he has been at my knees, a strong man, one who has been formed by my conversation, dear to the Romans by his prudence, venerable to the nations by his valour. Join rather thy prayers to his; share with him thy counsels: so that any prosperity which I may earn may redound to thy glory. Do not woo me in the only fashion in which I may not be won. Thine am I already in love, if thou sendest none of thy soldiers to lacerate my limbs. For if Africa has deserved through thee to recover freedom, it were hard that I should from the same hand lose that freedom which I have ever possessed. Control the emotions of anger, oh illustrious conqueror! The claims urged upon thee by the general voice of the people ought to outweigh the offence which the ingratitude of any private individual may have occasioned to thy heart."

'Thus Rome speaks while, through her Senators, she makes supplications to you. And if that be not enough, let the sacred petition of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul be also taken into your account. For surely they, who are proved to have so often defended the peace of Rome from her enemies, deserve that your Sovereignty should yield everything to their merits. The venerable man, our most pious King's ambassador to your Clemency, will further set forth our prayers.'

[It is not easy to fix the exact occasion on which this petition was likely to be sent from the Senate to the Emperor. The allusion to the conquest of Africa shows that it was after the Vandal War, which ended in March, 534. On the other hand, the language put into the mouth of the Senate implies that the Imperial troops had not yet landed in Italy or Sicily, and the petition is therefore of an earlier date than the summer of 535. During the whole of these fourteen months the relations between Empire and Kingdom were more or less strained, the causes of complaint on the part of Constantinople beginning with the occupation of Lilybaeum and ending with the murder of Amalasuentha. I fear that the nattering portrait drawn of 'the Amal' can apply to no one but Theodahad, the terms used being hopelessly inapplicable to a boy like Athalaric. Who then are 'our lords' ('nostri Domini'), in whose name peace is besought. The best that we can hope, for the sake of the reputation of Cassiodorus, is that they are Amalasuentha and Theodahad, the letter being written between October 2, 534 (when Athalaric died), and April 30, 535 (when Amalasuentha was imprisoned). Upon the whole this seems the most probable conclusion. If written after Amalasuentha's death, in the few months or weeks which intervened between that event and the landing of Belisarius in Sicily, the language employed reflects deep discredit on the writer. In that case, 'nostri Domini' must mean Theodahad and Gudelina.]