35. King Theodoric to Faustus, Praepositus.

Unreasonable delays. The sucking-fish and torpedo.

'This extraordinarily dry season having ruined the hopes of our harvest, it is more than ever necessary that the produce should be brought forward promptly. We are therefore exceedingly annoyed at finding that the crops which are generally sent forward by your Chancellor from the coasts of Calabria and Apulia in summer have not yet arrived, though it is near autumn and the time is at hand when the sun, entering the southern signs (which are all named from showers), will send us storm and tempest.

'What are you waiting for? Why are your ships not spreading their sails to the breeze? With a favourable wind and with bending oarsmen, are you perhaps delayed by the echeneis (Remora, or sucking-fish)? or by the shell-fish of the Indian Ocean? or by the torpedo, whose touch paralyses the hand? No; the echeneis in this case is entangling venality; the bites of the shell-fish, insatiable avarice; the torpedo, fraudulent pretence.

'The merchants are making delays in order that they may seem to have fallen on adverse weather.

'Let your Magnitude put all this to rights promptly, otherwise our famine will be imputed, not to bad seasons, but to negligence[241].'