12. King Theodoric to the Senate of the City of Rome.

The same subject.

Rehearses the usual sentiments about the dignity of the Senate and Theodoric's care in the choice of officials.

'It is easier, if one may say so, for Nature herself to err, than that a Sovereign should make a State unlike to himself.'

Recounts the ancestry of Argolicus. The older Senators will remember his eloquent and purely-living grandfather, a man of perfectly orthodox reputation, who filled the offices of Comes Sacrarum Largitionum and Magister Officiorum. His father never stained the dignity of 'Comes Privatarum' by cruelty, and was free from ill-gotten gains in an age when avarice was not accounted a crime[288].

'We may hope that the son will follow the example of such distinguished ancestors.'