36. King Theodoric to Faustus, Praetorian Praefect. a.d. 509-510.

Remission of taxes for Provincials of Cottian Alps.

'A wise ruler will always lessen the weight of taxation when his subjects are weighed down by temporary poverty. Therefore let your Magnificence remit to the Provincials of the Cottian Alps the as publicum for this year [the third Indiction], in consideration of their losses by the passage of our army. [The army of Ibbas, on its march in 408 to fight Clovis, after the fall of the Visigothic Monarchy.] True, that army went forth with shouts of concord to liberate Gaul. But so a river bursting forth may irrigate and fertilise a whole country, and yet destroy the increase of that particular channel in which its waters run.

'We have earned new subjects by that campaign: we do not wish them to suffer loss by it. Our own heart whispers to us the request which the subjects dare not utter to their Prince.'