48. King Theodoric to Eusebius, Vir Illustris.

Honourable retirement of Eusebius.

'After the worries of the noisy City, and the heavy burden of your official duties, your Greatness is longing to taste the sweetness of country life. When therefore you have finished your present duties, we grant you by our authority a holiday of eight months in the charming recesses of Lucania [near Cassiodorus' own country], to be reckoned from the time when by Divine [royal?] favour you depart from the City. When those months are at an end, return with speed, much missed as you will be, to your Roman habitation, to the assembly of the nobles, and to social intercourse of a kind that is worthy of your character.'