vanquished in a suit of this kind.'

[Footnote 257: 'Quod si eos vel ad honores transire jura vetuerunt,
quam videtur esse contrarium, Curialem Reipublicae, amissâ turpiter
libertate, servire? et usque ad conditionem pervenisse postremam quem
vocavit antiquitas _Minorem Senatum_.']

[Did the alleged Curials, in such a case, wish to have their curiality
or their quasi-ecclesiastical character established? Who can say?]


19. KING THEODORIC TO ALL THE GOTHS AND ROMANS, AND THOSE WHO KEEP THE
HARBOURS AND MOUNTAIN-FORTRESSES (CLUSURAS).

[Sidenote: Domestic treachery and murder.]

'We hate all crime, but domestic bloodshed and treachery most of all.
Therefore we command you to act with the utmost severity of the law
against the servants of Stephanus, who have killed their master and
left him unburied. They might have learned pity even from birds. Even
the vulture, who lives on the corpses of other creatures, protects
little birds from the attacks of the hawk. Yet men are found cruel
enough to slay him who has fed them. To the gallows with them! Let
_him_ become the food of the pious vulture, who has cruelly contrived
the death of his provider. That is the fitting sepulchre for the man
who has left his lord unburied.'


20. KING THEODORIC TO THE SAJO UNIGILIS (OR WILIGIS).