regions of Calabria and Apulia to Rome. We find the literary Quaestor
putting such words as these into the mouth of Theodoric, when
reprimanding the lazy official[26]: 'Why is there such great delay in
sending your swift ships to traverse the tranquil seas? Though the
south wind blows and the rowers are bending to their oars, has the
sucking-fish[27] fixed its teeth into the hulls through the liquid
waves; or have the shells of the Indian Sea, whose quiet touch is said
to hold so firmly that the angry billows cannot loosen it, with like
power fixed their lips into your keels? Idle stands the bark though
winged by swelling sails; the wind favours her but she makes no way;
she is fixed without an anchor, she is bound without a cable; and
these tiny animals hinder more than all such prospering circumstances
can help. Thus, though the loyal wave may be hastening its course, we
are informed that the ship stands fixed on the surface of the sea, and
by a strange paradox the swimmer [the ship] is made to remain
immovable while the wave is hurried along by movements numberless. Or,
to describe the nature of another kind of fish, perchance the sailors
in the aforesaid ships have grown dull and torpid by the touch of the
torpedo, by which such a deadly chill is struck into the right hand of
him who attacks it, that even through the spear by which it is itself
wounded, it gives a shock which causes the hand of the striker to
remain, though still a living substance, senseless and immovable. I
think some such misfortunes as these must have happened to men who are
unable to move their own bodies. But I know that in their case the
echeneis is corruption trading on delays; the bite of the Indian
shell-fish is insatiable cupidity; the torpedo is fraudulent pretence.
With perverted ingenuity they manufacture delays that they may seem to
have met with a run of ill-luck. Wherefore let your Greatness, whom it
specially concerns to look after such men as these, by a speedy rebuke
bring them to a better mind. Else the famine which we fear, will be