[Footnote 204: 'Vos totius orbis salutare praesidium, quod caeteri dominantes jure suspiciunt quia in vobis singulare aliquid inesse cognoscunt.' 'Suspiciunt' seems to give a better sense than the other reading, 'suscipiunt.'] [Footnote 205: 'Quia in vobis singulare aliquid inesse cognoscunt.'] 'Often have you exhorted me to love the Senate, to accept cordially the laws of past Emperors, to join together in one all the members of Italy. How can you separate from your august alliance one whose character you thus try to make conformable to your own? There is moreover that noble sentiment, love for the City of Rome, from which two princes, both of whom govern in her name, should never be disjoined. 'We have thought fit therefore to send A and B[206] as ambassadors to your most serene Piety, that Peace, which has been broken, through a variety of causes, may, by the removal of all matters of dispute, be firmly restored between us. For we think you will not suffer that any discord should remain between two Republics, which are declared to have ever formed one body under their ancient princes[207], and which ought not to be joined by a mere sentiment of love, but actively to aid one another with all their powers. Let there be always one will, one purpose in the Roman Kingdom. Therefore, while greeting you with our respectful salutations, we humbly beg that you will not remove from us the high honour of your Mildness's affection[208], which we have a right to hope for if it were never granted to any others. [Footnote 206: 'Illum atque illum.' I shall always render this phrase (which shows that Cassiodorus had not preserved the names of the ambassadors) as above.] [Footnote 207: 'Quia pati vos non credimus, inter utrasque Respublicas, quarum semper unum corpus sub antiquis principibus fuisse declaratur, aliquid discordiae permanere.'] [Footnote 208: 'Poma meute deposcimus ne suspendatis a nobis mansuetudinis vestrae gloriosissimam caritatem.'] 'The rest of their commission will be verbally conveyed to your Piety by the bearers of these letters[209].' [Footnote 209: For some remarks on the date of this letter, see Introduction, p. 23. The mention of interrupted peace, which evidently requires not mere estrangement but an actual state of war, points to the year 505, when Sabinian, the general of Anastasius, was defeated by the Ostrogoths and their allies at Horrea Margi; or to 508, when the Imperial fleet made a raid on the coast of Apulia, as probable dates for the composition of the letter. Its place at the beginning of the Variae does not at all imply priority in date to the letters which follow it. It was evidently Cassiodorus' method to put in the forefront of every book in his collection a letter to an Emperor or King, or other great personage.