'It is important to preserve as well as to create. We are earnestly anxious to keep the walls of Rome in good repair, and have therefore ordered the Lucrine port[233] to furnish 25,000 tiles annually for this purpose. See that this is done, that the cavities which have been formed by the fall of stones may be roofed over with tiles, and so preserved, and that thus we may deserve the thanks of ancient kings, to whose works we have given immortal youth.' [Footnote 233: I presume that 'portum Lucini' is an error for the Lucrine harbour; but there is an allusion which I do not understand in the following passage: 'Simul etiam portubus junctis, qui ad illa loca antiquitus pertinebant, et nunc diversorum usurpatione suggeruntur invasi?'] 26. KING THEODORIC TO FAUSTUS, PRAEPOSITUS. [Sidenote: Immunity of Church property from taxation.] In the time of Cassiodorus the Patrician (a man of tried integrity and pure fidelity[234]), a grant of freedom from taxation[235] was made to the Church of Vercelli. Since that time other property has been conveyed to the same Church, apparently by a soldier. An attempt is made to represent this after-acquired property as also tax-free. 'No,' says the King. 'It would be very wrong in us to recall our gift; but it is equally wrong in you to try to stretch it to something which it never included. Private persons must not make grants to the injury of our treasury. Tribute belongs to the purple, not to the military cloak[236]. Your newly acquired possessions must pay taxes along with those of other owners.' [Footnote 234: This is evidently the writer's father.] [Footnote 235: 'Onera indictorum titulorum.'] [Footnote 236: 'Tributa sunt purpurae, non lacernae.'] 27. KING THEODORIC TO SPECIOSUS. [Sidenote: Circus quarrels.] 'If we are moderating under our laws the character of foreign nations, if the Roman law is supreme over all that is in alliance with Italy, how much more doth it become the Senate of the seat of civilisation itself to have a surpassing reverence for law, that by the example of their moderation the beauty of their dignities may shine forth more eminently. For where shall we look for moderation, if violence stains Patricians? The Green party complain that they have been truculently assaulted by the Patrician Theodoric and the "Illustris and Consul Importunus," and that one life has been lost in the fray. We wish the matter to be at once brought before the Illustres Coelianus and Agapitus and examined into by them[237]. [Footnote 237: See i. 23, from which it appears that these two men had special jurisdiction in cases affecting Patricians.]