'Overcome, you say, by the severity of your imprisonment and the tortures inflicted upon you, and longing for death as a release from agony; being moreover refused the assistance of Advocates, while the utmost resources of rhetoric were at the disposal of your opponents, you confessed a crime which you had never committed. 'Such is your statement. The Governor of Bruttii sends his _relatio_ in opposition, saying that we must not give credence to a petitioner who is deceitfully seeking to upset a sentence which was given in the interests of public morality. 'Our decision is that we will by our clemency mitigate the severity of your punishment. From the date of this decree you shall be banished for six months; and on your return no note of infamy of any kind shall be attached to you; since it is competent for the Prince to wipe off all the blots on a damaged reputation. Anyone who offends against this decree [by casting your old offence in your teeth] shall be fined L120 (3 lbs. of gold). And all who are accused of the same offence in any place or time, but who offended through ignorance, are to be freed from all fear of punishment.' [A most illogical and unjust conclusion, by which the judgment of Venantius is in fact neither upheld nor reversed. And what the meaning of the concluding sentence may be it is impossible to conjecture. See Dahn, 'Koenige der Germanen' iii. 107, on this absurd decision. On the subject of the misgovernment and disgrace of Venantius, cf. Letters ii. 15, 16; iii. 8, 36. Cf. also Procopius, 'De Bello Gotthico' iii. 18 and 22, as to his son Tullianus. In connection with the alleged misgovernment of Bruttii and Lucania by Venantius, remember the close connection of Cassiodorus himself with those Provinces.] 47. KING THEODORIC TO FAUSTUS, PRAETORIAN PRAEFECT. [Sidenote: Jovinus, for killing a fellow Curial, is banished to the islands of Lipari, the volcanoes of which are described.] 'Jovinus the Curialis, according to the report of the Corrector of Lucania and Bruttii, had an angry altercation with a fellow Curial (collega), and in his rage slew him. 'He then took refuge within the precincts of a church, and refused to surrender himself to justice. We decide that the capital punishment shall be remitted out of reverence for his place of refuge, but he shall be banished to the Vulcanian [Lipari] Islands, there to live away from the paternal hearth, but ever in the midst of burning, like a salamander, which is a small and subtile beast, of kin to the slippery worm, clothed with a yellow colour. 'The substance of volcanoes, which is perpetually destroyed, is by the inextricable power of Nature perpetually renewed. 'The Vulcanian Islands are named from Vulcan, the god of fire, and burst into eruption on the day when Hannibal took poison at the Court of Prusias. It is especially wonderful that a mountain kindling into such a multitude of flames, should yet be half hidden by the waves of the sea.'