Do you wish for worse scandal than that he calls himself emperor, or that he usurps for himself the provinces of our empire? Both of these things are unbearable; and if both are insupportable, that especially is not to be borne, nay not to be heard of, that he calls himself emperor. But if you will confirm what they promised our majesty, will straightway dismiss you happy and rich.” This, moreover, he said not in order that I might expect you to observe the engagement , even if in my foolishness I had made it; but he wished to have in hand something that he might show in time to come to his praise and to our shame.
I answered him: “My most holy master, most wise as he s and full of the spirit of God, foreseeing this which you do desire, wrote me instructions which he also signed with his seal lest I should act counter to them: to the effect that I should not transcend the bounds he set for me.” -you know, my august master, what I relied upon when I said this – “Let these instructions be produced, and whatever he shall order, will be confirmed by an oath from me to you. But as to what the former envoys, without the order of in master, promised, swore or wrote,-in the words of Plato: ‘the guilt is with the wisher, the god is without fault”
Our imperial dignity refuses
After this we came to the matter of the most noble princes of Capua and Benevento, whom he call, his slaves, and on account of whom an inward grief is troubling him. “Your master,” he said, has taken my slaves under his protection; if he will not let them go restore them to their former servitude, he must do without our friendship They themselves demand to be taken back under our rule but our imperial dignity refuses them, that they may know and experience how dangerous it is for slaves to fall away from their masters and to flee slavery. And it is more becoming for your master to give them over to me as friend, than to renounce them to me against his will. Indeed they shall learn, if my life holds out, what it is deceive their lord; what it is to desert their servitude. And even now, as I think, they feel what I say,-our soldiers who are beyond the sea, having brought it to pass!”
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