Taxes remitted for a year.
Confirms all privileges and immunities granted by previous Princes, and remits the taxes (censum) for one year, a boon which they had not dared to ask for. 'For that is perfect pietas, which before it is bent by prayer, knows how to consider the weary ones.'
[Here, as in many other passages of Cassiodorus, pietas shows signs of passing into the Italian pietà (= pity).]
[27.] King Theodoric to the Sajo Tezutzat,
and
[28.] King Theodoric to Duda, [Senator] and Comes.
Petrus assaulted by the Sajo who was assigned for his protection.
[Duda was also a Sajo, as we see from [Letter 32]. Dahn ('Könige der Germanen' iv. 142, n. 3) thinks he was Comes Gothorum.]
Both letters relate to the affair of Petrus (a Vir Spectabilis, and probably the same whose admission to the Senate is ordered by [iv. 25]).
This Roman nobleman, according to a usage common under Theodoric's government, has had the Gothic Sajo Amara assigned to him as his Defensor. Amara, by an inversion of his functions, which the letter bitterly laments and upbraids, has turned upon his protegé and even used personal violence towards him. He has drawn a sword and wounded him in the hand; and nothing but the fact that Petrus was sheltered by a door saved him from losing his hand altogether.