'We send you some presents by our ambassadors, and shall be glad to receive further visits from you by the road which you have thus opened up, and to show you future favours.'
[The collection of amber is also noticed by Pliny ('Nat. Hist.' 37. 2). It is interesting to observe that he there, on the authority of Pytheas, attributes to the Guttones dwelling on the Baltic shore the collection of amber, and its sale to the Teutones. These Guttones were, if we are right in accepting Jordanes' account of the Gothic migrations, themselves ancestors of the Ostrogoths.]
[3.] King Theodoric to Honoratus, Vir Illustris, Quaestor.
[4.] King Theodoric to the Senate of the City of Rome.
Honoratus, brother of Decoratus, is made Quaestor.
The usual pair of letters on the promotion of Honoratus to the Quaestorship. He succeeds his brother Decoratus, whose early death Theodoric regrets. The date of the letters is the Third Indiction, September 1, 509.
The writer remarks on the prophetic instinct[377] of the parents, who named these two sons, destined to future eminence, Decoratus and Honoratus. Decoratus was originally an advocate at Rome. His services were often sought by men of Consular rank, and before his admission to the Senate he had had a Patrician for his client in a very celebrated case[378].
When he became Quaestor he distinguished himself by his excellent qualities. 'He stood beside us, under the light of our Genius, bold but reverent; silent at the right time, fluent when there was need of fluency. He kept our secrets as if he had forgotten them; he remembered every detail of our orders as if he had written them down. Thus was he ever an eminent lightener of our labours[379].'