[869] Compare Cassiodorus' treatise De Animâ, chapters x. and xi., in which he enumerates the various points in which the faces of good men and bad men differ from one another.
[870] The first Indiction was from September 1, 537, to September 1, 538.
[871] Here follows this sentence: 'Haec loca garismatia plura nutriunt.' Garum seems to have been a sauce something like our anchovy-sauce. Garismatium is evidently a garum-supplying place.
[872] We have a special allusion in Martial (iv. 25) to the villas of Altinum, and he too compares them to those of Baiae.
[873] Evidently 'the annexed letter' referred to in [No. 22].
[874] 'Ut in tot solidos vini, olei, vel tritici species de tributario solido debeas procurare.'
[875] 'Sicut te a Numerariis instruxit porrecta Notitia.' Note this use of the word 'Notitia,' as illustrating the title of the celebrated document bearing that name.
[876] Corn, wine, and oil.
[877] Written shortly after Sept. 1, 537. This is the celebrated letter to which Venetian historians point as evidence of the existence of their city (or at least of the group of settlements out of which their city sprang) in the Sixth Century. We may set side by side with it the words of the Anonymous Geographer of Ravenna (in the Seventh Century), 'In patria vero Venetiae sunt aliquantae insulae, quae hominibus habitantur.'
The address, Tribunis Maritimorum, looks as if there were something like a municipal government established in these islands. Tribunus was at this time generally, but not exclusively, a military title. Compare the Tribunus Fori Suarii and Tribunus Rerum Nitentium of the Notitia (Occidens iv. 10 and iv. 17). But there can be no doubt, from the tone of this letter, that the islanders were subjects of the Ostrogothic King.