Letter 6025: VARIAE, BOOK 6, FORMULA 25

Formula of the Count of the Soldiers of the Principal Court (Comitiva Supra Scripta). All judges ought to have their own apparitors [support staff]; for a man from whom a chief official is removed is also denied military service. But we, for whom it is a matter of concern to keep all orders in their proper places, hereby inform him that we grant him the Neapolitan countship, God willing, so that — as judges are renewed in annual succession — the established ceremonial of their office may not perish. [This is a formulary letter establishing the office of Count of the Soldiers attached to the principal court — a mid-level military appointment in the Ostrogothic administrative hierarchy. Cassiodorus's Variae Book 6 consists entirely of such formulae for various offices and titles.]

XXV. FORMULA (DE COMITE) PRINCIPIS MILITUM DE COMITIVA SUPRA SCRIPTA. [1] Omnes apparitiones habere decet iudices suos: nam cui praesul adimitur, et militia denegatur. sed nos, quibus cordi est locis suis universos ordines continere, indicamus illi comitivam Neapolitanam domino iuvante largitos, ut iudicibus annua successione reparatis vobis sollemnitas non pereat actionis. quapropter designato viro praestate competenter obsequium, ut sicut vos non patimur emolumentorum commoda perdere, ita et vos parendi debeatis priscam regulam custodire. Cassiodorus