The same Augusti to Hilarius, Prefect of the City.

If any member of the guild of swine collectors by a petition for assistance of any kind or by the attainment of high rank should be known to have evaded the compulsory public service to which he was born or to have betaken himself to service on various office staffs by means of annotations or rescripts elicited from Our Serenity, he shall be recalled to his original public service, whether he is found obligated through his paternal or his maternal ancestry. For if by pretense any privileges have arisen to the detriment of the people, such privileges must be deprived of their force. No admission at all to any high office whatsoever or to any imperial service shall be granted to any such person, but if any sych privileges henceforth should be elicited or impetrated from Our imperial altars through annotations or rescripts or in any manner whatsoever, they shall be annulled. 1. Also if any person has betaken himself to the privileges of the clergy, he must either assume his own compulsory obligation to the State, or he must cede his own patrimony to that guild which he deserts. 2. But if any person either by purchase or gift or by any other title whatever holds landed estates obligated to a guild, he must either assume his proportional part of the compulsory public service or cede such possessions. 3. The same general rule of Our regulation shall be observed with reference to all the other guilds which are recognized as sharing in the privileges of the City of Rome.

Given on the eighteenth day before the kalends of February at Rome in the year of the consulship of Bassus and Philippus. January 15, 408.

 

(trans. Pharr 1952: 411)