N ay, surely it is I who am shameless1 in ever submitting any of my writings to be read by genius so great, by judgment so great. The passage from your speech, which the Lord my father wished me to choose out, I even declaimed with appropriate action. Needless to say, the words cried aloud for their own author to deliver them: in fact, I was scarcely greeted with Worthy of the maker! But I will not delay telling you what you deservedly long for most. So struck was my Lord with what he heard that he was almost put out because business required his presence at the time elsewhere than in the court where you were to deliver your speech. He greatly admired the copiousness of the matter, the varied excellence of the diction, the witty originality of the thought, the skilful arrangement of the speech. And now you are asking, I imagine, what pleased me most. Listen: I begin with this passage.
"In those affairs2 and cases which are settled in private courts, no danger arises, since their decisions hold good only within the limits of the cases, but the precedents which you, Emperor, establish by your decrees will hold good publicly and for all time. So much greater is your power and authority than is assigned to the Fates. They determine what shall befall us as individuals: you by your decisions3 in individual cases make precedents binding upon all.
"Therefore, if this decision of the proconsul is approved by you, you will give all magistrates of all provinces a rule for deciding all cases of the same kind. What, then, will be the result? This evidently, that all wills from distant and oversea provinces will be brought over to Rome for cognizance in your court. A son will suspect that he has been disinherited: he will demand that his father's will be not opened. The same demand will be made by a daughter, a grandson, a great grand-child, a brother, a cousin, a paternal uncle, a maternal uncle, a paternal aunt, a maternal aunt; relations of all degrees will usurp this privilege of forbidding the will to be opened, that they may enjoy possession the while by right of consanguinity. When, finally, the case has been referred to Rome, what will result? The heirs designate will set sail, while the disinherited will remain in possession, procrastinate from day to day, look about for delays, and so put off the courts on various pretexts. It is winter time and the wintry sea is rough; he has been unable to appear. Winter over, it is the equinoctial gales, fitful and sudden, that have delayed him. The spring is past: the summer is hot and the sun scorches voyagers, and the man is seasick. The fall follows: the fruit will be in fault and debility the excuse.
"I am imagining and inventing this? What, has not this actually occurred in this case? Where is the defendant who ought to have been here this long while past to plead his cause? 'He is on his way.' On what way, prithee? 'He is coming from Asia.' And so he is still in Asia? 'It is a long way and he has made haste.'4 Is it on shipboard, or horseback, or by imperial post that he makes such headlong halts? Meanwhile, as soon as the trial is fixed, you are asked, Caesar, for a first adjournment, which is granted: the trial is fixed a second time,5 a second time an adjournment of two months is asked for. The two months expired on the last ides, and since then several days have gone by. Has he come at last? If not yet come, is he, at all events, near? If not yet near, has he at least set out from Asia? If he has not yet set out, does he at least think of setting out? What else does he think of but keeping in his hands6 the goods of others, plundering the proceeds, stripping the estate, wasting the whole property? He is not so foolish as to prefer coming to Caesar and losing his case to staying in Asia and keeping possession.7
"If this custom be brought in, that the wills of the deceased should be sent to Rome from the oversea provinces, the imperilling of wills would be more discreditable and distressing than if it were the custom for the bodies of the deceased, who make their wills oversea, to be sent to Rome. For no further peril can touch them. A corpse is assured of burial in its very mishaps. For whether it be swallowed by the sea in shipwreck, or swept away in a moment by a river, or the sands cover it, whether the beasts of the field devour it, or the birds of the air pick its bodies, the human body is practically buried wherever it is dissolved. But when by shipwreck a will is engulfed, the estate and home and family in question is then and there shipwrecked and lies unburied. Time was when wills used to be brought out from the securest temples of the Gods, from muniment rooms, or chests, or archives, or temple vestries: but now shall wills sail the stormy seas amid bales of merchandise and rowers' kit. The next thing will even be for them to be jettisoned8 with a cargo of pulse, should it become necessary to lighten the ship. Moreover, also, an import duty to be levied on wills must be fixed. In time past . . . .9
"But to say something as to the burial. The household would know how to mourn. The slave enfranchised under the will has one way of shewing sorrow, the client mentioned with praise another, another the friend honoured with a legacy. Why throw uncertainty and delay over the funeral rites? In the case of all animals the inheritance is realized at once after death: from sheep the wool is stripped at once, and from the elephant his ivory, their claws from lions, from birds their feathers and plumes; but a man dies and his inheritance lies derelict, is put aside,10 left as a prey to robbers, it is made away with."
I think I have copied out the whole. What indeed could I do, when I admired the whole man, loved the whole man—blessings on him—so much? Farewell, my master, most eloquent, most learned, most dear to me, most sweet, whom I most long for, miss the most.
The son of Herodes,11 born to-day, is dead. Herodes is overwhelmed with grief at his loss. I wish you would write him quite a short letter appropriate to the occasion. Fare ever well.
? 144–145 A.D.
To my Lord.