H ealth to my honoured and most dear son! just as I listen with willing and welcoming ears to those who are loudest in praise of your words and deeds in the administration of your province, so, if anyone grumbles at all or carps at it, I give him a much more critical hearing and require every detail of your acts and decisions, as one who would safeguard your reputation and good name equally with my own.
The two years then . . . . at last for Volumnius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . his children, grand children, son-in-law, and relations to be freed from infamy, for whom . . . . you will leave father and brothers at home. Relieve by your compassion an age which you know so well in your home and in your father . . . . and cancel . . . . that meanwhile. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . had paid all the money for his senatorship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
? 164 A.D.
Fronto to Arrius Antoninus, greeting.15
Volumnius Serenus of Concordia,1 if in what he tells me he has subtracted nothing from the truth, nor added anything to it, has every right and claim to my services as his advocate and intercessor before you. But if I seem to overstep the limits of a letter, the reason will be, that the facts of the case require some legal advocacy to be mixed up with the letter.
I will set forth the whole matter as Volumnius has stated it to me, and ask you at the same time as to each point, whether it is true.
Is it provided by the charter of the Colony of Concordia,2 that no one be made a notary except he be eligible also for the office of municipal senator? Have they all been and are they all senators, who up till now have ever been given the post of notary public at Concordia?
Was Volumnius elected notary and senator bv a resolution of the local senate? and has he made as many as four payments in respect of his senatorship?
Has he enjoyed for five and forty years all the rewards and privileges attaching to senators, at public banquets, in the senate-house, at shows? Has he dined, has he sat, has he voted as a senator?
In the case of public deputations has Volumnius been often chosen to be a deputy? Have his expenses as deputy always been voted to Volumnius from the public chest?
Again is there in the municipal registers record of a deputation on the corn supply undertaken by Volumnius at his own charges?
If all this that I have mentioned above has been so decreed, so paid, so done, how can you be in doubt after five and forty years whether he is a senator, who has been a notary, has paid in money in respect of his being senator, has enjoyed the privileges of being senator, has discharged its duties? And what is there, my son, what is there that you would wish more plainly proved? Since . . . . . . . .3 (has enjoyed) the privileges, paid-in moneys, discharged duties.
After these questions and answers of mine backwards and forwards, is it not also a begging of the question . . . .4 Volumnius has been accused of forcing his way into the senate illegally, since as a man temporarily banished he had no right to enter it; in that neither before his exile had he paid in all the money for his senatorship nor any since. When all this had been argued out in the lengthiest of proceedings, Lollius Urbicus,5 after examining the case, made no decree against Volumnius; but in place of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . reckoned in proportion to the honour, I do not see . . . . . . . . . . . .
What again of the similar decision of our Emperors6 in the case of Isidorus Lysias?7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . is branded with indelible infamy8 . . . .
The disgrace is not the same for a single man to receive the stigma of ignominy, as is the disgrace for a house full of children and grandchildren to be stained with infamy, for this bespattering with infamy defiles and disgraces many at once. Just as the loss is not the same in wars if a single horseman be cut down or a trireme be rammed9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Many laws10 have fixed a penalty for cutting down "happy" trees.11 What is this happiness of a tree? Is it not flourishing and fruit-bearing branches laden with berries and fruit? No one ever called a reed, however tall, no one ever called a bamboo happy. Is it more right that fruits and berries should count as an honour and safeguard for trees than children and grandchildren for men? . . . . . . . . a troop of Roman cavalry, a part of the senate is dishonoured in the person of one man . . . . scarcely ever have so many men lost their lives physically by lightning as will lose theirs civilly by your decision . . . .
He, who has preferred being to seeming good, has enjoyed far from prosperous fortune . . . . Certain it is that he who cares not to be thought virtuous does not care to be virtuous either . . . . Nor is there anyone who is greatly interested in acquiring the noble arts that is not interested to know whether he has acquired them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . but if he can grant a divorce and Gnaeus can be bereaved—that is what I doubt. For what is long can on occasion become longer, what is deep, deeper, what is numerous, more numerous. These and similar words I see admit of some latitude of increase, but nothing can become fuller than full. For surely if a cup be full, it would be useless to ask for it to be filled still more, unless you emptied some of it. For indeed, since in all business time is limited, and one time is closely associated with this business and another with that, consider in your own mind whether this case lacks the time for proving the point urged. Before that . . . . he ought to have been elected senator by the senate: he was elected; when elected he ought to have exercised his rights: he did exercise them in many ways; after exercising them he ought to have paid in money by fixed instalments: he did pay this in four times; he ought to have discharged the duties of senatorship: he did discharge them; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . whatever is added to this will be a superfluity. For when the judge is not satisfied with what ought to be sufficient to convince, there is no limit to uncertainty. As for one who starts on the right road a journey has a fixed destination and limit, so for those who get off the path it is easier to roam than to get home . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . to have shut out from the senate meanwhile, in a case I will not call a good one—let us call it doubtful—a man of such advanced age, most kindly, most gentle, most learned, most dutiful.
That age,12 which is entitled to exemption from all duties, no law, if they are bound by a military oath . . . . . . . . . . . .13 on an old man past his seventieth year you inflict a signal stain, and when, I ask, is it to be effaced? For how brief is the life left him for shaking off his dishonour and looking forward to regaining his former rank. This that you call the meanwhile, how long can he expect to hope for it? If as long as he breathes, it will be but a brief time for hope. Who delays to put the sickle to the sun-browned cornfield? and who defers the vintage when the grapes are ripe and dropping their juice? Who in fact loses time when fruits are mellowing, flowers fading, and torches burning down? Meanwhile is a word that fits the rising sun, for the setting sun the word is at once. Would that old age might put the old man off as you do . . . . Before youth, before manhood lies many a lengthy lap of life, just as days and nights may sometimes be long. Old age is a twilight that cannot last . . . . must be measured . . . .
Proculus14 . . . . that two years period . . . . . . . . . . . . for an old man whatever is meanwhile means but a mean while . . . . quashed the penalty and shortened the five years to three. For . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Proculus, a man of a disposition in all other respects easy-going and pleasure-loving, yet in passing sentence was, I think, a little too ready to punish, and too severe . . . . Many who have seemed in other matters far from taking things seriously, yet have been harsh on the bench, wishing no doubt to hide their real lack of severity under a cloak of ruthlessness put on for the purpose.