Letter 10034: The book you requested has been copied and will arrive with this letter; I add to it another that I think will...

All of us who are advanced to the most exalted ranks of office by the judgment of Your Clemency or by your favor ought to strive with the utmost zeal to safeguard the good name of the age by the truthfulness of our reports, O our three Lords and three Emperors [the Augusti Gratian, Valentinian II, and Theodosius]. For what kind of return, in repayment for the benefactions of princes, will fortune, unequal to the task, find, if it should abandon good faith, which alone fortifies an empire? When, therefore, I considered the rescript of Your Divine Majesty, in which you decreed that the debts owed to the wine-treasury [the arca vinaria, the fund supplying Rome with subsidized wine] should be exacted from the prefect of that period in which they are said to have been contracted, it was not lawful for me to keep silent as to what accords with the equity of your times. Now first I confess that I am astonished that to the heavenly mildness of Your Majesty, occupied as it is with the affairs of the whole world, and to whom therefore among its many cares only a few matters can be dealt with in summary fashion, the letters of the deified Constantius were so represented that a threat uttered under a condition was treated as if it were a kind of debt; and next, that by some chance there was passed over in silence that part of the rescript which provided that the person of a judge should not be oppressed with impunity as though he were baser than his own subordinate officials; and thirdly, that that sum of solidi which the inquiry and report of my predecessor, a man of illustrious rank, proved to have been for the greater part paid into the treasury, is being demanded as though it were owed and untouched. For the prefecture's inquiry, and the letters of the auditors, and the writings of my predecessor, a man of clarissimus rank, have shown that eleven thousand four hundred and forty-six solidi accrued to the sacred treasury from that year which follows the consulship of Sergius and Nigrinianus. Among these so many weighty matters, then, I could not violate by silence the good faith owed to Your Clemency, since I observed that Your Majesty too, with its accustomed caution, had neither set the name of any judge in the rescript nor reckoned that the man to be proceeded against was enjoying the light of life. For when would Your Clemency have directed the force of an old threat against a dead man, since even the punishment of grave offenses is dissolved by the end of life? But indeed that menace contained in the letters of the deified prince could not press even a living man; for you often threaten grave penalties against your subjects rather with the aim of sharpening their diligence than of doing harm. This too your deified father [Constantius II, here addressed as forebear], who will live forever in the hearts and on the lips of all men, established by a pious law: he emptied of effect and execution even sentences pronounced under a threat. But this condition, which the deified Constantius added to his letters, many things that were seen afterward have undermined. For while that same prince still ruled the world, the exaction passed to Tertullus, prefect of the City, a memorable man; and if it had been a matter of the man and not of the office, it could have clung to the person of the earlier judge. And not long afterward, in the time of the renowned Julian, the charge of this account fell to Maximus, then endowed with equal honor; while the deified father [Valentinian I, kinsman of Theodosius] of Your Majesty also governed the laws and the destinies of Rome, this business was entrusted to prefects and auditors, and the exaction of the public debt ran on through the successive terms of those administering it. Most recently, the brother of Your Clemency, now received into heaven [Valens, or Gratian — the brother lately deified], when he had Basilius, a man of clarissimus rank, appointed for the task, who did not spare the persons of the judges, made the chief secretaries of the urban office, whose responsibility it had been to see to the exaction through their successions, liable either for payment of the sum or for producing the account. And so the inquiry, often pursued by Anicius Bassus, a man of clarissimus rank and most approved, and by Aventius, a man of spectabilis rank, both ascertained that the greater part of the debt had been paid and found the pledge of the provincial judges, by which they undertook that, if the urban office should fail, the full integrity of this account could be made good by themselves. If, therefore, these things be weighed against the laws, Your Eternity will pronounce that in the pledge there is a true obligation, but in the threat only a terror. What of the fact that it is reported that recently the apparitor staff, brought in to compel the provincial judges, has raised hope of the debt's being exacted? It is not for me to pursue uncertain rumors; Your Divine Majesty will discover why constant attention has been lacking to this exaction. For this contrivance attacks my father-in-law Orfitus, a man of most illustrious memory, whose heirs the master of the offices, a man of clarissimus and illustrious rank, set down in his letters, although the scrupulousness of Your Mildness had expressed no name in the sacred oracle [the imperial rescript]. What then? Am I to suppose that it was deservedly done in the case of that man who, richer in honors than in resources, departed this life almost fifteen years ago, so that a threat often read, always set aside, and buried afterward beneath new decrees — a threat which neither the imperial law admits nor the payment of a great part allows — should rise up again against a dead man, when it did no harm before to the living man? Or should I rather judge that, to do me insult, the sequence of so many and such great enactments, and the recent injunction of the deified Gratian, and the diligence of the auditors, and the inquiries of the prefects, and the trustworthiness of the report, are being wounded by new representations? I call to witness the God who guards Your Majesty that there is nothing for which I should be thought to deserve injury. You bestowed this prefecture on me when I was at peace and without any solicitation: if perchance envy gnaws at someone, if I have not yielded to anyone's desires out of love for the commonwealth, let him reflect that private hatreds are not to be exercised against the laws; and finally let him learn, whoever he is, that I and mine have taken up the succession of Orfitus, a man of most clarissimus and most illustrious memory, neither by right of law nor by entry upon his estate. I ask, therefore, that no fraud against right and against innocence be devised to the insult of your judgment. For when have things transacted among others harmed those who were absent and unaware? Who ever, unheard, has received a sentence of Your Majesty? When has a threat been extended all the way to heirs? Certainly, to speak of the very case itself, which touches me and my kin — under your favor — by no legal right at all, the greater part of the debt is shown to have been paid, and the remaining part has settled upon evident names: in eagerness to absolve whom are the debtors to be cleared, so that the innocent may be entangled? Wherefore I beseech the justice innate in your divine minds, that you not suffer men ignorant of the business and strangers to the paternal inheritance to be assailed by an unfitting demand — contrary to the determination of the deified Gratian, contrary to the rescripts of so many princes which charged the prefects with exacting the debts, contrary to the report which proved that the fuller sum had been paid out, and signified that the remainder, according to the letters of the governors, was to be extracted from those liable. Nor should you, a dutiful emperor, introduce a new precedent, whereby the succession of men who had served the commonwealth should not pass in security to their children. This rule has restrained many — and most of them, I think, more justly, if perchance any have abused your provinces wickedly; but the posterity of Orfitus, a man of illustrious memory, sought from him nothing other than the distinction of his lineage. This representation aims only at my injury, for to his estate, often exhausted in its slenderness, no one succeeded by testament, none of us by entry upon his goods. From this Your Clemency understands that it is not from fear of a private case, which is protected by the laws, but from love of the times that I am anxious, lest only fruitless ill-will recoil upon the innocence of your treasury. And these things indeed I have set down in haste, that a postponement might not delay the business entrusted to me, sought only on behalf of the share of my wife Rusticiana, a woman of clarissima rank; her sister, much more straitened in resources, has been ordered to be present from the distant parts of Etruria. But we all pray to Your saving Majesty that the sudden ruin of a senatorial house not be hoped to be able to pay off what, already for the greater part returned from so many provinces, a still difficult exaction is extracting. This condition has harmed many who governed the commonwealth; for it would not be right that one family should be crushed by a new precedent. I ask, therefore, that you deign to hear the acts which establish the trustworthiness of the report, and that you review the laws, the harshness of which you have for the most part, in keeping with Your Clemency, tempered by more moderate decrees.

Omnes, qui ad amplissimos honorum gradus iudicio clementiae vestrae vel favore provehimur, summo studio debemus eniti, ut famam saeculi suggestionum veritate tueamur, ddd. imppp. quod enim genus gratiae beneficiis principum rependendae fortuna inpar inveniet, si fidem deserat, quae sola munit imperium? contemplanti mihi igitur rescriptum numinis vestri, quo arcae vinariae debita a praefecto eius temporis, quo contracta dicuntur, erui censuistis, silere fas non fuit, quid temporum vestrorum congruat aequitati. iam primum stupere me fateor caelesti mansuetudini veDig. XXXXVIIII 1, 21 § 3. D. Theodosio semper Aug. Symmachos praef. nrb. F 2 poit appellationem $paUwn vncuwn Utstrae totius orbis negotiis oecupatae et cui ideo inter multa curarum summatim nonnulla tractanda sunt, litteras divi Constantii ita esse suggestas, ut eomminatio sub condicione deprompta instar cuiusdam debiti duceretur; dehinc tacitum quodam casu de ea parte rescripti, quae tenebat officium, ut persona iudicis tamquam yilior apparitorum suorum inpunitate premeretur ; tertio quod ea summa solidorum , quam cognitio et relatio viri inlustris decessoris mei ex maiore parte solutam probavit aerario, tamquam debita et intacta deposcitur. namque xi milia ccccxlvi solidos ex eo anno, qui Sergii et Nigriniani sequitur consulatum, sacris accessisse tbesauris et praefecturae inquisitio et discussorum litterae et y. c. decessoris mei scripta docuerunt. inter haec igitur tam multa valida fidem clementiae vestrae debitam silentio violare non potui, cum vestrum quoque numen adverterem solita cautione neque iudicis nomen signasse rescripto et aestimasse, quod conveniendus luce frueretur. nam quando clementia vestra vim veteris comminationis in mortuum tetendisset, cum etiam gravium noxarum poena fine vitae solvatur? at vero iste terror divi principis litteris couprehensus ne viventem quidem posset urgere; gravia enim subiectis saepe minitamini acuendi potius studio quam nocendi. hoc etiam divus genitor tuus in omnium semper animis et ore victurus pia lege constituit, qui sententias quoque sub comminatione depromptas effectu atque exsecutione vacuavit. hanc vero condicionem, quam divus Constantius adiecit litteris suis, multa quae post visa sunt, subruerunt. nam eodem principe adhuc orbem regente ad TertuIIum praefectum urbi memorabilem virum migravit exactio, quae si hominis, non potestatis fuisset, circa personam prioris iudicis potuisset haerere; nec multo post tempore inclyti luliani Maximum pari honore tunc praeditum tituli istius cura convenit; divo etiam parente numinis tui Romana iura et fata moderante praefectis ac discussoribus haec mandata provincia est et per vices administrantium publici debiti cucurrit exactio. novissime relatus in caelum germanus clementiae tuae, cum ipsum Basilium c. v. haberet adpositum, qui personis iudicum non pepercit, primiscrinios urbani officii, quorum sollicitudo per successiones exigenda curaverat, vel solvendo nomini vel edendae rationi fecit obnoxios. itaque a v. c. ac probatissimo Anicio Basso et Aventio viro spectabili frequentata cognitio et solutam maiorem partem debiti deprehendit et provincialium iudicum repperit sponsionem , qua professi sunt, si urbanum cessaret officium , per se huius tituli integritatem posse sarciri. si igitur haec legibus conferantur, pronuntiabit aetemitas vestra, in professione verum esse nexum, in comminatione terrorem. quid, quod proxime apparitio cogendis provinciarum iudicibus admota spem debiti eruendi fecisse suggeritur? non est meum famae incerta sectari; inveniet divina maiestas tua, cur huic exactioni perpes cura defuerit. nam socerum meum clarissimae memoriae virum Orfitum petit ista molitio, cuius heredes v. c. et inlustris officiorum magister adscripsit litteris suis, cum tuae mansuetudinis verecundia nullum sacro oraculo noCod. Theod. VIIII 38, 3. 4. «tque [sie) ideo inter — 2 tractanda sunt po$i 7 intacta deposcitur coUoe, THF; atque in et cui mU'TMF men expresserit. quid ergo? existimem merito illius factum, qui maior honoribus quam facultatibus ante annos fere quindecim vitam peregit, ut comminatio saepe lecta semper omissa et novis post sepulta decretis, quam neque lex divalis admittit et solutio magnae partis exclusit, resurgat in mortuum, quae non obfuit ante viventi? an meae potius contumeliae causa et ordinem tot ac talinm statutorum et divi Gratiani & recentem praeceptionem et discussorum diligentiam et praefectorum cognitiones et relationis fidem novis suggestionibus arbitrer sauciari? testor custodem liuminis vestri deum nihil esse, quod iniuria dignus existimer. quieto mihi hanc praefecturam sine ulla adfec/atione tribuistis: si quem forte mordet invidia, si alicuius desideriis rei publicae amore non cessimus, cogitet privata odia adversum leges exercenda non lo esse; postremo cognoscat, si quis ille est, me meosque successionem clarissimae atque inlustrissimae memoriae viri Orfiti neque ratione iuris neque bonorum aditione cepisse. quaeso igitur, ne in contumeliam iudicii vestri et iuri et innocentiae fraus paretur. quando enim absentibus atque ignorantibus inter alios gesta nocuerunt ? quis umquam sententiam numinis vestri inauditus excepit? quando comminatio ad heredes usque is porrecta est? certe, ut ipsam causam loquar, quae me ac necessitudines meas vobis propitiis nuUo iure contingit, pars maior debiti soluta monstratur, in evidentibus nominibus pars resedit: cuius studio absolvendi sunt debitores, ut inplicentur innoxii? quare insitam divinis sensibus vestris oro iustitiam, ne adversum divi Gratiani definitionem , adversum rescripta tot principum , quae praefectis debita eruenda mandarunt, adversum relationem, quae uberiorem summam docuit exsolutam, reliquum vero secundum rectorum litteras exculpendum ab obnoxiis intimavit, ignaros negotii et patemae hereditatis alienos pulsari incongrua conventione patiaris, neve exemplum novum pius imperator inducas, ut successio Aomtnum, qui rei publicae profuerant, ad liberos secura non transeat. multos haec forma retinuit et plerosque, ut arbitror, 2& iustius, si qui forte provinciis vestris male abusi sunt; at vero posteritas inlustris memoriae viri Orfiti nihil ex illo aliud quam generis insigne quaesivit. meae tantum iniuriae studet ista suggestio, nam tenuitati illius frequenter exhaustae nemo testamento, nemo nostrum bonorum aditione successit. unde intellegit clementia vestra, quod non metu familiaris causae , quae legibus tuta est , sed temporum amore solliciter, ne ad innocentiam fisci vestri infructnosa tantum recurrat invidia. et haec quidem cursim, ne mandatum negotium conperendinatio differret, tantum pro coniugis meae Rusticianae c. f. parte quaesita snnt, cuius germana multo angustior facultatibus ex Etruriae longinquis adesse praecepta est. vestrum vero salutare numen omnes precamur, ne quod de tot provinciis pro maiore parte iam redditum adhuc difficilis 3s exculpat exactio, senatoriae domus inopinata labes speretur posse persolvere. multis nocuit ista condicio, qui rei publicae praefuenmt: neque enim ius si/, ut una familia novo opprimatur exemplo. quaeso igitur, ut gesta, quae fidem relationis adserunt, audire dignemini legesque percenseatis , quarum plerumque duritiam pro clementia vestra decretis moderatioribus temperastis.