Letter 10039: The grain supply from Africa has been interrupted; I write to report the situation and to request the imperial...

Generally the rationale or the fortune of cases brings it about that in disputes one party relies upon equity, the other upon strict law; and then, when human counsel wavers, the deliberation of the examining judge has recourse to the oracle of your Clemency, Our Three Lords the Emperors [the relatio is addressed to the joint emperors Valentinian II, Theodosius I, and Arcadius], a thing which the very character of the present business has also demanded. For Musa, having passed beyond the lawful years [of age], when she complained that Syntrophius had been admitted to a share of her paternal property, a man whom the fraud of her guardian Acholius had taken in as though he were the brother of her, then a grown woman, obtained by the favor of the law a restoration to her entire right [restitutio in integrum]; but, drawn out through many appeals and various trials, she was unable within the bounds of the lawful time to carry through the actions she had proposed. As the matter advised, she made good the lost benefit by the remedy of a petition; but the same misfortune defrauded the woman even of the kindness of the sacred rescript. For, having been deferred through the courses of four months, she fell short on the very last day of the time she had been granted; for the successor coming in had, by an interdict sent ahead, deprived the examining judge of his authority. After this, when she wished to repair by reinstatement the unhappy lapse of her case, she was thrown out by the objection of the Constantinian law [legislation of the emperor Constantine], which denied any longer extension when terms had been granted outside the ordinary course. An appeal against the judgment followed. When the matter had come to the examination of the sacred tribunal, and the same enactment was again brought forward by Faustinus, the heir of the guardian Acholius, the side of the procurator, to whom Musa had entrusted her actions, proved that the case had not lapsed in point of time through any fault of her own. To this effect the procurator produced the sanction of the deified princes, the parents of your Divinity [the emperors' deified predecessors], which among its other exceptions grants reinstatement to litigants if a case lapses through the fault of the examining judge. Since, therefore, both in the Constantinian law, by which reinstatement is taken away when terms have been granted outside the ordinary course, this case of a judge ceasing [to act] is not excepted, and the more recent decrees of the deified [emperors] have come to the aid of all matters with reinstatement, if perchance they are abandoned by the judge, I could not readily incline to either side, but, as the one remedy that suits doubtful matters, I have reserved the fortune of this troublesome struggle for the most august arbiters of the laws, with all the proceedings duly appended according to custom, so that the reading of them may confirm the truth of my report.