Letter 5046: I would say more, if justice needed many prayers to assist it.

A friend's case has prompted me to write; but I must confess that I have had greater concern for your reputation. For Minucianus, a man of senatorial rank, is imperiled over a trifling sum of silver. Yet no slight path to your praise will be opened up, if the slander stirred up by forged bonds of debt, as I hear, should settle into place. It grieves me to tell by what tricks the apportionment of the Italian treasury runs rampant. They say that, under the appearance of a public debt, false records of private accounts are read out. The weak it crushes at once by its onslaught, but the stronger, even when they have brought forward the safeguards of the law on their own behalf, are entangled in incriminating interpretations of words, so that out of fear of ill will they submit themselves to the endurance of loss. But Minucianus, a man of senatorial rank, feeling secure in you, wishes to remove the threats of a referral to the laws by an examination of the matter. Grant him, therefore, I beg you, judges such as the imperial choice has set over the city magistracies; for it is not fitting that a slender debt should be summoned to a remote inquiry, along with a person of high distinction. I would go on further, were it right that equity be assisted by many entreaties. The referral will make public the nature of the case; and although it will protect the error of the examining magistrate, yet it will never be able to earn this, that without another arbiter he should be believed by you.

Causa amici suasit, ut scriberem; sed fatendum est, maiorem me curam tnae existimationis habuisse. nam Minucianus v. c. exiguo periclitatur argento, Ubi autem non tenuis ad laudem reserabitur via, si falsis, ut audio, syngraphis calumnia excitata 5 2 consederit. piget dicere, quibus strophis adpar/tio Itali grassetur aerarii. ferunt sub publici debiti specie privatorum nominum falsa recitari. invalidos quidem statim vin- cit inpressio, validiores autem, cum munimenta pro se iuris adsciverint, criminosis verborum interpretationibus inplicantur, ut ad damni patientiam sese invidiae timore summittant. sed v. c. Minucianus tui securus et legum relationis minas amoliri optat 10 3 examine. da igitur, oro te, iudices, quos urbanis potestatibus imperialis praefecit electio; neque enim dignum est ad longinquam cogn/tionem vocari debitum tenue et praecipuam dignitatem. longius pergerein, si aequitas vellet multis precibus adiuvari. causae genus relatio publicabit ; quae etsi errorem tuebitur cognitoris, numquam tamen poterit emereri, ut illi a te sine alio disceptatore credatur. 15 Lxnn (Lxn).