Letter 7014: It is really most handsome on your part to not only request but also to insist so strongly that I should authorise...
Pliny the Younger→Corellia Hispulla|c. 107 AD|Pliny the Younger
property economics
To Corellia.
It is really most handsome on your part to not only request but also to insist so strongly that I should authorise my people to receive from you, as the price of that estate, not the 700,000 sesterces which you arranged to pay my freedman for it, but 900,000, * according to the rate which you paid the revenue officers for the twentieth part. ** But in my turn I also request and insist that you should consider not only what is becoming for you, but also what is becoming for me, and that in this one particular you should allow me to decline to accede to your wishes with the same spirit that I usually display to obey them. Farewell,
[Note: See letter 11 of this book.
]
[Note: The collectors claimed a twentieth part of the inherited lands, estimating them, of course, at their full value. This Corellia would "buy back", by a sum of money, the transaction amounting to what we should call a five per cent inheritance tax, with which the lands were charged.]
L To Corellia.
It is really most handsome on your part to not only request but also to insist so strongly that I should authorise my people to receive from you, as the price of that estate, not the 700,000 sesterces which you arranged to pay my freedman for it, but 900,000, * according to the rate which you paid the revenue officers for the twentieth part. ** But in my turn I also request and insist that you should consider not only what is becoming for you, but also what is becoming for me, and that in this one particular you should allow me to decline to accede to your wishes with the same spirit that I usually display to obey them. Farewell,
(*) See letter 11 of this book.
(**) The collectors claimed a twentieth part of the inherited lands, estimating them, of course, at their full value. This Corellia would "buy back", by a sum of money, the transaction amounting to what we should call a five per cent inheritance tax, with which the lands were charged.
◆
To Corellia.
It is really most handsome on your part to not only request but also to insist so strongly that I should authorise my people to receive from you, as the price of that estate, not the 700,000 sesterces which you arranged to pay my freedman for it, but 900,000, * according to the rate which you paid the revenue officers for the twentieth part. ** But in my turn I also request and insist that you should consider not only what is becoming for you, but also what is becoming for me, and that in this one particular you should allow me to decline to accede to your wishes with the same spirit that I usually display to obey them. Farewell,
[Note: See letter 11 of this book.
]
[Note: The collectors claimed a twentieth part of the inherited lands, estimating them, of course, at their full value. This Corellia would "buy back", by a sum of money, the transaction amounting to what we should call a five per cent inheritance tax, with which the lands were charged.]
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.