Letter 7014: It is really most handsome on your part to not only request but also to insist so strongly that I should authorise...
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.]
Human translation — Attalus.org
Latin / Greek Original
C. PLINIUS CORELLIAE SUAE S.
Tu quidem honestissime, quod tam impense et rogas et exigis, ut accipi iubeam a te pretium agrorum non e septingentis milibus, quanti illos a liberto meo, sed ex nongentis, quanti a publicanis partem vicensimam emisti. Invicem ego et rogo et exigo, ut non solum quid te verum etiam quid me deceat aspicias, patiarisque me in hoc uno tibi eodem animo repugnare, quo in omnibus obsequi soleo. Vale.
Related Letters
I know not whether I regarded your father, who was a man of consummate judgment and rectitude of life, with greater...
I make a practice of following the rules of my predecessors in not making promiscuous grants of the Alexandrine...
I have suffered a most grievous loss, if loss is a word that can be applied to my being bereft of so distinguished a...
You urge me to recite my speech before a company of my friends.
We have taken the usual vows, * Sir, for your safety, with which the public well-being is bound up, and at the same...