Letter 7018: You ask me how the money which you have given to our fellow-townsmen for an annual feast may be secured after you...
Pliny the Younger→Caninius Rufus|c. 107 AD|Pliny the Younger
property economics
To Caninius.
You ask me how the money which you have given to our fellow-townsmen for an annual feast may be secured after you are dead and gone. It is quite right of you to consult me on such a subject, but it is not easy to give an answer. If you hand over the money in a lump sum to the community, the danger is that it may be squandered, and if you give it in the form of land it will be neglected as all public lands are. For my own part, I can find no more satisfactory plan than that which I followed myself. For instead of paying down the 500,000 sesterces which I had promised as an endowment for the education of free-born boys and girls, I transferred some land of mine, which was worth considerably more, to the State agent and received it back from him, after he had fixed a rent for it, the arrangement being that I should pay 30,000 sesterces a year. By this plan the principal is secured to the community and the interest is also safe, while the land in question will always find a tenant to keep it in good order, as it is worth much more than the rent put upon it. Of course I am aware that the transaction has cost me more than the sum which people think I have given, for the selling price of that fine bit of land has been diminished by the obligation to pay the reserved rent. However, we ought to prefer public interests to private ones, and interests which will go in perpetuity to those which perish with us, and we should give much more careful consideration to our benefactions than to merely growing rich. Farewell.
L To Caninius.
You ask me how the money which you have given to our fellow-townsmen for an annual feast may be secured after you are dead and gone. It is quite right of you to consult me on such a subject, but it is not easy to give an answer. If you hand over the money in a lump sum to the community, the danger is that it may be squandered, and if you give it in the form of land it will be neglected as all public lands are. For my own part, I can find no more satisfactory plan than that which I followed myself. For instead of paying down the 500,000 sesterces which I had promised as an endowment for the education of free-born boys and girls, I transferred some land of mine, which was worth considerably more, to the State agent and received it back from him, after he had fixed a rent for it, the arrangement being that I should pay 30,000 sesterces a year. By this plan the principal is secured to the community and the interest is also safe, while the land in question will always find a tenant to keep it in good order, as it is worth much more than the rent put upon it. Of course I am aware that the transaction has cost me more than the sum which people think I have given, for the selling price of that fine bit of land has been diminished by the obligation to pay the reserved rent. However, we ought to prefer public interests to private ones, and interests which will go in perpetuity to those which perish with us, and we should give much more careful consideration to our benefactions than to merely growing rich. Farewell.
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To Caninius.
You ask me how the money which you have given to our fellow-townsmen for an annual feast may be secured after you are dead and gone. It is quite right of you to consult me on such a subject, but it is not easy to give an answer. If you hand over the money in a lump sum to the community, the danger is that it may be squandered, and if you give it in the form of land it will be neglected as all public lands are. For my own part, I can find no more satisfactory plan than that which I followed myself. For instead of paying down the 500,000 sesterces which I had promised as an endowment for the education of free-born boys and girls, I transferred some land of mine, which was worth considerably more, to the State agent and received it back from him, after he had fixed a rent for it, the arrangement being that I should pay 30,000 sesterces a year. By this plan the principal is secured to the community and the interest is also safe, while the land in question will always find a tenant to keep it in good order, as it is worth much more than the rent put upon it. Of course I am aware that the transaction has cost me more than the sum which people think I have given, for the selling price of that fine bit of land has been diminished by the obligation to pay the reserved rent. However, we ought to prefer public interests to private ones, and interests which will go in perpetuity to those which perish with us, and we should give much more careful consideration to our benefactions than to merely growing rich. Farewell.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.