Letter 10031: On the question you raised in your last letter about the proper interpretation of the relevant precedent: I think...

It is the way of savage characters, and bred in the bone, to arm their spirits with the example of impunity, our lords and emperors; for why should a man despair of a second escape when he has already slipped the snares of an earlier crime? The opinion set down beforehand fits the present case. For Valerianus, a most distinguished man, who is reported to have his household seat in Epirus, is moved neither by reverence for imperial rescripts, nor by the severity of the laws, nor by good faith toward agreements, nor by respect for the courts. He was first ordered to be summoned to the examination of the praetorian bench; but at the petition of the most distinguished man Iunior he eluded the force of the rescript and the very command of that lofty authority. Next, when called out by proconsular edicts, he frustrated the laws with equal cunning. Now, when he was being pressed both by a civil action and by a criminal accusation, he resisted the decrees in an unlawful manner, as the officers of the urban prefecture have certified, partly by formal records and partly by their report. One of these officers, after the death of the imperial courier-agent to whom the execution of the sacred command belonged, declared that he had been afflicted by Valerianus with grievous injuries. Moved therefore by the outrageousness of such complaints, since I saw that the courts could once again be mocked if I had decreed anything too severe, I judged it best to reserve the right of decision in this case for your eternity; for you alone correct by law the offenses of the highest rank. The credibility of the matter is laid out by the connected facts; nonetheless the returning officer is being held in readiness, the one who reported the senator's defiance and his servile assaults, so that he may be at hand with his reports should occasion happen to require it. I beg your eternal clemency that, all things being weighed with your accustomed fairness, you not allow this man, who has cheated so many judges, to range free any longer.