Letter 10044: The season at the villa has given me the leisure to reflect on what the office demands and what it gives in return;...

Since the salt-contractors [the mancipes salinarum, the guild responsible for the public salt supply], reduced from a great number to a few, were no longer able to bear the burden of their public obligation, they obtained their petition by lodging a supplication: that those who had previously been exempted and excused be restored to them, and that they receive supplements without delay from other corporate bodies or from persons not otherwise engaged, our Lords the Emperors [ddd. imppp.: domini nostri imperatores, the formula of the joint Augusti]. When, therefore, this divine instruction had been cited, since they found that very many men who had earlier been set apart from their association had been protected by the patronage of Macedonius [Flavius Macedonius, magister officiorum], they secured a formal report concerning the protections granted to those men. It rests with your clemency alone to rescind freely the rescripts that were unfairly extracted. Then, as the shortfall pressed upon them, they began to summon the shippers [navicularii], who are likewise liable to the duty of supplying timber, to share an equal responsibility, so that the joined care of both corporations might acknowledge an undivided service. But those men preferred to hand over some of their own squadron-members rather than to enter into partnership in so great a burden. And so it came about that, with those same men consenting, certain individuals were joined to the salt-contractors. Now the public cause demands a fixed assessment from your perpetuity, lest the resources of the reconstituted corporation be undermined by supplications obtained through misrepresentation. To my report I have attached the records, both those drawn up concerning the men whom the intervention of Macedonius had absolved, and those completed while I was adjudicating the matter, by which the will of the shippers assigned certain individuals to the salt-contractors without harassment of anyone. It will now be for your sacrosanct majesty both to annul the patronage of those who are shown to have been freed by intrigue, and to block their access to making supplication; while those whom the assent of their own corporation has adjudged to it [shall remain bound to it].