Page:Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto volume 2 Haines 1920.djvu/111

M. CORNELIUS FRONTO

you will find me too a little stronger. Our friend Valerianus has told you the great blows, which from all (quarters) . . . .^{[† 1]} I have treated him more firmly than Stratonabia or Pyrallus.^{[† 2]} A linen covering . . . . . . . .^{[† 3]}

Fronto to Marcus Antoninus as Emperor

162 A.D.

To my Lord.^[1]

. . . . that children of the earth, as the saying goes, or rather of the gutter, should snatch the booty: that so much wealth from the treasuries of Antoninus should be thrown away for that pampered protegee, whoever she is, to get, so that Egatheus^[2] will get nothing. What unfriendly comments however, what grumblings will arise, when the goods have been dispersed under the Falcidian Law? That celebrated string of pearls,^[3] which everyone talks of, and all the other ornaments of such value, who will buy them? If your wife buys them, she. will be said to have pounced upon the spoil and snatched them away at a very small price, and that so much the less had come to the legatees under the

1. From the fragmentary nature of the evidence, it is not easy to understand the legal points in the case alluded to in these three letters. Matidia, the great-aunt of Marcus and Faustina, had made them her heirs, but whether they were her natural heirs is not known. The codicilli were informal documents added to the will, in which directions were given to the heir as to certain gifts to be distributed by him. These were cancelled by Matidia, but certain interested parties tried to pass them off as valid. Fronto is afraid that Marcus will, for fear of benefiting himself, let them stand, in which case they might absorb more than the three-fourths of the whole property contrary to the Falcidian law, which stipulated that the heir must receive at least one-fourth of the whole inheritance. Marcus could either refuse to act as heir, or decide against the codicils, and so bring the gifts mentioned in them into his own share as residuary legatee, or let the codicils stand in spite of the seals being broken (cp, his own decision in Dig. xxviii. 4, 3, and Gaius, ii. 120 and 151). It is most likely that he took the second course, though he may also have carried out the cancelled provisions.
2. See Corp. Insc. Lat. vi. 8440: T. Aurelius Egatheus Imp. Antonini Aug. Lib. a Codicillis.
3. Possibly alluded to by Scaevola, one of the amici, in Dig. xxxv. 2, 36.

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1. Two lines lost.
2. These two words are not certain.
3. Perhaps ten lines are lost here.