M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
also. Then only shall I have confidence in our decision, when it has been approved by him. The "speech[1]" in which you have advocated our cause, I will shew at once to Faustina, and will tender her thanks because as an outcome of that business it has been my lot to read such a letter from you. Good master, best of masters, farewell.
162 A.D.
Fronto to Aufidius Victorinus his son-in-law.
At the time of the gold-test[2] . . . . and to her Varian proteges of either sex she left a million sesterces[3] apiece for them to enjoy as a life interest rather than for their own; for she directed that 50,000 sesterces[4] apiece should be given them every year by the Empress. Almost all those who had paid her court lost their labour: not a pound apiece was weighed out to them. Some of them however, brisk and smart fellows without a doubt, had the effrontery, while Matidia lay unconscious, to seal up the codicils, which she had annulled a long while before. They had the effrontery also to uphold and defend these codicils before our Lord as duly and truly executed. And I have not been without apprehension that Philosophy might lead him to a wrong decision. That you may know what I wrote to him on the subject, I send you a copy of my letter.
In my Bithynian speech, part of which you write
- ↑ He chaffingly calls the letter a speech.
- ↑ This assaying of the gold (presumably the gold ornaments) was done by means of fire in a small flat vessel called a cupel.
- ↑ About £20,000.
- ↑ About £500. It is not clear whether these alumni were children of an alimentary foundation, such as the puellae Faustinianae.
99
H 2