M. CORNELIUS FRONTO
Fronto to Arrius Antoninus, greeting.[1]
1. Health to my honoured and most dear son! just as I listen with willing and welcoming ears to those who are loudest in praise of your words and deeds in the administration of your province, so, if anyone grumbles at all or carps at it, I give him a much more critical hearing and require every detail of your acts and decisions, as one who would safeguard your reputation and good name equally with my own.
2. Volumnius Serenus of Concordia,[2] if in what he tells me he has subtracted nothing from the truth, nor added anything to it, has every right and claim to my services as his advocate and intercessor before you. But if I seem to overstep the limits of a letter, the reason will be, that the facts of the case require some legal advocacy to be mixed up with the letter.
3. I will set forth the whole matter as Volumnius has stated it to me, and ask you at the same time as to each point, whether it is true.
Is it provided by the charter of the Colony of Concordia,[2] that no one be made a notary except he be eligible also for the office of municipal senator?
- ↑ This letter is important for our knowledge of the status of a decurio, or municipal senator. It shews that these were elected by the whole body. The exact merits of the case at issue are obscured by the mutilation of the letter. We know from a law still preserved in the Digest that a decurio temporarily exiled for an offence not involving infamia might on his return take up his old position, but, if not a senator previously, he could only become one with the emperor's express permission. By excluding Volumnius even for a time from the senate, Antoninus might seem to affix upon him the stigma of infamy. Fronto argues that there can be no doubt he was a senator before his exile. We learn from this letter also that the decurions had to pay for their privileges. The case came under the cognizance of Antoninus as juridicus per Italiam regionis Transpadanae (see inscription quoted under the previous letter).
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 In Venetia.
