Letter 10019: The events at Adrianople have changed the texture of Roman public life in ways that are not yet fully visible; I set...

The conclusion of old disputes is difficult: for a matter agitated through many trials becomes entangled by the variety of legal actions, by the shifting opinions of those examining it, and by the substitution of the persons involved, O lords and emperors. So it has now happened in my own experience, when I heard out a years-long struggle between Gaudentius, the steward of Marciana, a most distinguished woman, and likewise Liberius, the agent of her aunt, who while she lived bore the same name. For at the very threshold of the inquiry, when it was alleged that the agency which the elder Marciana had entrusted was invalid, because it had earlier been enjoined upon a certain Principius, once we had ascertained that the actions had been returned to the mistress and again lawfully transferred to Liberius by acts recorded before the praetor, we set aside the objection of a void prescriptive plea. Then the defense of the opposing party denied that the person stood, whose agency the proceedings of the earlier trial did not uphold. On the contrary, they said that no prior reading-out of the mandate had been required, and that the benefit of restitution had been granted to the agent between the parties. Upon this point the dispute lingered longer than it should have. But because the earlier judge had restored to him, as to a lawful defender, the running of the time-limits, which cannot be obtained through mere agents, and the agency was read as having been entered into evidence before the praetor, this prescriptive plea too was laid to rest. Another point followed, namely that by the death of Marciana, a most distinguished woman, the mandate was said to be extinguished. But against this the decree of the venerable Julianus ordered that the duties of agents undertaken in cases while the principals were living should stand. Therefore, since Liberius had obtained both the restitution while Marciana yet survived and the agreement of the opposing party concerning the appraisal of the goods, we pronounced that the mandate had not perished. Thereafter, as the claimant pressed that, in accordance with the constitution of your divine authority, for the sake of preserving the debt owed he should be put into possession of the maternal property, because the opposing woman had refused to carry out the appraisal of the goods she had agreed to, the answer was given that the trustworthiness of the petition must first be examined. Because this seemed reasonable, I allowed it. But once entry had been made to dispute concerning the petitions, the defender of Marciana, a most distinguished woman, thought he had detected a falsehood in the petitioner, in that, although he had stated in the petition that under the will of her mother the granddaughters of the latter, born of Placidianus, had taken the inheritance, he could not prove that all the granddaughters had been named heirs by her. The answer was given that the petition had been made only concerning those whom the grandmother had instituted as heirs, and that nowhere had mention been made of all of them, but only of those to whom the succession had been transmitted. Having been beaten back on these points, the advocacy of the steward began to demand that the petitioner declare from what claims the proposed actions descended. Then the party coming from the other side, in the name of Placidianus, a most distinguished man, who had been the father of the elder woman, answered that the cause arose from immoderate donations; and he asserted that the supplement of the twelfth-shares [unciae, portions of the inheritance reckoned in twelfths] was being demanded from the heir of Placida, to whom her sister Marciana had succeeded. These claims the opponent refuted to this extent, that he said the younger Marciana, a most distinguished woman, had obtained not only the succession of her father Placidianus but also that of her own sister Placida for certain twelfth-shares [unciae], and yet that no mention of Placida was contained in the sequence of the petition. But when the allegation of the opposing party maintained that he was pursuing a matter liable to claim under the specified heads of the actions, and that what had come into litigation Marciana, a most distinguished woman, possessed in a definite share, and showed that her name together with the designation of the claims had been included in the petition, the deliberation of my court stood at a halt, the one asserting that the person of Placida ought to have been added to the petition, the other denying that, after the designation of the matter and of the person who today enjoys the possession of the property, anything further was to be inquired into. There came in addition a weightier cause for my hesitation, in that, since the law orders that within four months the possessor be held bound to the petitioner for the appraisal of the goods, now, as the records will show, the time fixed by the agreement seemed too narrow for the appraisal of property situated abroad. And therefore, moved by these uncertainties, I have reserved the whole matter to be resolved by the oracle of your divine authority; for in doubtful matters there is one path of safety, that whatever is divine, or nearest to the divine, be consulted. The attached pages have taken up the allegations of the parties and the supplements; and when the justice of your majesty has weighed these, I pray that you set bounds to this troublesome suit by a definitive ruling.