Letter 10020: The formal obligations of the season are behind me now, and I find myself with an unusual surplus of unobligated...

When Your Clemency recalled that an outlay for the making of the state carriage [carruca, an official ceremonial coach] had been decreed from the sacred treasury, you judged, O lords emperors three [ddd. imppp. = the three Augusti], that the silver for it should be repaid into the public stores. But the scrutiny of audit found that the bullion which the adornment of the vehicle had received was taken from other accounts. Of this matter even my predecessor, the illustrious Auchenius Bassus, is said to have reported the reckoning to Your Perpetuity; and therefore the fairness of your age commanded that I should set before you what had been examined and ascertained. Since the fisc [the imperial treasury] at the time, when the sum had to be furnished, did not have it, the silver was supplied for the commissioned work out of the quaestor's chest, and likewise out of the stores of the conduit-funds, and besides out of the savings of the silversmiths; and the repayment of this, if the use of the carriage were to continue, would by right be sought from the imperial treasuries. But now, the novelty of the carpentum [a covered ceremonial wagon] having been done away with, each party demands back its own, and we do not believe it difficult to obtain what is requested from the fathers of the laws. I beg that you render replies worthy of the times, so that the most excellent and illustrious Count of the Sacred Largesses may learn that what an outside contribution paid out without any gap in the imperial treasury must be refunded to the public accounts and to private persons.