Letter 2030: You can easily imagine how I received the news of the Sicilian affair gone wrong — you who know that the injustice...

With what feeling I received the wounding of the Sicilian affair you may easily guess, you who know me, since I am stung even in others' cases by the unfairness of judges. Indeed I am even charged by you with imprudent counsel for the loss—you do rightly! For why did I hope that the insult to the sacred court would be punished? Why did I presume upon what was lawful and just from my friends? And to what a pass have we been reduced! I have lost justice while I wait for vindication. And now, in what way am I to explain away the fact that Probus is judged the milder party—he who, to the prejudice or the odium of my possession, withdrew by retaining a tiny little plot of land, when the whole inheritance was being promised to that little woman? For this was the sole reason for the prefect of the City to refer the matter: not that the governor of Sicily should pay the penalty for the appeals he had admitted, but that, as cognizant judge, he might vindicate the injury done to the sacred court. Now a rescript would be issued in the case, after my victory, against the sentence of the prefecture—to which the opposing party assents—if the report concerned the outcome of the business and if the litigants had submitted supplements or rebuttals. I ask, on what proceedings will judgment be given? On those which in Sicily, after my appeal, the one party brought forward? With which the doings of the times of the usurpers have been associated? Is the ill-will toward me so great, and is our censure so welcome to certain people? Yield to the will of my adversaries, and deign to suggest to our lord, the most invincible prince Theodosius, ever Augustus, that with me riches do not count for more than reputation. I set a good judgment of me, on the part of the public father, my preserver, before any patrimony whatsoever. If it be his pleasure that I withdraw from all my hereditary possession, it shall be law to me, whatever the lord of all shall, with his appeased authority, decree.