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Epistulae ad Familiares, V. xx.

I had nobody to whom I could have entrusted that business in preference to the man to whom I did entrust it. At all events I only acted in accordance with the law directing that we should deposit the accounts made up and balanced in two states, Laodicea and Apamea, which appeared to me, since this had to be done in the two chief states, to be the most important ones; and so, to take this particular objection first, my reply to it is, that, though I was in a hurry for just and proper reasons to hand in the account to the Treasury, I should still have waited for you, were it not that I looked upon the accounts left behind in the province as accounts already rendered to the Treasury, And that is why . . .[1]

3 What you write about Volusius[2] has nothing to do with the accounts. I am advised by skilled lawyers, and among them C. Camillus, the most skilled of them all, and, moreover, a very good friend of mine, that the debt could not have been transferred from Valerius to Volusius, but that the sureties of Valerius were liable (by the bye, it was not 3000 sestertia as you say, but 1900) For the money was put in our charge in the name of Valerius as the actual purchaser[3]; and the adverse balance I have duly entered in the accounts.[4]

4 But by taking the view you do[5] you are robbing me of the fruits of my generosity, of my assiduity, and (though this troubles me least of all) of any

  1. ↑ The lacuna may be filled by some such phrase as "I acted as I did."
  2. ↑ The position, to put it shortly, seems to have been this. Volusius had entered into a contract on behalf of the state, which one Valerius, a banker, had taken over. Valerius had to give sureties for his fulfilment of the contract, among whom were Cicero’s praefectus fabrum, Q. Lepta, and also one of his legati. When the money was called in by the state, Valerius was unable to pay more than a portion of it, and wished to transfer the obligation to, his principal Volusius. The lawyers, Camillus in particular, decided the transference was illegal, and that, Valerius being insolvent, his sureties would have to make good the deficit. Cicero, considering that the state had lost nothing by the transference, and wishing to protect his personal friends among the sureties, in his official accounts as proconsul entered the balance due from Valerius as a "bad debt" or "a remission," in fact "wrote it off."
  3. ↑ Manceps was a recognized term for the purchaser of a state contract.
  4. ↑ As a bad debt.
  5. ↑ As expressed in Rufus's letter, which Cicero mentions above, but which has not been preserved.
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