4.
[14]
When this partnership had now subsisted many years, and when Naevius had often been
suspected by Quinctius, and was not able conveniently to give an account of the
transactions which he had carried on according to his caprice, and not on any system,
Quinctius dies in Gaul, when Naevius was there
too, and dies suddenly. By his will he left this Publius Quinctius his heir, in order
that, as great grief would come to him by his death, great honour should also accrue to
him.
[15]
When he was dead, Publius Quinctius soon after
goes into Gaul. There he lives on terms of
intimacy with that fellow Naevius. There they are together nearly a year, during which
they had many communications with one another about their partnership, and about the
whole of their accounts and their estate in Gaul; nor during that time did Naevius utter one single word about either
the partnership owing him anything, or about Quinctius having owed him anything on his
private account. As there was some little debt left behind, the payment of which was to
be provided for at Rome, this Publius
Quinctius issues notices that he shall put up to auction in Gaul, at Narbonne, those things
which were his own private property.
[16]
On this, this
excellent man, Sextus Naevius, dissuades the man by many speeches from putting the
things up to auction, saying that he would not be able at that time to sell so
conveniently what he had advertised. That he had a sum of money at Rome, which if Quinctius were wise he would consider
their common property, from their brotherly intimacy, and also from his relationship
with himself; for Naevius has married the cousin of Publius Quinctius, and has children
by her. Because Naevius was saying just what a good man ought, Quinctius believed that
he who imitated the language of good men, would imitate also their actions. He gives up
the idea of having an auction; he goes to Rome; at the same time Naevius also leaves Gaul for Rome.
[17]
As Caius Quinctius had owed money to Publius Scapula, Publius
Quinctius referred it to you, O Caius Aquillius, to decide what he should pay his
children. He preferred submitting to your decision in this matter, because, on account
of the difference in the exchange, it was not sufficient to look in his books and see
how much was owed, unless he had inquired at the temple of Castor 1 how much was to be paid in Roman money. You decide and determine, on
account of the friendship existing between you and the family of the Scapulae, what was
to be paid to them to a penny.
This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
1 Some have wished to alter ad Castoris here to a quaestoribus; but the temple of Castor was a place where much
money was kept:—Æratâ
“
Æratâ multus in arca
Fiscus et ad vigilem ponendi Castora nummi.
”—Juv. xiv. 260. and the precincts were
accordingly much frequented by men skillful in computing accounts, and the exchange of
money.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.