1It is established that a community can neither be appointed heir nor take a preferential legacy; 1Saturninus, however, who has left me his heir, gave a quarter to our community, and then, in place of the quarter, a preferential legacy of four hundred thousand sesterces. 1If you look at the law, this is void; if at the dead man's wishes, it is valid and firm. 2But to me the dead man's wishes — I am afraid of how the lawyers will take what I am about to say — come before the law, especially in what he wanted to go to our common homeland. 3Or am I, who have given this community a million six hundred thousand sesterces from my own money, to refuse it a little more than a third of four hundred thousand from a windfall?
3I know that you too do not disagree with my judgement, since as an excellent citizen you love the same community. 4I should like you, then, when the town councillors next meet, to point out what the law is, but sparingly and modestly; 4then to add that I am offering the four hundred thousand, as Saturninus directed. 4Let this be called his gift, his generosity; 4only the compliance mine. 5I have refrained from writing this officially, first because I remembered that, given the closeness of our friendship and the reach of your good sense, you both ought to and could act on my behalf just as on your own; 5and secondly because I was afraid that I might not seem to have kept in a letter the measure that is easy for you to keep in speech.
6For speech is tempered by the face, gestures and the voice itself, while a letter, stripped of all these recommendations, is exposed to the malice of those who interpret it. 6Farewell.