1You consult me about how the money which you have offered our fellow townsmen for a public feast may be kept safe after your death too. 1An honourable question, but not an easy one to answer. 1Suppose you pay the sum over to the town: there is a danger that it may be frittered away. 1Suppose you give land: as public property it will be neglected. 2For my part I find nothing more suitable than what I did myself. 2For in place of the five hundred thousand sesterces that I had promised for the maintenance of freeborn boys and girls, I conveyed to the town's agent a piece of land of my own worth much more; 2I took the same land back with a rent charge imposed on it, undertaking to pay thirty thousand a year.
3In this way the town's capital is safe and the income not uncertain, and the land itself, because its yield far exceeds the rent charge, will always find an owner to work it. 4Nor am I unaware that I have paid out somewhat more than I appear to have given, since the burden of the rent charge has lowered the value of a very fine estate. 5But one ought to put public advantage before private, eternal before mortal, and to look far more carefully to one's gift than to one's means. 5Farewell.