1It is evidently false, what is commonly believed, that men's wills are a mirror of their characters, since Domitius Tullus has shown himself far better in death than in life. 2For though he had let himself be courted by legacy-hunters, he left as his heir his daughter, whom he shared with his brother, since he had adopted his brother's child. 2He honoured his grandchildren with a great many very pleasing legacies, and honoured his great-granddaughter too. 2In short, everything is full of family affection, and all the more unexpected for that. 3So there is varied talk throughout the whole city: some call him false, ungrateful, forgetful, and while they attack him they betray themselves by most shameful confessions, since they complain of a father, grandfather and great-grandfather as if he were childless; 3others, on the contrary, extol this very thing with praise, that he has frustrated the wicked hopes of men whom it is in keeping with the morals of the times to deceive in this way.
3They add too that he was not free to die with any other will: for he had not left the wealth to his daughter but given it back, since it was through his daughter that he had been enriched by it. 4For Curtilius Mancia, who loathed his son-in-law Domitius Lucanus — he was Tullus's brother — had made Lucanus's daughter, his own granddaughter, his heir on condition that she was released from her father's control. 4Her father had released her, her uncle had adopted her, and so, the will having been circumvented, the brother, his partner, had brought the emancipated daughter back into his brother's control by the trick of adoption, and with very great wealth at that.
5Those brothers, moreover, seemed destined, as if by fate, to become rich, very much against the will of those who made them so. 5Indeed Domitius Afer, who took them into his name, left a will declared eighteen years before, and afterwards so disapproved of by him that he had their father's property confiscated. 6Remarkable was his harshness, remarkable their good fortune: his harshness, in that he struck from the roll of citizens a man whom he had had as a partner even in children; 6their good fortune, in that the man who had taken their father from them stepped into their father's place. 7But this inheritance from Afer too, like the rest acquired with his brother, had to be passed on to the brother's daughter, by whom Tullus had been made sole heir and preferred to his own daughter, in order to win him over.
7All the more praiseworthy, then, is the will, which family affection, good faith and a sense of shame wrote, in which, in short, gratitude has been shown to all his relations by marriage according to each one's service, and shown to his wife too. 8His wife received the most delightful villas, received a large sum of money, a most excellent and most patient woman, and one who deserved all the better of her husband for being the more criticised for marrying him. 8For a woman of distinguished birth, upright character, advancing years, long a widow and once a mother, seemed to have entered with too little propriety upon marriage with a rich old man so ruined by disease that he could have been a burden to a wife whom he had married as a young and healthy man.
9For, twisted and broken in all his limbs, he could survey his great wealth with his eyes alone, and could not even turn in bed except by the help of others; 9and what is more — foul and pitiful to tell — he had his teeth washed and scrubbed for him. 9He was often heard to say, when complaining of the indignities of his infirmity, that he licked the fingers of his slaves every day. 10Yet he lived and wished to live, sustained above all by his wife, who by her constancy had turned the reproach of having begun the marriage into glory. 11You have all the gossip of the city; 11for all the gossip is Tullus.
11The auction is awaited: for he was so well supplied that on the very day he bought a large garden estate he furnished it with a great many very ancient statues; 11so many beautiful works of art did he have in storerooms which he neglected. 11In return, if there is anything worth a letter there, do not grudge it. 12For not only are men's ears delighted by novelty, but we are also instructed by examples in the conduct of life. 12Farewell.