Letter 155

To Domitian the jurist. I know from the facts themselves that your greatest pleasure lies in doing good, and that you are always ready to extend a helping hand. I am therefore not embarrassed to ask you: help the man who carries this letter. His case is just, and your assistance will cost you nothing but a little time — while gaining you, as always, the gratitude of the deserving.

Letter 155: A Recommendation [1] To Domitian, the Jurist note [He is also the addressee of Letter 156 .] I know quite clearly, from the facts themselves, that your greatest pleasure is to do good, and that you are always ready to hold out a helping hand to the needy. I appeal to you with this very purpose, thinking to turn, as they say, the horse to the plain. [2] My dear friend, you should now show more kindness than ever, inasmuch as the future beneficiary is in this case the more pitiable, for it is a woman that is in question, who has the misfortune to be a widow, and her sufferings have been shared with an orphan child. Who it is that has wronged her, in what way, and how, she herself will instruct your goodness. [3] I beg you, therefore, my friend, to come to her aid, because that would be a good deed, and one worthy of you, and I ask for my sake as well, for I too will share with you in whatever befalls her. She is a kinswoman of mine, and brought up virtuously under an honorable mother in our midst.