INTRODUCTION
Around AD 100, on the death of Asudius Curianus, Pliny received a legacy, worth unknown, in Curianus' will. There was a history. Some three years previously Curianus had been disinherited by his mother's will which distribÂuted her fortune between a number of distinguished Romans, including Pliny himself.
Curianus was a wealthy man in his own right and had no children. Clearly mortified by his mother's actions Curianus asked Pliny to give him his share, promising to return its capital value in due course. Pliny declined to do so but rather offered to refuse his share, to Curianus' eventual benefit, if Curianus could persuade him that he had been improperly disinherited. Curianus then asked Pliny to look into the matter formally, which Pliny agreed to do, indicating that if he found that Curianus' mother was justified he would have no hesitation in so finding. Sitting in his own house with two other friends Pliny heard argument from Curianus, himself formally presenting the case on the other side. After a period of discussion judgment was given in favour of Curianus' mother having had good reason to disinherit her son.Despite this setback Curianus proceeded to sue the other beneficiaries of his mother's estate in the centumviral court. They, being anxious to comproÂmise the case, it being not unusual for the emperor Domitian to intervene in such matters to general discomfiture, approached Pliny to act as mediator. This he did, meeting Curianus in the temple of the goddess of Concord. Pliny suggested that Asudius be prepared to take a quarter of the share of each of the heirs he was suing. Although it was too late to sue Pliny, two years having then elapsed since the distribution of the estate, Pliny offered to contribute a quarter from his share also: offero pro mea parte tantumdem.
Obviously Pliny's intervention was successful with the result that Curianus gained by agreement as much as he might otherwise have expected to obtain as an heir burdened with legacies and this seems to have been sufficient to restore to him the reputation his mother's action had threatened to deprive him of.
In token of his satisfaction with the outcome Curianus subsequently left Pliny the moderate legacy on his death with which the story began.Pliny's letter is designed to show off his virtues, not to stress the legal questions. The short account is, however, packed with legal incidents, not all straightforward. The technique which John Crook espouses in his Law and Life of Rome is not primarily to determine knotty questions of law by referÂence to its practice but rather to explore the practical context of the working of the law, the Sitz im Leben in the characteristic phrase borrowed from the world of German biblical scholarship. If in the process it is shown that some of the concerns of the legal specialists are misplaced then so much the better social history, but this is not the main aim. I will therefore proceed serially through the legal issues raised, both relatively trivial and more troublesome, though paying particular regard to those matters concerning the law of inherÂitance.
B.
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