Kitap 2
5
Further, if any one in affluent circumstances has reared Sublatus . A word taken from a Roman custom of laying their new-born infants on the ground, and educating only those the father took up. an ailing son, lest a too open complaisance to a single man should detect you, creep gradually into the hope [of succeeding him], and that you may be set down as second heir; and, if any casualty should dispatch the boy to Hades, you may come into the vacancy. This die seldom fails. Whoever delivers his will to you to read, be mindful to decline it, and push the parchment from you: [do it] however in such a manner, that you may catch with an oblique glance, what the first page Prima cera signifies the first page of the will, in which the testator's name was written. Secundo versus was the second line, which contained the names of the heirs and co-heirs. intimates to be in the second clause: run over with a quick eye, whether you are sole heir, or co-heir with many. Sometimes a well-seasoned lawyer, risen from a Quinquevir, The quinqueviri were a kind of tip-staff or bailiff, in the colonies and municipal towns. A man who had passed through these little offices may well be supposed to be sufficiently knowing in what we call the practice, and from this body public notaries and registers were chosen. Horace therefore means, by scriba recoctus, a notary sufficiently refined in tricks and cunning of the law. Recoctus is properly double-dyed, that hath fully taken its color. shall delude the gaping raven; and the fortunehunter Nasica shall be laughed at by Coranus.
