LXV TRAJAN TO PLINY
I WILL let you know my determination concerning those exiles who were banished for three years by the proconsul P. Servilius Calvus, and soon afterwards restored to the province by his edict, when I shall have informed myself from him of the reasons of this proceeding. With respect to that person who was sentenced to perpetual banishment by Julius Bassus, yet continued to remain in the province, without making his appeal if he thought himself aggrieved (though he had two years given him for that purpose), I would have him sent in chains to my prætorian prefects:〖These, in the original institution as settled by Augustus, were only commanders of his body-guards; but in the later times of the Roman empire they were next in authority under the emperor, to whom they seem to have acted as a sort of prime ministers. M.
〗 for, only to remand him back to a punishment which he has contumaciously eluded will by no means be a sufficient punishment.