The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter/Legacy hunting
CHAPTER 116. “They either take in or else they are taken in.”
“Captare”’ may be defined as to get the upper hand of someone; and “captari” means to be the dupe of someone, to be the object of interested flattery; “captator” means a succession of successful undertakings of the sort referred to above. Martial, lib. VI, 63, addresses the following verses to a certain Marianus, whose inheritance had excited the avarice of one of the intriguers:
You know the miser’s mind;
You know the miser, and you sensed
His purpose; still, you’re blind.”
Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis, lib. XIV, chap. 1, writes in scathing terms against the infamous practice of paying assiduous court to old people for the purpose of obtaining a legacy under their wills. “Later, childlessness conferred advantages in the shape of the greatest authority and power; undue influence became very insidious in its quest of wealth, and in grasping the joyous things alone, debasing the true rewards of life; and all the liberal arts operating for the greatest good were turned to the opposite purpose, and commenced to profit by sycophantic subservience alone.”
And Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. XVIII, chap. 4, remarks: “Some there are that grovel before rich men, old men or young, childless or unmarried, or even wives and children, for the purpose of so influencing their wishes and them by deft and dextrous finesse.”
That this profession of legacy hunting is not one of the lost arts is apparent even in our day, for the term “undue influence” is as common in our courts as Ambrose Bierce’s definition of “husband,” or refined cruelty, or “injunctions” restraining husbands from disposing of property, or separate maintenance, or even “heart balm” and the consequent breach of promise.