Letter 1: Aeneas wants his prized book back.

If the book were yours and I loved it, then it would be perfectly right for it to stay with me; that is how friendship works. But as things stand, I am its owner and you will not give it back. Please, by Zeus the god of friendship, do not treat this as merely a book. To me it is property, and a possession more dignified than Croesus' wealth. Some men love a hoe, others dogs, another a bow, another a horse; my loves are books and words. The thing that most delights its owner most pains the man from whom it has been taken. If you return it, I will believe the book has already been written into your mind. If you do not, you will seem to have wanted not what was written in it, but only to possess the book itself. But why am I saying all this? I will not let the very thing that has so often delighted me become a cause of grief.