Letter 1005: You certainly imitate the style of Menippean Varro, but you surpass his talent.

You imitate indeed the diligence of Menippean Varro [the satirist Varro, author of Menippean satires], but you surpass his talent. For the epigrams that you have lately been composing against our countrymen, I think, outshine the maxims of the seven days [the elogia of the hebdomades, Varro's gallery of distinguished men]; because these of yours are equally sober, yet are polished, while those, though struck from good metal, could not be brought to finish by the file. And you strive after harder material, unless I am mistaken. That Pythagoras, who first asserted that souls pass into eternity, that Plato, who persuaded us that the gods exist, that Aristotle, who reduced the nature of speaking well into an art, that poor Curius, yet one who commanded over the wealthy, those stern Catos, the Fabian clan, the glories of the Scipios, and that whole triumphal senate — he touched upon with sparing praise; but you illuminate the muse of the most recent age. It is a difficult thing to do, that honor should be added to scanty matters. You bid me too to append some verses to yours. Not so did your Flaccus [Horace, son of a freedman, Quintus Horatius Flaccus] prescribe in those edicts of the poetic art, of which this is the beginning, that a horse's neck should not be joined to a human head. I prefer therefore to displease you by my obstinacy in a refused service rather than by my imprudence in a promised work. We shall speak more about this face to face, since we are preparing to follow, or to come up with, this letter. You, carry through what you have begun, and be generous with eloquence so skilled: as I deny you the compliance of my tongue, so I shall lend you that of my ears. Letter V (II), before the year 376.