Letter 3011: You want longer letters from me.

If this is your one reason, as you say, for plying your pen so often, namely to extract from me a like exchange of conversation, then there is great value in our silence as regards your letters. See to it, therefore, that the abundant profit of keeping quiet does not call me back from writing, since, if I reply often, you will perhaps send back yet more, as though already victorious in what you wished. Persist, then, in your purpose of constant writing even after my letter, although I would rather obtain your return than your pages. Those of yours are indeed inlaid with Tullian [Ciceronian] gold, but from friends who are present more goods are taken. The very words flow better from the springs of the lips than they are entrusted to the woven sheets of papyrus. Why, then, having struggled free from the rot of long leisure, do you not revisit our Caelius? Enough time has been given to Spoletium [Spoleto], a good city and mother of the best citizens, yet one that understands that it cannot acquire by long possession the men of our senate. [...]