Letter 5005: I took up your letter with great eagerness, since a long silence had built up my desire for news.

I am afraid to entrust our writings to your eloquence, but I am no less wary of denying anything of mine to your affection. Therefore I have sent two little speeches recently published by us. One of them held back a candidate who was striving against the urban fasces [the office of urban praetor]; to the other a censorial review, long since rejected by a decree of the senate, supplied its subject matter. But my judgment, formed when the matter was being conducted, I have extended by a fuller work. And do not turn it into a fault against me, this rebuff of old-fashioned strictness. For certain things, specious only in name, do the greatest harm in practice and by experience. The reasons for my opinion you, the reader, will discover. I only wish that you would come to the examination of what is said as a man fair to both sides. The defense of the speech will deserve, as I hope, that you too, a patron of antiquity, should extend a helping hand to the authority of the order [the senate]. Given in the year 398.

Vereor eloquentiae tuae scripta nostra committere, sed non minus caveo amori tuo meorum quidquam negare. duas igitur oratiunculas nuper editas a nobis misi. earum una ad urbanos fasces resultantem tenuit candidatum, alteri argumentum dedit iam pridem decreto senatus inprobata censura. sed iudicium meum, cum res acta 2 est, habitum propagavi opere largiore. nec mihi vitio vortas priscae severitatis repul- 20 sam. nam quaedam solis speciosa nominibus usu et experiundo plurimum nocent. rationes sententiae meae lector invenies. volo tmtum ad inspectionem dictorum parti utrique aequus accedas. merebitur, ut spero, orationis adsertio, ut tu etiam vetustatis patronus auctoritati ordinis manum porrigas. X a. 398. 25