Letter 6063: Old custom dictates that the person leaving home should send the first letter.

Ancient custom established this order of writing, that those who have set out from home should inaugurate the duty of the epistolary office. But it seemed too long to wait for a letter from your like-minded self, whose slowness we do not censure, and therefore, with the usual practice reversed, we have burst forth into this service. It remains that you willingly repay what you ought to have begun, and, thus provoked, exercise your pen as the witness of your good health. We ourselves await the arrival at the estate of Arabiana, my lady daughter; although the reckoning of the solemn days promises that you too, our glory, will be present without delay. Farewell. LXI (LXII) in the year 398.

Prisca observantia hunc scribendi ordinem fecit, ut domo profecti officium litte- is rarii muneris auspicentur. sed longum visum est opperiri unanimitatis tuae litteras, quarum non arguimus tarditatem, atque ideo mutato usu in hoc munus erupimus. superest, ut libens rependas, quae inchoare debueras, et provocatus exerceas sa- nitatis tuae indicem stilum. ipsi in Arabiana domnae filiae .meae expectamus ad- ventum; licet te etiam, decus nostrum, dierum sollemnium ratio confestim spondeat 20 adfuturum. vale. LXI (LXII) a. 398.