Letter 1012: A letter arguing that true rule builds educated speakers, not useless colonnades.

That is what it means to know how to govern: not tiles and stones, walls, paintings, or some useless colonnade, but helping the governed toward education, sound judgment, and the power to speak well. A man who does that deserves the name father more than those others do. By sending this letter and honoring the young man under your authority so highly, you have awakened those who had neglected rhetoric and made those who had not abandoned it cling to it more firmly. I think you will send more letters here with the same purpose. When you praise us for the ability of those who have studied with us, and call our letters a fortunate thing, you are effectively announcing to everyone: fathers, send your sons to labor with an old man who still knows his craft; let neither distance nor waves hold them back. In what you say and do, you increase both wisdom and Pamphylia's standing. I have received Rhetorius as you wished and instructed, and I complain to the gods for taking away my sons; Cyprus would not have been wronged if I had had them.