Letter 3008: It is just like your usual respectful regard for me that you beg me so earnestly to transfer the tribuneship, *...
Pliny the Younger→Suetonius Tranquillus|c. 100 AD|Pliny the Younger
friendship
To Suetonius Tranquillus.
It is just like your usual respectful regard for me that you beg me so earnestly to transfer the tribuneship, * which I obtained for you from that noble man ** Neratius Marcellus, to your relative Caesennius Silvanus. I should have been delighted to see you as tribune, but I will be equally pleased to see another take the post through your generosity, for I do not think it would be becoming in me to grudge a man whom you desire to advance in dignity the fame of family affection, which is a greater distinction than any honorific titles. Besides, as it is a splendid thing both to deserve benefits and to confer them, I see that you will at one and the same time receive credit for both, now that you bestow on another what your own merits have won. Moreover, I quite understand that I too shall come in for some glory when it is known through your generous deed that friends of mine can not only fill the office of tribune, but can bestow it on others. For these reasons I bow to the wishes which do you the greatest credit. No name has yet been placed on the lists, and so we can quite well substitute that of Silvanus for yours. I hope that he will show himself as grateful to you as you have to me. Farewell.
[Note: A military tribuneship.
]
[Note: clarissimus, the standard word used to describe senators.]
L To Suetonius Tranquillus.
It is just like your usual respectful regard for me that you beg me so earnestly to transfer the tribuneship, * which I obtained for you from that noble man ** Neratius Marcellus, to your relative Caesennius Silvanus. I should have been delighted to see you as tribune, but I shall be equally pleased to see another take the post through your generosity, for I do not think it would be becoming in me to grudge a man whom you desire to advance in dignity the fame of family affection, which is a greater distinction than any honorific titles. Besides, as it is a splendid thing both to deserve benefits and to confer them, I see that you will at one and the same time receive credit for both, now that you bestow on another what your own merits have won. Moreover, I quite understand that I too shall come in for some glory when it is known through your generous deed that friends of mine can not only fill the office of tribune, but can bestow it on others. For these reasons I bow to the wishes which do you the greatest credit. No name has yet been placed on the lists, and so we can quite well substitute that of Silvanus for yours. I hope that he will show himself as grateful to you as you have to me. Farewell.
(*) A military tribuneship.
(**) clarissimus, the standard word used to describe senators.
◆
To Suetonius Tranquillus.
It is just like your usual respectful regard for me that you beg me so earnestly to transfer the tribuneship, * which I obtained for you from that noble man ** Neratius Marcellus, to your relative Caesennius Silvanus. I should have been delighted to see you as tribune, but I will be equally pleased to see another take the post through your generosity, for I do not think it would be becoming in me to grudge a man whom you desire to advance in dignity the fame of family affection, which is a greater distinction than any honorific titles. Besides, as it is a splendid thing both to deserve benefits and to confer them, I see that you will at one and the same time receive credit for both, now that you bestow on another what your own merits have won. Moreover, I quite understand that I too shall come in for some glory when it is known through your generous deed that friends of mine can not only fill the office of tribune, but can bestow it on others. For these reasons I bow to the wishes which do you the greatest credit. No name has yet been placed on the lists, and so we can quite well substitute that of Silvanus for yours. I hope that he will show himself as grateful to you as you have to me. Farewell.
[Note: A military tribuneship.
]
[Note: clarissimus, the standard word used to describe senators.]
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.