Letter 5015: It is when I try to equal your verses that I most fully appreciate how excellent they are.

To Arrius Antoninus. It is when I try to equal your verses that I most fully appreciate how excellent they are. For just as painters rarely succeed in putting a perfectly beautiful face on their canvas without doing injustice to the original, so, though I slave hard with your verses as my model, I always fall short. Let me urge you then to publish as many as possible, so good that everyone will burn to imitate them, and yet no one, or but very few, will succeed in the attempt. Farewell.

L To Arrius Antoninus. It is when I try to equal your verses that I most fully appreciate how excellent they are. For just as painters rarely succeed in putting a perfectly beautiful face on their canvas without doing injustice to the original, so, though I slave hard with your verses as my model, I always fall short. Let me urge you then to publish as many as possible, so good that everyone will burn to imitate them, and yet no one, or but very few, will succeed in the attempt. Farewell.

C. PLINIUS ARRIO ANTONINO SUO S. Cum versus tuos aemulor, tum maxime quam sint boni experior. Ut enim pictores pulchram absolutamque faciem raro nisi in peius effingunt, ita ego ab hoc archetypo labor et decido. Quo magis hortor, ut quam plurima proferas, quae imitari omnes concupiscant, nemo aut paucissimi possint. Vale.