Letter 1034: Here's Rusticus, barely freed from his business in Rome.
Here's Rusticus, barely freed from his business in Rome. I hope you'll forgive him the delay, for our friendship's sake — it wasn't laziness that kept him. It's hard to leave this city once you've arrived; if you want a sense of Rome's grandeur, Rusticus will seem to you to have come back remarkably quickly.
But I'm not worried about that, since you're so naturally forgiving among your many virtues that you take minor lapses in stride. What I do earnestly ask is this: put as much effort into writing to me as the affection you feel for me deserves. Farewell.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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