Letter 1067: You say you're hampered by endless obligations and can't manage to write to your dearest friends as diligently as...
You say you're hampered by endless obligations and can't manage to write to your dearest friends as diligently as you'd like. No need to keep defending what we already know. Even from a distance, we're well aware of your cares and sleepless nights.
You've changed your role, not abandoned your duty — rightly, the welfare of citizens came before correspondence. Now we both long for and press for your letters, gathered like provisions against the coming winter. Though I know you don't yet consider that ground entirely safe. Love of country is never at ease; however great the remedies it finds, it always dreads the return of what it feared. Farewell.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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