Letter 2077: Your love for Domitius is well known and firmly established, which spares me the labor of commending him.

Your affection for Domitius, well known and strong, has spared me the labor of recommending him; on his behalf it will suffice to have said only this much: that he too is joined to me by an old-standing intimacy. This circumstance will, as I hope, secure for him an increase of your patronage; for a shared likeness of judgment will make him the more acceptable to you. Meanwhile, at the very point of the spectacle, we are in want of the bears so often promised and so long awaited. For we have scarcely received a few cubs, worn down by starvation and toil. And rumor has fallen silent concerning the lions, whose arrival could have brought it about that an encounter of Libyan beasts might make good the failure of bears. The dole of bread, maliciously and rashly cut off, the people's own spontaneous goodwill has restored to the abundance of its founders. And so all those things which were rightly gnawing at your mind are now safe and secure. And would that an equal good fortune of successes had soothed your quaestorial anxieties! Farewell. Letter 77 (76), in the year 393.

Amor tuus in Domitium notus et validus ademit mihi commendandi eius laborem, pro quo hoc tantum dixisse suffecerit, mihi quoque eundem prisca familiaritate con- iungi. qnae res illi incrementum patrocinii tui, ut spero, praestabit. probabiliorem 15 quippe eum tibi faciet conmiunis similitudo iudicii. interea nos ursis saepe promissis 2 et diu speratis sub ipso articulo muneris indigemus. vix enim paucos catulos mace- ratos inedia et labore snscepimus. et de leonibus fama conticuit, quorum adventus posset efficere, ut ursorum defectum congressio Libyca repensaret. nnciam panis ma- 3 litiose et temere restitutam spontanea voluntas populi redegit in copiam conditomm. 20 tuta igitur omnia atque secura sunt, quae animum tuum iure mordebant. atque uti- nam soIIicitudinQS quaestorias par successuum felicitas mitigasset! vale.^ LXXVn (LXXVI) a. 393.