Letter 7042: You were joking, I think, when you wrote that you'd been frightened by soldiers on the road -- a transparent excuse...

You seemed to me to be jesting when you wrote that you had been afraid of the soldiers' arms in your path -- because, I suppose, you feared that we might follow you on your journey into the distant parts of Campania. For if you yourself, long accustomed to the camp, experienced some measure of fear, what bitterness should I, used to the toga, have fallen into? But I will not allow your feigned alarm to serve you as an excuse for delay. The whole Appian Way is now free of soldiers, all of them having been carried across, men who, with the state of Africa now pacified, have returned in obedience to the divine prince. What of the fact, too, that our homeland in straitened circumstances requires either the aid of good men or their fellowship? For its prosperous affairs alone do not look for our presence; it belongs to a more praiseworthy duty to share its uncertainties together with one's fellow citizens. But already a better hope brings serenity to the countenance of our City, and meanwhile, sustained by the provision of a foreseen supply, it bargains for the arrival even of the grain of Libya. Farewell.