Letter 9015: While you are busy relieving the hardships of the provincials, a heavier blow has fallen on the Apulians.

While you are busy relieving the hardships of the provincials, a heavier blow has fallen on the Apulians. Their grain is being requisitioned because of a groundless rumor of abundance — grain that will be stripped from the province without ever reaching the public supply in time. How can so great a shipment be prepared when the year is already turning toward winter? If you can hasten your journey to Campania, let me know quickly so I may wait for you. But if some greater obligation has changed your plans, tell me that at once, so that our Symmachus, who has been idling long enough at Formiae, can hurry back with me to serious work. Farewell.

Dum provincialium mederis adversis et salutarem laborantibus manum porrigis, gravior Apulos casus incessit, a quibus ob inanem famam fecunditatis frumenta pos- i5 cuntur et detrahenda provinciae et reip. usui non futura. quando enim in hiemem vergente anno poterit maturari tantae frugis si igitur tibi suppetit, facul- tates xxvmiA. itineris celeriter ad Campaniam promovendi, scire me fa- 2u cito, ut te paulisper opperiar; aut si promissum maior causa mutavit, id ipsum noti- tiae meae protinus pande, ut Symmachus noster diu in Formianis litoribus otiatus propere mecum ad studia revertatur. vale. XXX (XXVII).