1I used to love Pompeius Saturninus (I mean our friend) and to praise his talent, even before I knew how varied, how versatile, how manifold it was; 1but now he holds me, has me, possesses me entirely. 2I have heard him pleading cases keenly and passionately, but with no less polish and elegance, whether what he delivered was prepared or impromptu. 2There are apt and frequent epigrams, a weighty and graceful structure, words that are sonorous and old-fashioned. 2All these things please wonderfully when they are carried along with a kind of rush and flood, and they please if they are read again. 3You will feel as I do when you take his speeches in hand, which you will easily compare with any of the ancients, whose rival he is.
4Yet he will satisfy you still more in history, by the brevity, or the clarity, or the charm, or even the splendour and loftiness of his narrative. 4For in the set speeches of his history there is the same force as in his speeches, only more compressed, more concise and more tightly drawn. 5Besides, he writes verses such as my Catullus or Calvus wrote, truly such as Catullus or Calvus wrote. 5How much wit, sweetness, bitterness and love there is in them! 5He inserts, it is true, but deliberately, some rather rough lines among the soft and smooth ones; 5and this too like Catullus or Calvus. 6He recently read me some letters; 6he said they were his wife's.
6I thought I was hearing Plautus or Terence turned into prose. 6Whether they are his wife's, as he asserts, or his own, as he denies, he deserves equal glory, either for composing them or for making his wife, whom he married as a girl, so learned and refined. 7So he is with me all day long; 7I read the same man before I write, the same when I have written, the same even when I relax, and never as though he were the same. 8I both urge and advise you to do this too; 8for the fact that he is alive should not count against his works. 8If he had flourished among those whom we have never seen, we would be seeking out not only his books but even his portraits; is the honour and favour of the same man now to languish, as if from surfeit, because he is among us?
9But it is perverse and spiteful not to admire a man most worthy of admiration because we have the chance to see, speak to, hear and embrace him, and not only to praise him but even to love him. 9Farewell.