1On an aqueduct, my lord, the people of Nicomedia have spent three million three hundred and eighteen thousand sesterces; it was abandoned while still unfinished, and has even been pulled down; 1again, two hundred thousand were paid out on another aqueduct. This too has been abandoned, and new expenditure is needed if those who have wasted so much money are to have water. 2I have myself visited a very pure spring, from which it seems the water ought to be brought, as was attempted at the start, on an arched structure, so that it does not reach only the level and low-lying parts of the city. 2A very few arches still remain: some can also be built up from the squared stone which was removed from the earlier work; 2some part, as it seems to me, will have to be made of brickwork, for that is both easier and cheaper.
3But first of all it is necessary that you send either a water engineer or an architect, so that what happened may not happen again. 3I affirm this one thing: both the usefulness and the beauty of the work are most worthy of your age.