1The theatre at Nicaea, my lord, already for the most part built but still unfinished, has swallowed up, in sesterces — so I hear; 1for the accounts of the work have not been examined — more than ten million: I fear to no purpose. 2For it has subsided and gapes with huge cracks, whether the cause is the damp, soft soil or the stone itself, which is thin and crumbly: it certainly deserves consideration whether it should be completed, or abandoned, or even demolished. 2For the props and substructures by which it is shored up from time to time seem to me not so much solid as costly. 3Much is owed to this theatre from the promises of private persons, such as basilicas around it and a colonnade above the auditorium.
3All of these are now postponed, since the work that must be completed first is at a standstill. 4The same people of Nicaea began, before my arrival, to restore their gymnasium, which had been lost in a fire, on a far more extensive and spacious scale than before, and they have already spent a good deal; 4there is a danger that it has been to little purpose; 4for it is ill-planned and straggling. 4Moreover, an architect — admittedly a rival of the one by whom the work was begun — asserts that the walls, although twenty-two feet thick, cannot bear the loads placed on them, because they are filled with rubble in the middle and not faced with brickwork.
5The people of Claudiopolis too are excavating rather than building a huge bath in a low-lying spot, with a mountain overhanging it, and indeed with the money which the councillors added by your kindness have either already offered for their admission or will contribute at our demand. 6So, since I fear that in the one place public money, and in the other your gift, which is more precious than any money, may be badly invested, I am compelled to ask you to send an architect not only for the theatre but also for these baths, to consider whether it is more useful, after the expense that has been incurred, to complete the works somehow or other, 6as they were begun, or to correct what seems to need emending and move what needs moving, lest, while we wish to preserve what has been spent, we spend badly what must be added.