1As I contemplate the greatness both of your fortune and of your mind, it seems most fitting that works should be pointed out to you worthy no less of your immortality than of your glory, works that will have as much usefulness as beauty. 2In the territory of Nicomedia there is a very large lake. 2Across it marble, produce, firewood and timber are carried by boat with little expense and labour as far as the road, but from there by carriage to the sea with great labour and greater expense ... 2this work requires many hands. 2But these, in turn, are not lacking. 2For there is a great abundance of people in the countryside and a very great one in the city, and a sure hope that all will most gladly take on a work profitable to all.
3It remains for you to send a leveller or an architect, if you see fit, to investigate carefully whether the lake is higher than the sea, which the experts of this region maintain is higher by forty cubits. 4In the same area I find a canal dug by a king, but it is uncertain whether it was to collect the moisture of the surrounding fields or to connect the lake to the river; 4for it is unfinished. 4This too is doubtful: whether the king was cut off by death or gave up hope of completing the work. 5But by this very fact — for you will bear with my ambition for your glory — I am spurred and fired to wish that what kings had only begun should be completed by you.