1When I was looking, sir, for a place at Prusa where the baths which you granted could be built, I settled on a spot where there was once a house, beautiful, as I hear, but now disfigured by ruins. 1For by this means we shall bring it about that the ugliest feature of the city is made handsome, and also that the city itself is enlarged and no buildings are pulled down, but those which have collapsed with age are restored for the better. 2The status of this house is as follows: Claudius Polyaenus had left it to Claudius Caesar, and ordered a temple to be built to him in the peristyle and the rest of the house to be let.
2For some time the city received an income from it; 2then gradually, partly plundered and partly neglected, the whole house collapsed together with the peristyle, and now almost nothing is left of it except the ground; 2and if you, sir, either give this to the city or order it to be sold, the city will receive it as the greatest boon because of the convenience of the site. 3If you permit, I intend to place the baths on the empty plot, and to surround the place where the buildings stood with an exedra and colonnades and to dedicate it to you, by whose kindness a handsome work worthy of your name will come into being.
4I have sent you a copy of the will, though it is full of errors; 4from it you will learn that Polyaenus left many things for the adornment of the same house, which have perished like the house itself, but which will nevertheless be searched for by me as far as possible.