1When I was last with you, I did not tell you that I had composed something about your son, first because I had not written it in order to talk about it but to satisfy my love and my grief; 1secondly because I believed that you, Spurinna, having heard that I had given a reading, as you yourself told me, had heard at the same time what I had read. 2Besides, I was afraid of upsetting you during the festival days if I brought you back to the memory of your heaviest grief. 2Even now I have hesitated a little whether to send, at your request, only what I read, or to add what I am thinking of reserving for another volume.
3For it does not satisfy my feelings to honour in a single small book a memory so dear and sacred to me, whose fame will be more widely served if it is spread out and arranged. 4But as I hesitated whether to show you everything I have already composed or still to hold some of it back, it seemed more frank and more friendly to show you everything, especially since you assure me that it will stay between you until you decide to publish it. 5For the rest, I ask that with the same frankness you point out to me whatever you think should be added, changed or left out.
6It is hard to direct one's mind so far in grief; 6hard, but still, just as you would advise a sculptor or a painter who was making a portrait of your son what he should bring out and what he should correct, so shape and guide me too, who am trying to create a likeness not fragile and perishable but immortal, as you believe: and it will be the more lasting the more true, good and finished it is. 6Farewell.