1Our friend Artemidorus has altogether so kind a nature that he exaggerates the services of his friends. 1Hence he also spreads abroad my own service, true as it is, with praise beyond its merit. 2It is true that, when the philosophers had been banished from the city, I visited him at his house outside Rome, and — which made it more conspicuous, that is, more dangerous — I was praetor at the time. 2Money too, of which he then needed a rather large sum to pay off a debt contracted for the most honourable reasons, I borrowed myself, while certain great and wealthy friends of his muttered, and gave to him free of interest.
3And I did this when seven of my friends had been either put to death or banished — put to death, Senecio, Rusticus and Helvidius; banished, Mauricus, Gratilla, Arria and Fannia — and when, with so many thunderbolts hurled around me, I was scorched, as it were, and foresaw from certain sure signs that the same destruction hung over me too. 4Yet I do not believe that I have thereby earned outstanding glory, as he proclaims, but merely that I have escaped disgrace. 5For I both loved his father-in-law Gaius Musonius with admiration, as far as my age allowed, and embraced Artemidorus himself in close friendship as far back as when I was serving as a military tribune in Syria, and I first gave this proof of some natural ability, that I seemed to understand a man who was either a sage or very near and very like a sage.
6For of all who now call themselves philosophers you will find scarcely one or two of such sincerity, such truthfulness. 6I say nothing of the bodily endurance with which he bears winters and summers alike, how he yields to no labours, how he allows nothing to pleasure in food or drink, how he keeps his eyes and his mind in check. 7These things are great, but in another man; 7in him they are very small, if they are compared with his other virtues, by which he earned being chosen by Gaius Musonius as his son-in-law out of all his followers of every rank. 8When I recall these things, it is indeed pleasant that he heaps such praises on me, both with others and with you; 8yet I fear that he may exceed the measure which his kindness — for I return to where I began — is not accustomed to keep.
9For in this one thing alone a man otherwise most sensible sometimes falls into an error, honourable indeed, but an error none the less: he values his friends more highly than they deserve. 9Farewell.