1The duty of my consulship laid upon me the task of thanking the emperor in the name of the state. 1When I had done this in the senate in the customary way, as suited the place and the time, I thought it most fitting for a good citizen to treat those same things at greater length and more fully in a book, first so that our emperor's virtues might be commended to him with true praise, and secondly so that future emperors might be forewarned, not as if by a teacher but still by example, by what road above all they might strive towards the same glory. 3For to prescribe what an emperor ought to be is a fine thing indeed, but burdensome and almost arrogant; 3but to praise an excellent emperor, and by this to show posterity, as if from a watchtower, a light to follow, has the same usefulness and nothing of arrogance.
4And I took no small pleasure in the fact that, when I wished to read this book to my friends, they, invited not by notes, not by programmes, but with 'if it is convenient' and 'if you are quite free' — and at Rome no one is ever quite free, nor is it ever convenient, to hear someone reading — assembled for two days in the foulest weather besides, and when my modesty wished to put an end to the reading, they insisted that I add a third day. 5Shall I think this honour was paid to me, or to literature? 5To literature, I prefer to think, which, all but extinct, is being revived.
6But on what subject did they bestow this diligence? 6On the very one which even in the senate, where we had to endure it, we used to find tiresome for even a moment of time; now people are found who are willing both to read it and to listen to it for three days, not because it is written more eloquently than before, but because it is written more freely, and therefore more gladly too. 7This too, then, will be added to our emperor's praises, that a thing once as hateful as it was false has now become as lovable as it is true. 8But I wonderfully approved both the enthusiasm of my audience and their judgement: for I noticed that the most austere passages gave the greatest satisfaction.
9I remember, indeed, that I read to few what I wrote for all; yet nonetheless, as if everyone's opinion will be the same, I rejoice in this severity of ear, and just as once theatres taught musicians to play badly, so now I am led to hope that it may come about that the same theatres teach musicians to play well. 10For all who write to please will write the sort of things they have seen to please. 10And for my part I am confident that in this kind of subject a more luxuriant style is justified, since the passages I wrote in a terser and more compressed manner, rather than those I wrote more gaily and, as it were, exuberantly, might seem far-fetched and dragged in.
10Yet I do not pray any less earnestly that the day may come at some time — and would that it had come already! — 10— when these sweet and flattering things will give way to those austere and severe ones, even from their rightful possession. 11There you have my three days' proceedings; 11now that you know of them, I wanted you, though absent, to take as much pleasure, both for literature's sake and for mine, as you could have had if you had been present. 11Farewell.