1If I do anything at all with judgement, I certainly do this: I love Asinius Rufus exceptionally. 1He is an outstanding man and most devoted to good men. 1For why should I not count myself among the good as well? 1He has also embraced Cornelius Tacitus — you know what a man he is — in close friendship. 2So if you think well of us both, you must think the same of Rufus too, since likeness of character is perhaps the firmest bond for knitting friendships together. 3He has several children. 3For in this too he has done the duty of an excellent citizen, in that he chose to enjoy his wife's fertility to the full, in an age in which the rewards of childlessness make most people feel even a single son a burden.
3Despising those rewards, he has even taken on the name of grandfather. 3For he is a grandfather, and indeed through Saturius Firmus, whom you will love as I do if, like me, you get to know him more closely. 4All this is meant to let you know how large, how numerous a household you will oblige with a single favour; 4and to ask for it we are led first by a wish, and then by a certain good omen. 5For we wish and foretell for you the consulship next year: so your virtues, so the emperor's judgements bid us prophesy. 6It happens too that in the same year the eldest of Rufus' children, Asinius Bassus, will be quaestor, a young man — I am not sure whether I should say what his father wants me both to think and to say, though the young man's modesty forbids it — better than his father himself.
7It is hard for you to believe me about someone absent — although you are used to believing everything I tell you — that there is as much industry, integrity, learning, talent, application and memory in him as you will find when you have tried him. 8I wish our age were so fertile in good qualities that there were some you ought to prefer to Bassus: then I would be the first to urge and advise you to look about you and weigh at length whom above all you should choose. 9As it is — but I do not want to say anything too presumptuous about my friend; 9I say only this, that the young man is worthy for you to take him in the place of a son, after the custom of our ancestors.
9Wise men like you ought to receive from the state, as their children, such men as we usually wish to receive from nature. 10It will become you as consul to have a quaestor whose father is of praetorian rank and whose relatives are ex-consuls, to whom, in their own judgement, young as he still is, he is already in his turn a distinction. 11So grant my prayers, follow my advice, and above all forgive me if I seem to be in a hurry, first because love usually runs ahead of its own wishes; 11then because in a state where everything is done as if by those who seize it first, things that wait for the proper time come not in season but too late; 11and finally because the very anticipation of the things you long to obtain is delightful.
12Let Bassus already revere you as consul, and do you love him as your quaestor, and let us, finally, who are most devoted to you both, enjoy a double joy. 13For since we love you and Bassus so much that we would help, with all our resources, effort and influence, both him in seeking office, whoever's quaestor he might be, and whoever might be your quaestor, it will be most delightful to us if the claims both of my friendship and of your consulship direct our support to the same young man, if, in short, you above all come to support my prayers, you whose vote the senate most gladly indulges and whose testimony it trusts the most.
13Farewell.