1You congratulate me on receiving the augurate: and rightly you congratulate me, first because it is a fine thing to win the approval of so serious an emperor even in lesser matters, and then because the priesthood itself is both ancient and sacred and also holy and distinguished in this respect, that it is not taken away from a man while he lives. 2For other offices, although almost equal in rank, are taken away just as they are granted; 2in this one fortune has power only so far as to allow it to be given. 3To me, indeed, this also seems worth congratulation, that I have succeeded Julius Frontinus, a leading man, who throughout these recent years, on the day of nominations, kept nominating me to the priesthood, as if he were co-opting me into his own place; 3and the outcome has now so confirmed this that it did not seem a matter of chance.
4You, as you write, are delighted by my augurate above all because Marcus Tullius was an augur. 4For you are glad that I am following in the steps of his honours, since I long to rival him in my studies. 5But if only, just as I have obtained the same priesthood, and the consulship at a much younger age than he did, so I might, as an old man at least, attain to his genius in some degree! 6But of course the things that lie in human hands have fallen to me and to many others; 6but that which can be given only by the gods is as hard to obtain as it is presumptuous even to hope for.
6Farewell.