1When I came to my mother-in-law's villa at Alsium, which for some time belonged to Verginius Rufus, the place itself renewed, not without grief, my longing for that best and greatest of men. 1For he had been accustomed to frequent this retreat and even to call it the little nest of his old age. 2Wherever I went, my mind, my eyes looked for him. 2I wanted also to see his tomb, and I regretted having seen it. 3For it is still unfinished, and the cause is not the difficulty of the work, which is modest, or rather slight, but the idleness of the man to whom the care of it was entrusted.
3Indignation comes over me, along with pity, that in the tenth year after his death his remains and neglected ashes lie without an inscription, without a name, though his memory ranges with glory over the whole world. 4Yet he had given instructions and made provision that that divine and immortal deed should be inscribed in verse: 'Here lies Rufus, who once, having routed Vindex, claimed the empire not for himself but for his country.' 5So rare is loyalty in friendships, so ready the forgetting of the dead, that we ought to build even our own tombs and anticipate all the duties of our heirs. 6For who need not fear what we see has happened to Verginius?
6whose wrong his very fame makes as much better known as it makes it more shameful. 6Farewell.