1You did right to promise a gladiatorial show to our people of Verona, by whom you have long been loved, looked up to and honoured. 1From there too you took your dearest and most excellent wife, to whose memory some public work or show was owed, and this above all, which is most fitting for a funeral. 2Besides, you were asked with such unanimity that to refuse would have seemed not firm but harsh. 2This too was excellent, that you were so ready and so generous in giving the show; 2for by such things too a great spirit is shown. 3I could wish that the African beasts, which you had bought in great numbers, had arrived on the appointed day: but though they failed to come, held back by a storm, you have still deserved to be given credit for what it was not your fault that you could not display.
3Farewell.