1All my studies, all my cares, all my diversions have been taken away, shaken off, snatched from me by grief, the very heavy grief I have felt at the death of Junius Avitus. 2He had put on the broad stripe in my house, he had been helped by my vote in seeking office; 2besides this, he so loved me, so respected me, that he treated me as the shaper of his character, as his teacher, so to speak. 3This is rare among our young men. 3For how few of them yield, as the junior, to another's age or authority? 3At once they are wise, at once they know everything, they respect no one, imitate no one, and are their own examples.
3But not Avitus, whose chief wisdom was this, that he thought others wiser, his chief learning this, that he wished to learn. 4He was always consulting about something either in literature or in the duties of life, always going away as one made better; 4and he had been made better, either by what he had heard or by the very fact that he had asked. 5What deference he showed to Servianus, a most exacting man! 5whom, when Servianus was legate and he a tribune, he so understood and won over that, when Servianus was moving from Germany to Pannonia, he followed him not as a fellow soldier but as a companion and attendant.
5With what diligence, what modesty, as quaestor, was he no less pleasant and welcome than useful to his consuls — and he served several! 5With what running about, what vigilance did he canvass for this very aedileship from which he has been snatched away! 5This is what most of all inflames my grief. 6Before my eyes there hover his wasted labours, his fruitless canvassing, and the office he only deserved; 6there comes back to my mind that broad stripe assumed in my home, there come back those first and those last votes of mine, those conversations, those consultations. 7I am moved by his youth, moved by the misfortune of his family.
7He had an aged mother, he had a wife whom he had married a year before as a girl, he had a daughter whom he had lately acknowledged. 7One day has turned so many hopes, so many joys, into their opposites. 8Just elected aedile, newly a husband, newly a father, he has left his office untouched, his mother childless, his wife a widow, his daughter an orphan who never knew her father: It adds to my tears that, being away and unaware of the impending blow, I learnt at one and the same time that he had been ill and that he had died, so that I could not grow used to the bitterest grief through fear.
8I was in such torment when I wrote this that this was all I could write; 8for I can neither think nor speak of anything else now. 8Farewell.