1I warmly approve of your being so grievously affected by the death of Pompeius Quintianus that you prolong your affection for the man you have lost by your longing for him, unlike most people, who love only the living, or rather pretend to love them, and do not even pretend except with those whom they see prospering; 1for they forget the unfortunate just as they forget the dead. 1But your loyalty is lasting, and your constancy in love so great that it cannot be ended except by your own death. 2And, by Hercules, Quintianus was a man whom it is fitting to love after his own example. 2He loved the fortunate, protected the unfortunate, longed for those he had lost.
2And then what integrity there was in his face, what deliberation in his speech, how evenly balanced his seriousness and his affability! 2what devotion to literature, what judgement! 2with what dutifulness he lived with a father utterly unlike him! 2how little it stood in the way of his seeming the best of men that he was the best of sons! 3But why do I inflame your grief? 3And yet you loved the young man so much that you would rather have this than silence about him, especially from me, by whose praise you think his life can be adorned, his memory prolonged, and that very youth from which he was snatched away restored.
3Farewell.