Letter 16: Aeneas turns priestly conflict into a meditation on courage and rhetoric.

I have heard the drama among you, and I wept for the earth itself, if war begins among priests, whose proclamation should be peace. If destruction comes from the place where salvation ought to come, what path to safety is left for us? Anyone, I think, could say this with tears. Yet I both grieve and rejoice. Experience of danger is painful, but courage in danger is the most exact test of greatness of soul. What virtue is ever acquired without a contest first? Otherwise you might call a general excellent who has never seen an enemy. We must endure and not lose heart; from war peace is made firm. If not, then we must carry the war through. You know how I treat friends. I confessed to you that I loved rhetoric, hoping to find the cure from you. The opposite happened: you increased the love rather than dissolved it, gathering a theater around my letter and stirring up applause. How, then, could anyone dishonor what you praise?