Letter 9025: You complain that your camp duties keep you exceedingly busy, yet, as though your time were all your own, you read...

To Mamilianus. You complain that your camp duties keep you exceedingly busy, yet, as though your time were all your own, you read my sportive trifles, approve them, ask for more, and spur me on with great importunity to compose others like them. I am beginning to seek not only amusement from this kind of literary work, but fame as well, now that I read your verdict on them, considering the weight of your judgment and learning, and, above all, your character for truth. At present I have some law cases which take up not my entire time, but a considerable part of it; when they are finished, I will send some more products of the same Muses to your kindly lap. You will give my little sparrows and doves leave to fly among your eagles, if such is their pleasure and yours; but, if they fail to please you, you will see to it that they are confined with a cage or a nest. Farewell.

L To Mamilianus. You complain that your camp duties keep you exceedingly busy, yet, as though your time were all your own, you read my sportive trifles, approve them, ask for more, and spur me on with great importunity to compose others like them. I am beginning to seek not only amusement from this kind of literary work, but fame as well, now that I read your verdict on them, considering the weight of your judgment and learning, and, above all, your character for truth. At present I have some law cases which take up not my entire time, but a considerable part of it; when they are finished, I will send some more products of the same Muses to your kindly lap. You will give my little sparrows and doves leave to fly among your eagles, if such is their pleasure and yours; but, if they fail to please you, you will see to it that they are confined with a cage or a nest. Farewell.

C. PLINIUS MAMILIANO SUO S. Quereris de turba castrensium negotiorum et, tamquam summo otio perfruare, lusus et ineptias nostras legis amas flagitas, meque ad similia condenda non mediocriter incitas. Incipio enim ex hoc genere studiorum non solum oblectationem verum etiam gloriam petere, post iudicium tuum viri eruditissimi gravissimi ac super ista verissimi. Nunc me rerum actus modice sed tamen distringit; quo finito aliquid earundem Camenarum in istum benignissimum sinum mittam. Tu passerculis et columbulis nostris inter aquilas vestras dabis pennas, si tamen et tibi placebunt; si tantum sibi, continendos cavea nidove curabis. Vale.