Letter 10046: The matter of the candidate you recommended has been handled as you wished, though not without some difficulty that...

Even if ancient practice had not assigned to the abstracts of the census [registers of the senatorial property tax] that are to be sent to Your Clemency any regular course or fixed order, Our Lords the Emperors Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius [Valentinian II, Theodosius I, and Arcadius, the three reigning Augusti], renowned victors and triumphators, ever Augusti, the diligence of this good age would nonetheless require the formal record of the public accounting. For it is fitting that the rulers and parents of the human race be informed of what the admission of new senators adds to the venerable order, or what is subtracted from it through the exemptions claimed for the gleba [the senatorial land-tax owed by the order]. Of these matters the quarterly account, which I have duly received from the census office and appended to the pages of this report, will furnish to Your Eternity a faithful indication, so that Your Majesty may learn what number of colleagues has flowed into the most ample Curia [the Senate], and what either the registration of a new member has added to the senatorial assessments by way of increase, or the removal of an old one has cut away.