Letter 2037: Has it really pleased our common father [the emperor] to keep you detained longer than I would wish?

Has it then so pleased our common parent [father] that you must, longer than I would wish, of necessity be detained? Or is your avoidance of the affairs of the city so great that you frustrate my expectation with a dutiful pretext? And in truth nothing is done or said here that a good spirit and a sincere nature could embrace. But however these things may be, if you were acting at Rome, perhaps with our mutual help they would grow milder between us; as it is, I experience the more grievous offenses of all matters, alone as I am. By way of example take one thing, from which you may conjecture the rest. The Vestal virgins, mistresses of the sacred rite, intend to dedicate a monument of a statue to our Praetextatus. The pontiffs, having been consulted, before they weighed the reverence due to that exalted priesthood, or the merit of his long life, or the condition of the present time, gave their assent that they should set up his likeness, with the exception of a few who followed my lead. I, since I observed that such tributes neither befitted the honor of the virgins toward men nor were done according to custom, since Numa the founder, Metellus the preserver of the rites, and all the chief pontiffs never before earned such a thing, kept silent about this matter, lest, when it was disclosed to the rivals of our worship, I should create harm among those who judged it an unprecedented act; I wrote back only that the precedent must be avoided, lest a matter arisen from a just beginning should soon by canvassing pass to the unworthy. Not to speak at length, I have sent to you the very words, approved by good men but perhaps to be overcome by the count of numbers, although in the decrees of the pontiffs there is not the same form as that of the senate house. But this too ignorance will make little of. But if you were present, the soundness of two men would advance the matter greatly. Therefore, as soon as our common parent [father] emerges from the uncertainty of his illness, restore yourself to me, so that shared consolations may make the course of life fairer for us.