Letter 10002: The grain supply from Africa has been interrupted; I write to report the situation and to request the imperial...

For some time now, as the matter itself shows, the thoughts of your divine power have looked upon me with favoring goodwill; for otherwise I should not have come forward among the first, or as the first, before emperors who bestow nothing rashly. I seem, then, to have been kept waiting until now together with the commonwealth, which, when it summoned the care of your Majesty to the far-off regions of the empire, found among you judgments already deliberated upon, O lords and emperors three times invoked [the imperial college addressed in the plural ddd. nnn. = domini nostri]. It is therefore too narrow a thing that I should give thanks to your eternity merely for the honor I have received: you have often made prefects, and over your boundless reign you will make them still, but men whom assiduity and long practice have pressed forward; whereas me, long since a man of proconsular rank, now this long while yielding to the ways of the powerful, you have willed to take up the magistracy before I might expect it. Now I beg and entreat you to assist your own act with perpetual favor. It is a delightful thing to preside over one's fellow citizens, but a difficult thing to please them. For a harsh firmness is always something exacting both to oneself and among those one knows. And what of that which most often happens, that some men, by the long exercise of power, presently lose their judgment? Those who have given my honor will not have abandoned it; I, for my part, will strive as I am able, that an earlier reputation may not be seen to have deceived your clemency concerning me: it will be the part of your divine power to safeguard our common cause. For in the case of good magistrates the report of the age seeks a greater glory than the report of judges.