Letter 1014: Good fortune usually makes a man talkative, eager to burst the bounds of a quiet heart.

Joy is wont to be eloquent and, scorning the confines of a shut-up breast, to long to make itself known: but in you, my friend, prosperity has bred forgetfulness of writing. This could not serve me as a model, since the heavenly speech of our lord Gratian [the emperor] filled me with good hope and gladness. Of my own accord, therefore, I have not spared to address you, idle as you are, for the sake either of my duty or of my joy, the one of which our intimacy, the other of which the public happiness, suggested to me. Now, if it is worth the trouble, give your attention that I may make use of you for a little while. January was opening the first kalends of the year. We had come in a crowded body, in the early morning, into the senate-house, before the clear day had dissolved the dimness of night. By chance a rumor was brought that the speech of the longed-for prince had arrived late in the night. And it was true, for the weary courier of the night-watches stood by. Before the sky grew white, men ran together; with the lamps lit, the destinies of the new age were read out. Why say much? We received the light which until then we had been awaiting. "Tell me," you will say, — for that is the thing worth hearing — "what did our fathers feel about that speech?" Let the nature of things itself answer you by what votes the longed-for devotion was heard. We know how to embrace our blessings. If you believe me, even now I suffer a certain surfeit of that joy of mine. Good Nerva, vigorous Trajan, harmless Pius, Marcus full of dutifulness, were helped by their times, which then knew no other manners: here the nature of the prince is in praise, there it was the gift of an earlier age. Why, with the order reversed, should we reckon these to be examples of the noblest arts, and those to be vestiges of a former age? Let fortune protect her own benefaction and be willing to preserve these delights at least for the Roman name! Let the public happiness be bitten by no evil eye! You have heard everything, but only sipped from the very surface of the lips; the records of our senate-house will speak with you more fully. When there you find more written, judge how much more abundant the mind of one man wished for than the applause poured forth.