Letter 2053: My return and arrival in the city -- which is always welcome to everyone -- did not match our expectations in terms...

Your return, and your renewed visits to our homeland, which are always welcome to everyone, by no means answered our haste in proportion to our expectation. If you want the reasons, hear them. In the first place, that we may prefer matters of common concern to private ones, no import is increasing the grain supply of our city. Hope itself, which is wont to nourish spirits in adversity, refuses to promise any escape, since a barren year has not even returned the seeds entrusted to the soil. Next, that we may speak to you of a household concern, a military requisition is pressing hard upon our estate at Ostia. We invoke the empty name of the laws. Let the gods see to the outcome of the case. Meanwhile we are bitten, not by the fear of loss, but by the injustice done to fairness. The deliberation of our colleagues, which had summoned me, has restored to our eternal emperors the choice of men to be sent as envoys into Africa. The senate's deliberation therefore ceases; let us not be summoned. [LUI; before the year 395.]