Letter 3012: Your servant delivered two letters from you, and I would be guilty of bad faith if I did not reply in kind.

Your footman delivered two letters to me; I would be charged with fraud had I not returned just as many. In both you pledged that you would return to Rome, if your years allow it. You had often written the same thing; I no longer set any store by your bonds. To repeat a promise is a rehearsal of deceit. I know that old men grow slow to take up labor, but because faults increase with time, you must be drawn to me tomorrow, before a longer span of days makes your excuse the more justified. Nestor, surely, in the third generation of his life, demanded no exemption from military service, nor did the aged counselor [Phoenix] excuse Achilles on the ground of his age's chill. And surely not much of a journey lies between us: Spoletium [Spoleto] is our suburb. While you mull over your poems, while you compose epigrams upon the groves or rivers offered to you, the feeling of toil is beguiled by learned thoughts. [The remainder of the manuscript transmits only the editor's critical apparatus, recording variant readings among the manuscripts (P, F) and the conjectures of earlier editors: e.g., "openly" (the words "for it can" omitted in F); "each by itself, the material" (I, a part of the material in P, a part of the material in F); "it drips" (F); "but already an indulgence has been declared to me" (F); "we have described" (Juretus, "concerning it we have written" in PF); "we have sent" (F); "of the best" (P, first hand); "of his age" (F); "Achilles" (F); the phrase "offered ... rivers" omitted in P, "offered places or men" (Mommsen); "rivers" (Scioppius, "all" in PDP); "you make" (Pr., "you compose" in F). Heading: Book III, 75; xiii.]

Binas ad me litteras pedisequus tuus detulit: fraudis arguerer, nisi totidem red- didissem. utrisque te rediturum Romam, si per annos liceat, spopondisti. saepe nu- 25 mero idem scripseras; nihil iam moror syngraphas tuas. iterare promissum fallaciae meditatio est. scio lentos ad capessendum laborem senes fieri, sed quia crescunt vitia cum tempore, in cra^ es mihi adtrahendns, priusquam iustiorem veniam faciat longior 2 dies. nullam certe Nestor tertio aevi sui saeculo militiae vacationem poposcit, nec Achilli excusavit aetatis suae frigus senex monitor. et certe haud multum itineris so interiacet. Spoletium suburbanitas nostra est. dum carmina tua ruminas, dum epi- grammata oblatis lucis aut amnibus facis, fallitur doctis cogitationibus sensus laboris. fort, propalam 3 enim om. F potest singulas F per se materia] ego, pars materia P, pars materiae F 4 stiUat F 5 sed iam mihl uenia indicta est F 7 descripsimus] Juretus, de eo scripsimus PF 8 misimus F 20 obtimorum P 1 m, aetatis suae F 30 achiUem F 32 oblatis — amnibus om. P, oblatis locis aut hominibus Mornmaen amnibus] ScioppiuB^ omnibus PDP facis] Pr^ componis F LIBER m. 75 xmi.