Letter 3014: You ask me to reply -- your letters are practically a challenge to a duel.

You ask that I reply: this is a declaration of contest issued by my letters. But where am I to get, advancing as I am into heavy years, that aged and comic wit by which you rival the men of old? And yet the despair I feel over my own pen shall not abandon your wish. For what shame is there in being defeated after one has confessed? This too compelled me to write back: I feared that by the example of my own halting I might give you a kind of formula for silence, and I perceived that more harm would fall back upon me if your standing-off were to imitate me keeping silent than if my own daring were to imitate one superior to me. You yourself will judge how much, out of love for you, I have done this against my own modesty. Meanwhile, the fact that you are well is sweet, although you have added that there is great need that the sudden onset of your years not forestall our return. I do not wish you to call your years to the reckoning: confidence of health lies in one's strength. And since the guardianship of your character shrinks from spending those strengths, I hope the gods will bring it to pass that you remain sound in life up to the bounds which the determination of the ancients granted to the age of man. Farewell. XVI.

Petis, ut respondeam : litteris meis dennntiatio ista certaminis est. sed unde mihi qnamqnam procedenti in annos graves senile illnd et comicum, quo tn veteres aemn- u laris? nec tamen destilnet voluntatem tuam stili mei desperatio. quis enim pudor est vinei post confessionem ? illnd qnoqne me ad rescribendum coegit, qnod timni cessa- tionis exemplo quandam tibi silentii formulam dare plnsqne in me reditnmm frandis adverti, si tna offensio imitaretur tacentem, quam si ansns meus snperiorem. aesti- 2 mabis ipse, qnanto hoc tni amore adversnm verecnndiam meam fecerim. interea, qnod 20 vales , dnlce est , quamvis adieceris , canto esse opus , ne forte reditnm nostram aevi tni snbita praevortant. nolo annos ad calculum voces: fiducia salutis in viribns est. qnas cnm vitet expendere tntela mornm tnorum , spera confecturos deos , ut maneas vitae integer in metas, qnas veternm definitio dedit saecnlo. vale. XVI.