Letter 4025: If I may say so, we no longer lack a supply of chariot horses for the games — but the delay in the praetorship spurs...

Granted it may be permissible to say so, we no longer lack a supply of racing-horses for the games; but the delay of my praetorship spurs us on to desire a more generous number. If, then, the execution of my commission is agreeable, as it usually is, I wish four teams of four from the herd of the Laodiceans [the Laodicean stud], the ones that your selection picks out as the finest, to be brought to me as soon as the spring sailing season has opened up the sea. I will repay the price, whatever your letter specifies, to the agents sent for the business. And yet I ought not to have pledged this, since the good faith of friendship requires no written bond. I believe you may wonder why I do not rather make my request from your own herds, which surpass the most excellent of the Spaniards [Iberian horses] in nobility. Our city grows weary of a uniform spectacle, whose surfeit I must overcome by variety. Let it only be the task of your diligence to apply judgment and to match the renown of your own animals from others' stables. For when a friend's affair is at stake, you ought to regard these too as your own, the ones that you choose.