For that presumption therefore you will debit the responsibility to yourself, and will grant yourself pardon on the score of my offence. Consequently as all those methods of paying you reverence are open to everybody else, to me is left only the presumption of treating you with more intimate respect. § 1.1.1 PREFACE IN THE FORM OF A LETTER: PLINIUS SECUNDUS TO HIS DEAR VESPASIAN, GREETING MOST Gracious Highness (let this title, a supremely true one, be yours, while that of 'Most Eminent' grows to old age with your sire) - I have resolved to recount to you, in a somewhat presumptuous letter, The offspring of my latest travail, my volumes of Natural History (a novel task for the native Muses of your Roman citizens) - For 'twas e'er your way, To deem my trifles something worth - to give a passing touch of polish to my "opposite number" - you recognize even this service slang - Catullus (for he, as you know, by interchanging the first syllables made himself a trifle harsher than he wished to be considered by his 'darling Veraniuses and Fabulluses') and at the same time that my present sauciness may effect what in the case of another impudent letter of mine lately you complained of as not coming off - that it may result in something getting done, and everyone may know on what equal terms the empire lives with you - you with a triumph to your name and censorial rank, six times consul, colleague in tribune's authority, and (a service that you have made more illustrious than these in rendering it equally to your father and to the equestrian order) commander of his bodyguard and all this in your public life - and then what a good comrade to us in the companionship of the camp! Nor has fortune's grandeur made any change in you save in enabling you to bestow all the benefit you desire.
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