Latin Texts & Translations

DXIV (F XIII, 21)

TO SERVIUS SULPICIUS RUFUS (IN ACHAIA) ROME

M. Aemilius Avianius has always from his earliest manhood shewn me attention and affection. He is both a good and cultivated man, and worthy of your favour in every kind of employment. If I had thought that he was at Sicyon, and had I not been told that he was still staying where I left him at Cibyra, there had been no necessity for my writing at any greater length to you about him. For he would of himself have secured your affection by his own character and culture without anyone's recommendation, in as great a degree as he enjoys mine and that of all his other friends. But as I suppose him to be away, I commend with more

than common earnestness his family at Sicyon and his property, especially his freedman C. Avianius Hammonius, whom indeed I commend to you on his own account also. For, while he has earned my esteem by his remarkable loyalty and fidelity to his patron, he has also done me personally some valuable services, and stood by me in the time of my greatest distress with a fidelity and affection as great as though I had myself liberated him. Accordingly, I beg you to support Hammonius for himself; as well as in his patron's business, and to go so far as to like and reckon among your friends both his agent, whom I am commending to you, and Avianius himself. You will find him modest and serviceable, and worthy of your affection. Good-bye.