Chapter 1

I express my thanks to you, most gracious Emperor; could I do so, I would also make repayment. But neither does your estate need any interchange of bounty, nor does mine supply the ability to return it. Men of private station alone have the opportunity for being liberal to one another: your favours at once surpass all others in their princely scale and demand no requital. And so 1 express my thanks—all that is in my power to do: yet in such a way as one is wont to do in the presence of God, with greater fulness of feeling than of speech. And it is not in the shrine of the imperial oracle, a place where feelings of subdued fear and reverent awe rarely permit your subject to exhibit outwardly all that he feels within; but it is at all times and in all places that I express my thanks, now silently in my own heart, now with my tongue, now in company with others, now by myself, whether I speak openly or reflect inwardly and apart, in every place, deed, habit, and season. Nor is it surprising that I set no limit to the expression of my gratitude, seeing that you do not know how to set any bound to your gracious favours. For what place, what time is there which docs not remind me of this or some similar cause for thankfulness? Do I say remind? What a weak and feeble connotation has that word! Is there any place, I say. which does not thrill and fire me with a sense of your bounty? There is no place, I say, Most Gracious Emperor, but stamps my consciousness with the wondrous image of \ our most worshipful majesty; not the Court, which was so formidable when you succeeded, and which you have made so agreeable: not the forum and basilicas, which once reechoed with legal business, but now with the taking of vows for your well-being—for under your rule who is there whose property is not secure?—; not the Senate-house, now happy in the business of passing resolutions in your honour as formerly gloomy and troubled with complaints; not the public highways where the sight of so many joyous faces suffers no one to be alone in showing delight; not the universal privacy of the home. The very bed, destined for our repose, is made more restful as we reflect upon your benefits: slumber, which blots out everything, nevertheless presents your picture to our gaze. As for that throne of honour, the curule chair surrounded with all the splendid circumstance which belongs to a rank which confers the imperium, to the proud elevation of which you have exalted me from so ordinary a station, as often as I think of it, its grandeur overpowers me and I am reduced to silence, being not merely loaded by your bounty, but overwhelmed. Your presence, indeed, is felt in all places and we are no longer surprised at the supposed extravagance of the poets who have declared that all things arc full of God. ' You surpass our hopes, you anticipate all we can desire, you outstrip our fondest wishes; and the swiftness of our thought, which claims to be something divine, is outdistanced by your benefits which outrun it. For you to fulfil a wish is more instantaneous than for us to conceive it.