To the holy lord, most blessed and most pious brother, Bishop Apollinaris, from his brother Avitus. After the completion of the little books which my own arrangement did not publish as it had wished, but which your pious haste and that of certain companions — affectionate indeed, yet ill-considered — snatched forth prematurely, you further compel me that there be given to you especially those verses which I composed for our venerable sister Fuscina, on the consoling praise of chastity. When I, after announcing the poem's end, would more rightly have called them an epigram, you first named them with the title of 'book,' asserting that this word befitted their length. Wherefore have me in this matter too as a servant to your judgment, or rather to your affection;
since it is surely unjust that I should contradict in small matters the one whom I obeyed in greater ones. But let your piety remember to give this very little book, since you so call it — which discourses rather intimately either of the religion of our common parents, or of the virgins of our family — to be read only by those whom in truth either the bond of kinship or the purpose of religion joins to us. For you can measure from the quality of the matter that what was composed by private meditation concerning the devotion of a consecrated sister, I scarcely confess even to you, overcome by your frequent command, when or in what manner I would wish it to come into the hands of strangers;
for the rest, I shall indeed draw back my foot from making verses and joining metrical feet, unless perhaps the reason of some evident cause should wring out the necessity of some epigram; whose brevity I promise will be so great that you yourself would not presume to give it another name. For it befits my long-standing profession, and now also our age, if anything is to be written, rather to spend labor and time on a weightier style, and not to linger over what sings by keeping the measure of syllables for the few who understand, but over what serves many readers with the measured edification of the faith.