It is known to all that your Highness measures not the hindrances of the times, but the vows of your subjects. Under the security and gladness of this confidence, to our most glorious prince we, though absent in body, present ourselves in mind. And although my lineage, servant to you, has discharged this from devotion, yet not so much my ancestral debts as the benefits bestowed upon me have made me a debtor of your grace. My people are indeed yours, but it delights me more to serve you than to preside over them. Roman devotion has ever, from the forefathers of my race, drawn this in spirit among you and your predecessors: that we reckoned that splendor the greater which your Highness might hold out through the titles of military service:
and by all my ancestors that was ever more coveted which they might take from princes, than what they had brought from their fathers. And although we seem to rule our own nation, we believe ourselves to be appointed nothing other than your soldiers. Your prosperity imparts to us the gift of joys: whatever you there provide for the safety of all is ours also. Through us you administer the expanses of far-off regions: our fatherland is your world. The light of the East touches its own Gaul, and the ray which is believed to rise in those parts shines again here. We do not indeed grasp the radiance of your countenance by beholding it: but the light of the serenity which you diffuse everywhere, we possess by longing.
The dominion divinely bestowed on you no barrier confines, nor is the diffusion of your happy scepters limited by any bounds of provinces. Be it said, saving the honor of the Divinity. It does not diminish your majesty that not all are able to hasten to you: it suffices well enough for the reverence owed you, that all adore you from their own seats. You who by valor have risen over the world, by good fortune reign over the West: you may be loved everywhere, even though it is not granted to all to gaze upon you. But since this is rightly said of the whole world, conjecture now how much they owe whom you exalt with honors, whom you attach as partners of all your triumphs and successes by the titles of your dignities;
so that thus the glories of your valor may be ours, and whatever the fountain of good things has done may pertain to the ornaments of those it has honored. I offer therefore, O renowned among princes, the services of a letter, the vows of thanksgiving; I await the oracle of your august speech; I am eager, if there be anything you would deign to command. For even if your Perpetuity does not believe that it needs our service, yet whoever has merited to serve so happy a lord serves as a soldier for himself. Let then the far distance of the Eastern nations too, as a suppliant, offer up its untamed allegiance; let it demand that our sovereign preside. Let the Parthian leader, for the advantage of peace, rejoice to pass over into the Roman empire.
Let the Indian himself, after experience of your mild countenance, his shrill voice subdued, learn through a Greek interpreter the laws by which he is bidden to serve. If there is any heat with which the southern axis burns, temper it with coolness, and subdue by reverence whatever before you had been untamed by nature. Whoever does not desire it, let him receive the scepters of unconquered religion pressing upon him. Let religion be extended through you no less than by power—religion which, for peoples in servitude, both builds up truth and holds out liberty toward the things that are heavenly and alike to be venerated: and by whose mediation, you leaning upon the summit of eternal salvation, it befits us long to serve you, not by human order only, but also by divine love.