Preface. When I had gathered the favor of eloquent men either by common conversations or by gratuitous benefits, yet by no true merits, they kept urging me to gather into one body my utterances, which, often placed in offices of honor, I had poured forth to set forth the nature of public affairs, so that posterity to come might recognize both the troubles of my labors, which I sustained for the common good, and the unbought action of a sincere conscience. I kept saying that their very affection would rather work against me, so that what was now thought acceptable on account of the desires of petitioners might afterward seem insipid to readers. I added that they ought to recall the sayings of Flaccus, who warns what peril a hasty utterance may incur.
You all see that everyone demands swiftness of reply, and do you believe that I bring forth things not to be repented of? A discourse is always rustic which is either not adorned through delay with chosen thoughts, or is by no means set forth with the proprieties of words. To speak has been given us in common: ornament alone is what distinguishes the unlearned. A ninth year is granted to authors for writing: to me not even the moments of hours are afforded. As soon as I have begun, I am pressed with clamors and driven by excessive haste, lest things begun be carried out more cautiously. One man heaps upon us the frequency of an envious interruption: another chastises us with a mass of miseries: others surround us with the furious sedition of contentions. Amid these things, why do you require eloquence of dictation, where we can scarcely have an abundance of words?
Even the nights themselves are beset by an inexplicable care, lest provisions be lacking to the cities, which the people demand above all things, devoted to the belly, not to the ears. Hence it is that we are compelled to range in mind through all the provinces and ever to inquire into things enjoined, because it does not suffice to command soldiers what is to be done, unless the assiduity of the judge be seen to require it. Do not, I beg, love us hurtfully. That persuasion is to be shunned which has more of peril than of seemliness. But they wearied me the more with such an argument: 'All know you to be prefect of the praetorian seat, to which dignity public occupations, like attendants, ever stand by. For from this are demanded the expenses of the army;
from this is sought the people's sustenance without consideration of time: to this also has been added the heavy weight of judgments alone. Upon this office the laws have seemed to impose an immense burden, since for the sake of its honor they preferred that almost everything should pertain to it. For what space could you snatch from public labor, when into one breast flows together whatever the advantage of the commonwealth demands? We add also that frequent reflection often takes away from you, burdened with the turns of the quaestorship, the time of leisure, and, as if to one sweating under moderate fasces, the emperors seem to impose upon you those things which the proper judges cannot accomplish. Yet these things you do by selling nothing, but after the example of your own father you receive from those who hope only labors:
thus by granting to petitioners freely, under the gift of self-restraint, you purchase all things. The glorious conversations of kings, moreover, are known to occupy you for the greater part of the day for the public good, so that it is a weariness for the idle to await those things which you are known to sustain by continual labor. But this can rather profit you toward the suffrage of praise, if amid such great and weighty matters you have been able to bring forth things worthy to be read: and then, because your labor will be able, without any offense, to instruct unpolished men prepared for the commonwealth by a conscious eloquence, and the practice which you, tossed amid the perils of the contending, exercise, it befalls those who are placed in tranquillity to attain more happily.
Accordingly, since, with the good faith you enjoy preserved, you cannot dissemble it, if you suffer such great benefits of kings to be ignored, in vain did you prefer that they be granted with kindly haste. Do not, we beseech, recall into the obscurity of silence those who, while you spoke, deserved to receive illustrious dignities. For you undertook to describe them with true praise and in a certain way to depict them with the color of history. If you should hand these men down to be celebrated by posterity, you have, after the custom of our ancestors, fittingly taken away destruction from the dying. Then you set right by the king's authority depraved manners, you break the boldness of the transgressor, you restore fear to the laws. And do you still hesitate to publish what you prove can accord with such great advantages?
You even conceal, so to speak, the mirror of your mind, wherein every age to come might behold you. For it happens that a dissimilar son is for the most part begotten: a discourse unlike one's character can scarcely be found. This therefore is a far surer offspring of the will: for what is begotten of the secret of the breast is more truly esteemed the posterity of its author. You have also frequently spoken praises to queens and kings for the commendation of the whole, and in twelve books you have composed a history of the Goths, culling their prosperities. Since in those works your outcome was favorable, why do you hesitate to give these also to the public, who are already known to have laid the first beginnings of speaking?' I am conquered, I confess, to my own shame:
nor could I withstand such great wise men, since I saw myself blamed out of affection. Now pardon me, readers, and if there is any incautious presumption, impute it rather to those who urged me, because my judgments seem to side with him who has resolved to accuse me. And therefore what I was able to find, dictated by me in diverse public acts during the dignities of the quaestorship, the mastership, and the prefecture, I have composed in an arrangement of twelve books, so that, although the reader's attention may be roused by the diversity of cases, yet the mind may be the more effectively carried along, as it tends toward its term.
But this one thing we have not allowed others to endure, which we ourselves frequently incurred in conferring honors: unpolished and headlong dictations, which are so demanded on the sudden that they scarcely seem able even to be written. And so the formulas of all the dignities I have comprised in the sixth and seventh books, that I might provide both for myself, however late, and assist those who follow in a strait time: thus the things I have said suit both past and future, because I have set them forth not concerning persons, but concerning the very offices that seemed apt. The title of the books, the index of the work, the herald of the matters, the briefest voice of the whole discourse, I have headed with the name 'Variae,' because it was necessary for us not to assume a single style, having undertaken to admonish persons of varied kinds.
For one must speak in one way to those sated with much reading, in another to those held in suspense by moderate tasting, in another, for the sake of persuasion, to those fasting from the savor of letters, so that sometimes it is a kind of skill to avoid what pleases the learned. Accordingly, it is the fine definition of our forefathers so to speak aptly that you can persuade your hearers of the wishes you have conceived. For not in vain did prudent antiquity define three kinds of speaking: the humble, which seems to creep along by its very commonness; the middle, which neither swells with grandeur nor is thinned by smallness, but, placed between the two, enriched with its own gracefulness, is kept within its own bounds; the third kind, which is raised to the highest summit of disputation by exquisite thoughts:
namely, so that the variety of persons might obtain a congruous eloquence and, though it flowed from one breast, might yet issue forth through diverse channels, since no one obtains the name of eloquent except him who, girded with this triple virtue, stands manfully prepared for the cases that arise. To this is added that we seem to speak now to kings, now to the powers of the court, now to the most lowly, to whom it has fallen to pour forth some things in haste, but to bring forth other things considered at leisure, so that it may deservedly be called 'Variae,' since it is accomplished with such great diversity. But would that, just as we are proved to have received these things by the ancient rules, so the same might fulfill the deserts of the promised diction! Wherefore we modestly promise the humble of ourselves; the middle we pledge not improperly;
but the highest, which on account of its nobility is set in a loftier place, we do not believe ourselves to have attained. Yet nevertheless let unlawful presumptions keep silence, we who are to be read. For it is unbecoming that we should thrust forward our own disputations about ourselves, we who rather await your judgments.