instructions he nurtured my youth, and taught me to deserve those
praises he was pleased to bestow upon me. You could not give me,
then, a more important, or more agreeable, commission; nor could
I be employed in an office of higher honour, than that of choosing
a young man worthy of being father of the grandchildren of
Rusticus Arulenus; a choice I should be long in determining, were
I not acquainted with Minutius Aemilianus, who seems formed for
our purpose. He loves me with all that warmth of affection which
is usual between young men of equal years (as indeed I have the
advance of him but by a very few), and reveres me at the same
time, with all the deference due to age; and, in a word, he is no
less desirous to model himself by my instructions than I was by
those of yourself and your brother.

He is a native of Brixia, one of those provinces in Italy which still
retain much of the old modesty, frugal simplicity, and even
rusticity, of manner. He is the son of Minutius Macrinus, whose
humble desires were satisfied with standing at the head of the
equestrian order: for though he was nominated by Vespasian in the
number of those whom that prince dignified with the praetorian
office, yet, with an inflexible greatness of mind, he resolutely
preferred an honourable repose, to the ambitious, shall I call them,
or exalted, pursuits, in which we public men are engaged. His
grandmother, on the mother's side, is Serrana Procula, of
Patavium:12 you are no stranger to the character of its citizens; yet
Serrana is looked upon, even among these correct people, as an
exemplary instance of strict virtue, Acilius, his uncle, is a man of
almost exceptional gravity, wisdom, and integrity. In short, you
will find nothing throughout his family unworthy of yours.
Minutius himself has plenty of vivacity, as well as application,