A Slip of the Tongue in Greeting (16-19)

But, if I must make a human apology for what has happened, there is nothing strange, if a fervent desire for your good opinion in all that is best was too strong and in my utter confusion I stumbled into the opposite effect. A man might also be startled away from proper deliberation by the crowd of soldiers pushing their way to the front or not waiting their turn in presenting their petitions.

But I know that you at any rate have taken the affair as a sign of modesty and simplicity and a mind un-debased and unsophisticated, even if the others referred it to ignorance or bad training or idiocy. Excessive boldness in such matters is not far off audacity and shamelessness. May I never make such a slip, or, if I do, may I happen on some lucky phrase!

Indeed they say that something like this happened to the first Augustus. It happened that he had decided a certain case correctly and acquitted a defendant who had been unjustly prosecuted on a most serious charge. The man acknowledged his gratitude in a loud voice: “Thank you, Emperor, for your bad and unjust judgment!” Augustus’s courtiers were furious and would have torn him to pieces, but the emperor said, “Calm your anger. It is his meaning, not his words, that you must consider.” That was his answer, but if you look at my

Having now reached this point, I think I may reasonably be afraid of something else: some may think the slip deliberate, a pretext for writing this defence. May my composition, dearest Asclepius, be such that all may see it as a starting point of a display, not as a defence.