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because, as you say, I hindered their building operations by the letter I wrote. In the same despatch also you request me to release them from my objection and enable them to go on building as soon as possible, so that they may not find winter suddenly upon them; and at the same time you complain with much bitterness that I forbade them to exact a tax[1] before I had investigated the matter and given them leave to do so, which you said practically meant putting a stop to their building, since I could only make the investigation after I returned from Cilicia for the winter.
3 On all these counts, listen to my reply and recognize the fairness of your remonstrance. In the first place, when I had been approached by men who declared that they were the victims of intolerable exactions, what unfairness was there in my writing that they[2] should hold their hands until I had investigated the affair and what led up to it? Do you really suppose that I could do nothing before winter? for that is what you write. Really! as though I had to come to them, and not they to me, to hold an investigation. "All that distance?" you say. What? when you gave them the letter in which you pleaded with me not to hinder their building before winter, were you then under the impression that they would not come to me? Anyhow what they did was ludicrous; the letter they brought me, asking that it might be possible for them to do the work in the summer, that letter they did not put into my hands till after midwinter. But let me tell you firstly, those who object to pay the tax are far more numerous than those who press for its exaction, and secondly, that in spite of that I am going to do what, I take it,