| nan | To Septicius. You have constantly urged me to collect and publish the more highly finished of the letters that I may have written. I have made such a collection, but without preserving the order in which they were composed, as I was not writing a historical narrative. So I have taken them as they happened to come to hand. I can only hope that you will not have cause to regret the advice you gave, and that I shall not repent having followed it; for I shall set to work to recover such letters as have up to now been tossed on one side, and I shall not keep back any that I may write in the future. Farewell.. ,To Arrianus. As I see that your arrival is likely to be later than I expected, I forward you the speech which I promised in an earlier letter. I beg that you will read and revise it as you have done with other compositions of mine, because I think none of my previous works is written in quite the same style. I have tried to imitate, at least in manner and turns of phrase, your old favourite, Demosthenes, and Calvus, to whom I have recently taken a great fancy; for to catch the fire and power of such acknowledged stylists is only given to "the heaven-inspired few". * I hope you will not think me conceited if I say that the subject-matter was not unworthy of such imitation, for throughout the whole argument I found something that kept rousing me from my sleepy and confirmed indolence, that is to say, as far as a person of my temperament can be roused. Not that I abandoned altogether the pigments of our master Cicero; when an opportunity arose for a pleasant little excursion from the main path of my argument I availed myself of it, as my object was to be terse without being unnecessarily dry. Nor must you think that I am apologising for these few passages. For just to make your eye for faults the keener, I will confess that both my friends here and myself have no fear of publishing the speech, if you will but set your mark of approval against the passages that possibly show my folly. I must publish something, and I only hope that the best thing for the purpose may be this volume which is ready finished. That is the prayer of a lazy man, is it not? but there are several reasons why I must publish, and the strongest is that the various copies I have lent out are said to still find readers, though by this time they have lost the charm of novelty. Of course, it may be that the booksellers say this to flatter me. Well, let them flatter, so long as fibs of this kind encourage me to study the harder. Farewell. ,To Caninius Rufus. How is Comum looking, your darling spot and mine? And that most charming villa of yours, what of it, and its portico where it is always spring, its shady clumps of plane trees, its fresh crystal canal, and the lake below that gives such a charming view? How is the exercise ground, so soft yet firm to the foot; how goes the bath that gets the sun's rays so plentifully as he journeys round it? What too of the big banqueting halls and the little rooms just for a few, and the retiring rooms for night and day? Have they full possession of you, and do they share your company in turn? or are you, as usual, continually being called away to attend to private family business? You are indeed a lucky man if you can spend all your leisure there; if you cannot, your case is that of most of us. But really it is time that you passed on your unimportant and petty duties for others to look after, and buried yourself among your books in that secluded yet beautiful retreat. Make this at once the business and the leisure of your life, your occupation and your rest; let your waking hours be spent among your books, and your hours of sleep as well. Mould something, hammer out something that shall be known as yours for all time. Your other property will find a succession of heirs when you are gone; what I speak of will continue yours for ever - if once it begins to be. I know the capacity and inventive wit that I am spurring on. You have only to think of yourself as the able man others will think you when you have realised your ability. Farewell. ,To Pompeia Celerina, his mother-in-law. What treasures you have in your villas at Ocriculum, at Narnia, at Carsulae and Perusia! Even a bathing place at Narnia! My letters - for now there is no need for you to write - will have shown you how pleased I am, or rather the short letter will which I wrote long ago. The fact is, that some of my own property is scarcely so completely mine as is some of yours; the only difference being that I get more thoroughly and attentively looked after by your servants than I do by my own. You will very likely find the same thing yourself when you come to stay in one of my villas. I hope you will, in the first place that you may get as much pleasure out of what belongs to me as I have from what belongs to you, and in the second that my people may be roused a little to a sense of their duties. I find them rather remiss in their behaviour and almost careless. But that is their way; if they have a considerate master, their fear of him grows less and less as they get to know him, while a new face sharpens their attention and they study to gain their master's good opinion, not by looking after his wants but those of his guests. Farewell. ,To Voconius Romanus. Did you ever see a man more abject and fawning than Marcus Regulus has been since the death of Domitian? His misdeeds were better concealed during that prince's reign, but they were every bit as bad as they were in the time of Nero. He began to be afraid that I was angry with him and he was not mistaken, for I certainly was annoyed. After doing what he could to help those who were prosecuting Rusticus Arulenus, he had openly exulted at his death, and went so far as to publicly read and then publish a pamphlet in which he violently attacks Rusticus and even calls him "the Stoics' ape," adding that "he is marked with the brand of Vitellius." * You recognise, of course, the Regulian style! He tears to pieces Herennius Senecio so savagely that Metius Carus said to him, "What have you to do with my dead men? Did I ever worry your Crassus or Camerinus?" - these being some of Regulus's victims in the days of Nero. Regulus thought I bore him malice for this, and so he did not invite me when he read his pamphlet. Besides, he remembered that he once mortally attacked me in the court of the centumviri. ** I was a witness on behalf of Arionilla, the wife of Timon, at the request of Rusticus Arulenus, and Regulus was conducting the prosecution. We on our side were relying for part of the defence on a decision of Metius Modestus, an excellent man who had been banished by Domitian and was at that moment in exile. This was Regulus's opportunity. "Tell me, Secundus," said he, "what you think of Modestus." You see in what peril I should have placed myself if I had answered that I thought highly of him, and how disgraceful it would have been if I had said that I thought ill of him. I fancy it must have been the gods who came to my rescue. "I will tell you what I think of him," I said, "when the Court has to give a decision on the point." He returned to the charge Well, now the fellow is conscience-stricken, and buttonholes first Caecilius Celer and then implores Fabius Justus to reconcile me to him. Not content with that, he makes his way in to see Spurinna, and begs and prays of him - you know what an abject coward he is when he is frightened - as follows. "Do go," says he, "and call on Pliny in the morning - early in the morning, for my suspense is unbearable - and do what you can to remove his anger against me." I was early awake that day, when a message came from Spurinna, "I am coming to see you." I sent back word, "I will come and see you." We met at the portico of Livia, just as we were each of us on the way to see the other. He explained his commission from Regulus and added his own entreaties, but did not press the point too strongly, as became a worthy gentleman asking a favour for a worthless acquaintance. This was my answer That practically closed the conversation. I did not wish it to go any further, so that I might not commit myself until Mauricus arrived. Moreover, I am quite aware that Regulus is a difficult bird to net. He is rich, he is a shrewd intriguer, he has no inconsiderable body of followers and a still larger circle of those who fear him, and fear is often a more powerful factor than affection. But, after all, these are bonds that may be shattered and weakened, for a bad man's influence is as little to be relied upon as is the man himself. Moreover, let me repeat that I am waiting for Mauricus. He is a man of sound judgment and sagacity, which he has learned by experience, and he can gauge what is likely to happen in the future from what has occurred in the past. I shall be guided by him, and either strike a blow or set aside my weapons just as he thinks best. I have written you this letter because it is only right, considering our regard for one another, that you should be acquainted not only with what I have said and done, but also with my plans for the future. Farewell. ,To Cornelius Tacitus. You will laugh, and I give you leave to. You know what sort of sportsman I am, but I, even I, have bagged three boars, each one of them a perfect beauty. "What!" you will say, "YOU!" Yes, I, and that too without any violent departure from my usual lazy ways. I was sitting by the nets; I had by my side not a hunting spear and a dart, but my pen and writing tablets. I was engaged in some composition and jotting down notes, so that I might have full tablets to take home with me, even though my hands were empty. You need not shrug your shoulders at study under such conditions. It is really surprising how the mind is stimulated by bodily movement and exercise. I find the most powerful incentive to thought in having the woods all about me, in the solitude and the silence which is observed in hunting. So when next you go hunting, take my advice and carry your writing tablets with you as well as your luncheon basket and your flask. You will find that Minerva loves to wander on the mountains quite as much as Diana. Farewell. ,To Octavius Rufus. See on what a pinnacle you have placed me by giving me the same power and royal will that Homer attributed to Jupiter, Best and Greatest ,To Saturninus. Your letter, asking me to send you one of my compositions, came at an opportune moment, for I had just made up my mind to do so. So you were spurring a willing horse, and you have not only spoiled your only chance of making excuses for declining, but have enabled me to press work upon you without feeling ashamed at asking the favour. For it would be equally unbecoming for me to hesitate about accepting your offer as for you who made it to look upon it as a bore. However, you must not expect anything of an original kind from a lazy man like me. I shall only ask you to find time to again look through the speech which I made to my townsfolk at the dedication of the public library. I remember that you have already criticised a few points therein, but merely in a general way, and I now beg that you will not only criticise it as a whole, but will apply your pencil to particular passages as well, in your severest manner. For even after a thorough revision it will still be open to us to publish or suppress it as we think fit. Very likely the revision will help us out of our hesitation and enable us to decide one way or the other. By looking through it again and again we shall either find that it is not worth publication or we shall render it worthy by the way we revise it. What makes me doubtful is rather the subject-matter than the actual composition. It is perhaps a shade too laudatory and ostentatious. And this will be more than our modesty can carry, however plain and unassuming the style in which it is written, especially as I have to enlarge on the munificence of my relatives as well as on my own. It is a ticklish and dangerous subject, even when one can flatter one's self that there was no way of avoiding it. For if people grow impatient at hearing the praises of others, how much more difficult must it be to prevent a speech becoming tedious when we sing our own praises or those of our family? We look askance even at unpretentious honesty, and do so all the more when its fame is trumpeted abroad. In short, it is only the good action that is done by stealth and passes unapplauded which protects the doer from the carping criticism of the world. For this reason I have often debated whether I ought to have composed the speech, such as it is, simply to suit my own feelings, or whether I should have looked beyond myself to the public. I am inclined to the former alternative by the thought that many actions which are necessary to the performance of an object lose their point and appositeness when that object is attained. I will not weary you with examples further than to ask whether anything could have been more appropriate than my gracing in writing the reasons which prompted my generosity. By so doing, the result was that I grew familiar with generous sentiments; the more I discussed the virtue the more I saw its beauties, and above all I saved myself from the reaction that often follows a sudden fit of open-handedness. From all this there gradually grew up within me the habit of despising money, and whereas nature seems to have tied men down to their money bags to guard them, I was enabled to throw off the prevailing shackles of avarice by my long and carefully reasoned love of generosity. Consequently my munificence appeared to me to be all the more worthy of praise, inasmuch as I was drawn to it by reason and not by any sudden impulse. Again, I also felt that I was promising not mere games or gladiatorial shows, but an annual subscription for the upbringing of freeborn youths. The pleasures of the eye and ear never lack eulogists; on the contrary, they need rather to be put in the background than in the foreground by speakers Beyond all this, however, there is a special obstacle in the way of publishing the speech. I delivered it not before the people but before decurions, * not in public but in the Council Chamber. So I am afraid that it may look inconsistent if, after avoiding the applause and cheers of the crowd when I delivered the speech, I now seek for that applause by publishing it, and if, after getting the common people, whose interests I was seeking, removed from the threshold and the walls of the Chamber - to prevent the appearance of courting popularity - I should now seem to deliberately seek the acclamations of those who are only interested in my munificence to the extent of having a good example shown them. Well, I have told you the grounds of my hesitation, but I shall follow the advice you give me, for its weight will be reason sufficient for me. Farewell. ,To Minucius Fundanus. It is surprising how if you take each day singly here in the city you pass or seem to pass your time reasonably enough when you take stock thereof, but how, when you put the days together, you are dissatisfied with yourself. If you ask any one, "What have you been doing to-day?" he will say, "Oh, I have been attending a coming-of-age function; I was at a betrothal or a wedding; so-and-so asked me to witness the signing of a will; I have been acting as witness to A, or I have been in consultation with B." All these occupations appear of paramount importance on the day in question, but if you remember that you repeat the round day after day, they seem a sheer waste of time, especially when you have got away from them into the country; for then the thought occurs to you, "What a number of days I have frittered away in these chilly formalities!" That is how I feel when I am at my Laurentine Villa and busy reading or writing, or even when I am giving my body a thorough rest and so repairing the pillars of my mind. I hear nothing and say nothing to give me vexation; no one comes backbiting a third party, and I myself have no fault to find with anyone except it be with myself when my pen does not run to my liking. I have no hopes and fears to worry me, no rumours to disturb my rest. I hold converse with myself and with my books. It is a genuine and honest life; such leisure is delicious and honourable, and one might say that it is much more attractive than any business. The sea, the shore, these are the true secret haunts of the Muses, and how many inspirations they give me, how they prompt my musings! Do, I beg of you, as soon as ever you can, turn your back on the din, the idle chatter, and the frivolous occupations of Rome, and give yourself up to study or recreation. It is better, as our friend Attilius once very wittily and very truly said, to have no occupation than to be occupied with nothingness. Farewell. ,To Attius Clemens. If ever there was a time when this Rome of ours was devoted to learning, it is now. There are many shining lights, of whom it will be enough to mention but one. I refer to Euphrates the philosopher. * I saw a great deal of him, even in the privacy of his home life, during my young soldiering days in Syria, and I did my best to win his affection, though that was not a hard task, for he is ever easy of access, frank, and full of the humanities that he teaches. I only wish that I had been as successful in fulfilling the hopes he then formed of me as he has been increasing his large stock of virtues, though possibly it is I who now admire them the more because I can appreciate them the better. Even now my appreciation is not as complete as it might be. It is only an artist who can thoroughly judge another painter, sculptor, or image-maker, and so too it needs a philosopher to estimate another philosopher at his full merit. But so far as I can judge, Euphrates has many qualities so conspicuously brilliant that they arrest the eyes and attention even of those who have but modest pretensions to learning. His reasoning is acute, weighty, and elegant, often attaining to the breadth and loftiness that we find in Plato. His conversation flows in a copious yet varied stream, strikingly pleasant to the ear, and with a charm that seizes and carries away even the reluctant hearer. Add to this a tall, commanding presence, a handsome face, long flowing hair, a streaming white beard - all of which may be thought accidental adjuncts and without significance, but they do wonderfully increase the veneration he inspires. There is no studied negligence in his dress, it is severely plain but not austere; when you meet him you revere him without shrinking away in awe. His life is purity itself, but he is just as genial; his lash is not for men but for their vices; for the erring he has gentle words of correction rather than sharp rebuke. When he gives advice you cannot help listening in rapt attention, and you hope he will go on persuading you even when the persuasion is complete. He has three children, two of them sons, whom he has brought up with the strictest care. His father-in-law is Pompeius Julianus, a man of great distinction, but whose chief title to fame is that though, as ruler of a province, he might have chosen a son-in-law of the highest social rank, he preferred one who was distinguished not for social dignities but for wisdom. Yet why describe at greater length a man whose society I can no longer enjoy? Is it to make myself feel my loss the more? For my time is all taken up by the duties of an office - important, no doubt, but tedious in the extreme. I sit on the magistrates' bench; I countersign petitions, I make out the public accounts; I write hosts of letters, but what unliterary productions they are! ** Sometimes - but how seldom I get the opportunity - I complain to Euphrates about these uncongenial duties. He consoles me and even assures me that there is no more noble part in the whole of philosophy than to be a public official, to hear cases, pass judgment, explain the laws and administer justice, and so practise in short what the philosophers do but teach. But he never can persuade me of this, that it is better to be busy as I am than to spend whole days in listening to and acquiring knowledge from him. That makes me the readier to urge you, whose time is your own, to let him put a finish and polish upon you when you come to town, and I hope you will come all the sooner on that account. I am not one of those - and there are many of them - who grudge to others the happiness they are debarred from themselves; on the contrary, I feel a very lively sense of pleasure in seeing my friends abounding in joys that are denied to me. Farewell. 0 ,To Fabius Justus. It is quite a long time since I had a letter from you. "Oh," you say, "there has been nothing to write about." But at least you might write and say just that, or you might send me the line with which our grandfathers used to begin their letters ,To Calestrius Tiro. I have suffered a most grievous loss, if loss is a word that can be applied to my being bereft of so distinguished a man. Corellius Rufus is dead, and what makes my grief the more poignant is that he died by his own act. Such a death is always most lamentable, since neither natural causes nor Fate can be held responsible for it. When people die of disease there is a great consolation in the thought that no one could have prevented it; when they lay violent hands on themselves we feel a pang which nothing can assuage in the thought that they might have lived longer. Corellius, it is true, felt driven to take his own life by Reason - and Reason is always tantamount to Necessity with philosophers - and yet there were abundant inducements for him to live. His conscience was stainless, his reputation beyond reproach; he stood high in men's esteem. Moreover, he had a daughter, a wife, a grandson, and sisters, and, besides all these relations, many genuine friends. But his battle against ill-health had been so long and hopeless that all these splendid rewards of living were outweighed by the reasons that urged him to die. I have heard him say that he was first attacked by gout in the feet when he was thirty-three years of age. He had inherited the complaint, for it often happens that a tendency to disease is handed down like other qualities in a sort of succession. While he was in the prime of life he overcame his malady and kept it well in check by abstemious and pure living, and when it became sharper in its attacks as he grew old he bore up against it with great fortitude of mind. Even when he suffered incredible torture and the most horrible agony - for the pain was no longer confined, as before, to the feet, but had begun to spread over all his limbs - I went to see him in the time of Domitian when he was staying at his country house. His attendants withdrew from his chamber, as they always did whenever one of his more intimate friends entered the room. Even his wife, a lady who might have been trusted to keep any secret, also used to retire. Looking round the room, he said His malady had become worse, though he tried to moderate it by his careful diet, and then, as it still continued to grow, he escaped from it by a fixed resolve. Two, three, four days passed and he refused all food. Then his wife Hispulla sent our mutual friend Caius Geminius to tell me the sad news that Corellius had determined to die, that he was not moved by the entreaties of his wife and daughter, and that I was the only one left who might possibly recall him to life. I rushed to see him, and had almost reached the house when Hispulla sent me another message by Julius Atticus, saying that now even I could do nothing, for his resolve had become more and more fixed. When the doctor offered him nourishment he said, "My mind is made up" {Κέκρικα}, and the word has awakened within me not only a sense of loss, but of admiration. I keep thinking what a friend, what a manly friend is now lost to me. He was at the end of his seventy-sixth year, an age long enough even for the stoutest of us. True. He has escaped a lifelong illness; he has died leaving children to survive him, and knowing that the State, which was dearer to him than anything else, was prospering well. Yes, yes, I know all this. And yet I grieve at his death as I should at the death of a young man in the full vigour of life; I grieve - you may think me weak for so doing - on my own account too. For I have lost, lost for ever, the guide, philosopher, and friend of my life. In short, I will say again what I said to my friend Calvisius, when my grief was fresh ,To Socius Senecio. This year has brought us a fine crop of poets ,To Junius Mauricus. You ask me to look out for a husband for your brother's daughter, and you do well to select me for such a commission. For you know how I looked up to him, and what an affection I had for his splendid qualities; you know, too, what good advice he gave me in my early years, and how by his warm praises he actually made it appear that I deserved them. You could not have given me a more important commission or one that I should be better pleased to undertake, and there is no charge that I could possibly accept as a greater compliment to myself than that of being set to choose a young man worthy of being the father of grandchildren to Arulenus Rusticus. I should have had to look carefully and long, had it not been that Minucius Acilianus was ready to hand, - one might almost say that Providence had prepared him for the purpose. He has for me the close and affectionate regard of one young man for another - for he is only a few years younger than myself - yet at the same time he pays me the deference due to a man of years, for he is as anxious that I should mould and form his character as I used to be that you and your son should mould mine. His native place is Brixia, a part of that Italy of ours which still retains and preserves much of the old-fashioned courtesy, frugality and even rusticity. His father, Minucius Macrinus, was one of the leaders of the equestrian order, because he did not wish to attain higher rank; he was admitted by the divine Vespasian to praetorian rank, * and to the end of his days preferred this modest and honourable distinction to the - what shall I say? - ambitions or dignities for which we strive. His grandmother on his mother's side was Serrana Procula, who belonged to the township of Patavium. You know the character of that place - well, Serrana was a model of austere living even to the people of Patavium. His uncle was Publius Acilius, a man of almost unique weight, judgment, and honour. In short, you will find nothing in the whole of his family which will fail to please you as much as if the family were your own. As for Acilianus himself, he is an energetic and untiring worker, and the very pink of courtesy. He has already acquitted himself with great credit in the quaestorship, tribunate, and praetorship, and so he has thus spared you the trouble of having to canvass in his behalf. He has a frank, open countenance, fresh-coloured and blooming; a handsome, well-made figure, and an air that would become a senator. These are points which, in my opinion, are not to be neglected, for I regard them as just rewards to a girl for her chastity. I don't know whether I should add that his father is a well-to-do man, for when I think of you and your brother for whom we are looking out for a son-in-law, I feel disinclined to speak of money. On the other hand, when I consider the prevailing tendencies of the day and the laws of the state which lay such prominent stress upon the matter of income, I think it right not to overlook the point. Moreover, when I remember the possible issue of the marriage, I feel that in choosing a bridegroom one must take his income into account. Perhaps you will imagine that I have let my affection run away with me, and that I have exaggerated my friend's merits beyond their due. But I pledge you my word of honour that you will find his virtues to be far in excess of my description of them. I have the most intense affection for the young man, and he deserves my love, but it is one of the proofs of a lover that you do not overburden the object of your regard with praise. Farewell. ,To Septicius Clarus. What a fellow you are! You promise to come to dinner and then fail to turn up! Well, here is my magisterial sentence upon you. You must pay the money I am out of pocket to the last as, and you will find the sum no small one. I had provided for each guest one lettuce, three snails, two eggs, spelt mixed with honey and snow (you will please reckon up the cost of the latter as among the costly of all, since it melts away in the dish), olives from Baetica, cucumbers, onions, and a thousand other equally expensive dainties. You would have listened to a comedian, or a reciter, or a harp-player, or perhaps to all, as I am such a lavish host. But you preferred to dine elsewhere, - where I know not - off oysters, sow's matrices, sea-urchins, and to watch Spanish dancing girls! You will be paid out for it, though how I decline to say. You have done violence to yourself. You have grudged, possibly yourself, but certainly me, a fine treat. Yes, yourself! For how we should have enjoyed ourselves, how we should have laughed together, how we should have applied ourselves! You can dine at many houses in better style than at mine, but nowhere will you have a better time, or such a simple and free and easy entertainment. In short, give me a trial, and if afterwards you do not prefer to excuse yourself to others rather than to me, why then I give you leave to decline my invitations always. Farewell. ,To Erucius. I used to be very fond of Pompeius Saturninus - our Saturninus, as I may call him - and to admire his intellectual powers, even before I knew him; they were so varied, so supple, so many-sided; but now I am devoted to him body and soul. I have heard him pleading in the Courts, always keen and impassioned, and his addresses are as polished and graceful when they are impromptu as when they have been carefully prepared. He has a never-failing flow of apt sentiment; his style is weighty and dignified, his language is of the sonorous, classical school. All these qualities charm me immensely when they come pouring forth in a streaming rush of eloquence, and they charm me too when I read them in book form. You will experience the same pleasure as I do when you take them up, and you will at once compare them with some one of the old masters whose rival indeed he is. You will find even greater charm in the style of his historical compositions, in its terseness, its lucidity, smoothness, brilliancy and stateliness, for there is the same vigour in the historical harangues as there is in his own orations, only rather more compressed, restricted, and epigrammatic. Moreover, he writes verses that Catullus or Calvus might have composed. They are positively brimming over with grace, sweetness, irony and love. He occasionally, and of set design, interpolates among these smooth and easy-flowing verses others cast in a more rugged mould, and here again he is like Catullus and Calvus. A little while ago he read me some letters which he declared had been written by his wife. I thought, on hearing them, that they were either Plautus or Terence in prose, and whether they were composed, as he said, by his wife or by himself, as he denies, his credit is the same. It belongs to him either as the actual author of the letters or as the teacher who has made such a polished and learned lady of his wife - whom he married when she was a girl. So I pass the whole day in the company of Saturninus. I read him before I set pen to paper; I read him again after finishing my writing, and again when I am at leisure. He is always the same but never seems the same. Let me urge and beg of you to do likewise, for the fact that the author is still alive ought not to be of any detriment to his works. If he had been a contemporary of those on whom we have never set eyes, we should not only be seeking to procure copies of his books but also asking for busts of him. Why then, as he is still amongst us, should his credit and popularity dwindle, as though we were tired of him? Surely it is discreditable and scandalous that we should not give a man the due he richly deserves, simply because we can see him with our own eyes, speak to him, hear him, embrace him, and not only praise but love him. Farewell. ,To Cornelius Titianus. Faith and loyalty are not yet extinct among men 0 ,To Suetonius Tranquillus. You say in your letter that you have been troubled by a dream, and are afraid lest your suit should go against you. So you ask me to try and get it postponed, and that I will have to put it off for a few days, or at least for one day. It is not an easy matter, but I will do my best, for, as Homer says, "A dream comes from Zeus." However, it makes all the difference whether your dreams usually signify the course of future events or their opposite. When I think over a certain dream I once had, what causes you fear seems to me to promise a splendid termination to your case. I had undertaken a brief for Julius Pastor, when there appeared to me in my sleep a vision of my mother-in-law, who threw herself on her knees before me and begged that I would not plead. I was quite a young man at the time of the action, which was to be heard in the Fourfold Court, * and I was appearing against the most powerful men of the State, including some of the Friends of Caesar. All these things or any one of them might well have shattered my resolution after such an ominous dream. Nevertheless, I went on with the case, remembering the well-known line of Homer 0 ,To Romatius Firmus. You and I were born in the same township, we went to school together, and shared quarters from an early age; your father was on terms of friendship with my mother and my uncle, * and with me - as far as the disparity in our years allowed. These are overwhelming reasons why I ought to advance you as far as I can along the path of dignities. The fact of your being a decurion in our town shows that you have an income of a hundred thousand sesterces, and so that we may have the pleasure of enjoying your society not only as a decurion, but as a Roman knight, I offer you 300,000 sesterces, to make up the equestrian qualification. The length of our friendship is sufficient guarantee that you will not forget this favour, and I do not even urge you to enjoy with modesty the dignity which I thus enable you to attain, as perhaps I ought, just because I know you will do so without any urging from without. People ought to guard an honour all the more carefully, when, in so doing, they are taking care of a gift bestowed by the kindness of a friend. Farewell. ,To Cornelius Tacitus. I am constantly having arguments with a friend of mine who is a learned and practised speaker, but who admires in pleading nothing so much as brevity. I allow that brevity ought to be observed, if the case permits of it; but sometimes it is an act of collusion to pass over matters that ought to be mentioned, and it is even an act of collusion to run briefly and rapidly over points which ought to be dwelt upon, to be thoroughly driven home, and to be taken up and dealt with more than once. For very often an argument acquires strength and weight by being handled at some length, and a speech ought to be impressed on the mind, not by a short, sharp shock, but by measured blows, just as a sword should be used in dealing with the body of an opponent. Thereupon he plies me with authorities, and flourishes before me the speeches of Lysias among the Greeks, and those of the Gracchi and Cato from among Roman orators. The majority of these are certainly characterised by conciseness and brevity, but I quote against Lysias the examples of Demosthenes, Aeschines, Hyperides, and a multitude of others, while against the Gracchi and Cato I set Pollio, Caesar, Caelius, and, above all, Marcus Tullius, whose longest speech is generally considered to be his best. * And upon my word, as with all other good things, the more there is of a good book, the better it is. You know how it is with statues, images, pictures, and the outlines of many animals and even trees, that if they are at all graceful nothing gives them a greater charm than size. It is just the same with speeches, - even the mere volumes themselves acquire a certain additional dignity and beauty from mere bulk. These are but a few of the many arguments I usually employ to establish my point; but there is no pinning my friend down in an argument. He is such a slippery fellow that he wriggles off the pin and declares that these same orators, whose speeches I instance, spoke at less length than their published addresses seem to show. I hold the contrary to be the case, and there are many speeches of many orators in favour of my opinion, as, for example, the 'Pro Murena' and the 'Pro Vareno' of Cicero, in which he indicates by headings alone, and quite barely and briefly, how he dealt with certain charges against his clients. From these it is clear that he actually spoke at much greater length and left out a considerable number of passages when he published the addresses. Cicero indeed says that in his defence of Cluentius "he had simply followed the ancient custom and compressed his whole case into a peroration," and that in defending Caius Cornelius "he had pleaded for four days." ** Hence it cannot be questioned that after speaking somewhat discursively for several days, as he was bound to do, he subsequently trimmed and revised his oration and compressed it into a single book - a long one, it is true, but yet a single book. But, argues my friend, a good indictment is a different thing from a good speech. I know some people hold that view, but I - of course I may be wrong - feel persuaded that though it is possible to have a good indictment without a good speech, it is not possible for a good speech not to be a good indictment. For a speech is the exemplar of an indictment - one might even call it its archetype. Hence in every first-class oration we find a thousand extempore figures of speech, even in those which we know to have been carefully edited. For example, in the Speech against Verres Regulus once said to me when we were in Court together Nor do I forget that in his eulogy of that consummate orator, Pericles, the comedy-writer Eupolis used the following language But, you say, the mean is the best. Quite so, but the mean is as much neglected by those who fail to do justice to their subject as by those who overdo it, by those who restrain themselves as by those who give themselves their heads. And so you often hear the criticism that a speech was "frigid and weak," just as you hear that another was "overloaded and a mass of repetition." The one speaker is said to have over-elaborated his subject, the other not to have risen to the occasion. Both are at fault; one through weakness, the other through too much strength, and the latter, though he may not show the more refined intellect, certainly shows the more robust mind. When I say this it must not be supposed that I am approving Homer's Thersites - the man who was a torrent of words - but rather his Ulysses, whose "words were like snow-flakes in winter," though at the same time I admire his Menelaus, who spoke "Few words, but well to the point." Yet, if I had to choose, I should prefer the speech that is like the winter snow- storm - viz. fluent, flowing, and of generous width; and not only that, but divine and celestial. It may, I know, be said that many people prefer a short pleading. No doubt, but they are lazy creatures, and it is ridiculous to consult the tastes of such sloths as though they were critics. For if you take their opinion as worth anything, you will find that they not only prefer a short pleading, but no pleading at all. Well, I have told you what I think. I shall change my opinion if you do not agree with me, but in that case I beg of you to give me clear reasons for your disagreement; for although I feel bound to bow to a man of your judgment, yet in a point of such importance, I consider that I ought to give way rather to a reasoned statement than to an ipse dixit. But even if you think I am right, still write and tell me so, and make the letter as short as you like - for you will thus confirm my judgment. If I am wrong, see that you write me a very long letter. I feel sure I have not estimated you wrongly in thus asking you for a short note if you agree with me, while laying on you the obligation of writing at length if you disagree. Farewell. ,To Paternus. Let me acknowledge not only the keenness of your judgment but the sharpness of your eyesight, not because you are full of wisdom - no, don't plume yourself on that - but because you are just as wise as I am, and that is saying a great deal. Yet, joking apart, I think the slaves which I bought on your recommendation are a tidy-looking lot. It now remains to be seen whether they are honest; because in judging the value of a slave, it is better to trust one's ears than one's eyes. Farewell. ,To Catilius Severus. Here am I still in Rome, and a good deal surprised to find myself here. But I am troubled at the long illness of Titus Aristo, which he cannot shake off. He is a man for whom I feel an extraordinary admiration and affection You would marvel, if you were by his side, at the patience with which he endures his illness, how he fights against his suffering, how he resists his thirst, how, without moving and without throwing off his bed- clothes, he endures the dreadful burning heats of his fever. Just recently he sent for me and a few others of his especial friends with me, and begged us to consult his doctors and ask them about the termination of his illness, so that if there were no hope for him he might voluntarily give up his life, but might fight against it and hold out if the illness only threatened to be difficult and long. He owed it, he said, to the prayers of his wife, the tears of his daughter, and the regard of us who were his friends, not to cheat our hopes by a voluntary death, providing those hopes were not altogether futile. I think that such an acknowledgment as that must be especially difficult to make, and worthy of the highest praise; for many people are quite capable of hastening to death under the impulse of a sudden instinct, but only a truly noble mind can weigh up the pros and cons of the matter, and resolve to live or die according to the dictates of Reason. However, the doctors give us reassuring promises, and it now remains for the Deity to confirm and fulfil them, and so at length release me from my anxiety. The moment my mind is easy, I shall be off to my Laurentine Villa - that is to say, to my books and tablets, and to my studious ease. For now as I sit by my friend's bedside I can neither read nor write, and I am so anxious that I have no inclination for such study. Well, I have told you my fears, my hopes, and my future plans; it is your turn now to write and tell me what you have been doing, what you are doing now, and what your plans are, and I hope your letter will be a more cheerful one than mine. If you have nothing to complain about, it will be no small consolation to me in my general upset. Farewell. ,To Pompeius Falco. You ask me whether I think you ought to practise in the courts while you are tribune. The answer entirely depends on the conception you have of the tribuneship, whether you think it is a mere empty honour, a name with no real dignity, or an office of the highest sanctity, and one that no one, not even the holder himself, ought to slight in the least degree. When I was tribune, I may have been wrong for thinking that I was somebody, but I acted as if I were, and I abstained from practising in the courts. In the first place, I thought it below my dignity that I, at whose entrance every one ought to rise and give way, should stand to plead while all others were sitting; or that I, who could impose silence on all and sundry, should be ordered to be silent by a water- clock; that I, whom it was a crime to interrupt, should be subjected even to abuse, and that I should make people think I was a spiritless fellow if I let an insult pass unnoticed, or proud and puffed up if I resented and avenged it. Again, there was this embarrassing thought always before me. Supposing appeal was made to me as tribune either by my client or by the other party to the suit, what should I do? Lend him aid, or keep silence and say not a word, and thus forswear my magistracy and reduce myself to a mere private citizen? Moved by these considerations, I preferred to be at the disposal of all men as a tribune rather than act as an advocate for a few. But, to repeat what I said before, it makes all the difference what conception you happen to have of the office, and what part you essay to play. Providing you carry it through to the end, either will be quite consistent with a man of wisdom. Farewell. ,To Baebius Hispanus. My comrade Tranquillus wishes to buy a bit of land which your friend is said to be offering for sale. I beg that you will see that he purchases it at a fair price, for in that case he will be glad to have bought it. A bad bargain is always annoying, and especially so as it seems to show that the previous owner has played one a scurvy trick. As to the plot in question, if only the price is right, there are many reasons that tempt my friend Tranquillus to buy - the nearness of the city, the convenient road, the modest dimensions of his villa and the extent of the farm, which is just enough to pleasantly disengage his thoughts from other things, but not enough to give him any worry. In fact learned schoolmen, like Tranquillus, on turning land-owners, ought only to have just sufficient land to enable them to get rid of headaches, cure their eyes, walk lazily round their boundary paths, make one beaten track for themselves, get to know all their vines and count their trees. I have gone into these details that you might understand what a regard I have for Tranquillus, and how greatly I shall be indebted to you if he is enabled to purchase the estate which has all these advantages to commend it at such a reasonable price that he will not regret having bought it. Farewell. |
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| nan | To Romanus. Not for many years have the Roman people seen so striking and even so memorable a spectacle as that provided by the public funeral of Verginius Rufus, one of our noblest and most distinguished citizens, and not less fortunate than distinguished. He lived in a blaze of glory for thirty years. * He read poems and histories composed in his honour, and so enjoyed in life the fame that awaited him among posterity. He held the consulship three times, so that he might attain the highest distinction open to a private citizen, as he had declined to lay hands on the sovereign power. He escaped unscathed from the Emperors, who were suspicious of his motives and hated him for his virtues; while the best Emperor of them all, and the one who was his devoted friend, he left behind him safely installed on the throne, as though his life had been preserved for this very reason, that he might be honoured with a public funeral. He was eighty-three years of age when he died, sublimely calm, and respected by all. He enjoyed good health, for though his hands were palsied they gave him no pain He died full of years, full of honours, full even of the honours he refused. We shall seek his like in vain; we shall lose in him a living example of an earlier age. I shall miss him most of all, for my affection equalled my admiration, not only of his public virtue but of his private life. In the first place, we came from the same district, we belonged to neighbouring municipalities, our estates and property lay alongside, and, moreover, he was left as my guardian and showed me all the affection of a parent. When I was a candidate for office he honoured me with his support; in all my elections he left his private retreat and hastened to escort me in all my entries upon office - though for years he had ceased to show his friends these attentions, - and on the day when the priests are accustomed to nominate those they think to be worthiest of the priesthood he always gave me his nomination. Even in his last illness, when he was afraid lest he should be appointed one of the commission of five who were being appointed on the decree of the senate to lessen public expenditure, he chose me, young as I am - though he had a number of friends still surviving who were much older than I and men of consular rank - to act as his substitute, and he used these words I wished to write to you on many other subjects, but my whole mind is given up to and fixed on this one subject of thought. I keep thinking of Verginius, I dream of him, and, though my dreams are illusory, they are so vivid that I seem to hear his voice, to speak to him, to embrace him. It may be that we have other citizens like him in his virtues, and shall continue to have them, but there is none to equal with him in glory. Farewell. ,To Paulinus. I am angry with you; whether I ought to be I am not quite sure, but I am angry all the same. You know how affection is often biased, how it is always liable to make a man unreasonable, and how it causes him to flare up on even small provocation. But I have serious grounds for my anger, whether they are just or not, and so I am assuming that they are as just as they are serious, and am downright cross with you because you have not sent me a line for such a long time. There is only one way that you can obtain forgiveness, and that is by your writing me at once a number of long letters. That will be the only excuse I shall take as genuine; any others you may send I shall regard as false. For I won't listen to such stuff as "I was away from Rome," or "I have been fearfully busy." As for the plea, "I have not been at all well," I hope Providence has been too kind to let you write that. I am at my country house, enjoying study and idleness in turns, and both of these delights are born of leisure-hours. Farewell. ,To Nepos. Isaeus's reputation - and it was a great one - had preceded him to Rome, * but it was found to fall short of his merits. He has consummate oratorical power, fluency and choice of expression, and though he always speaks extempore his speeches might have been carefully written out long beforehand. He speaks in Greek, and that the purest Attic; his prefatory remarks are polished, neat and agreeable, and occasionally stately and sparkling. He asks to be supplied with a number of subjects for discussion, and allows his audience to choose which they will have and often which side they would like him to take. Then he rises to his feet, wraps his gown round him, and begins. Without losing a moment he has everything at his fingers' ends, irrespective of the subject selected. Deep thoughts come crowding into his mind and words flow to his lips. And such words - exquisitely choice! Every now and then there come flashes which show how widely he has read and how much he has written. He opens his case to the point; he states his position clearly; his arguments are incisive; his conclusions are forcible; his word-painting is magnificent. In a word, he instructs, delights, and impresses his hearers, so that you can hardly say wherein he most excels. He makes constant use of rhetorical arguments, ** his syllogisms are crisp and finished - though that is not an easy matter to attain even with a pen. He has a wonderful memory and can repeat, without missing a single word, even his extempore speeches. He has attained this facility by study and constant practice, for he does nothing else day or night Consequently, I look upon Isaeus not only as a wonderfully learned man but as one who possesses a most enviable lot, and you must be made of flint and iron if you do not burn to make his acquaintance. So if there is nothing else to draw you here, if I myself am not a sufficient attraction, do come to hear Isaeus. Have you never read of the man who lived at Gades who was so fired by the name and glory of Titus Livius that he came from the remotest corner of the world to see him, and returned the moment he had set eyes on him? It would stamp a man as an illiterate boor and a lazy idler, it would be disgraceful almost for any one not to think the journey worth the trouble when the reward is a study which is more delightful, more elegant, and has more of the humanities than any other. You will say 0 ,To Calvina. If your father had owed his other creditors, or any one of them, as much as he owed to me, there would perhaps have been good reason for you to hesitate about entering on the inheritance of an estate which even a man might find burdensome. However, I am now the sole creditor, for as we are relations I thought it my duty to pay off all those who were - I will not say importunate - but were rather more particular about getting their money. When your father was alive, and you were about to be married, I contributed 100,000 sesterces towards your dowry, in addition to the sum which your father assigned as your wedding portion, out of my pocket - for it had to be paid out of my money, - so you have ample proof of my leniency towards you in money matters, and you may boldly rely thereon and defend the credit and honour of your dead father. Moreover, to show you that I can be generous with my purse as well as with my advice, I authorise you to enter as paid whatever sum was owing by your father to me. You need not be afraid that my generosity will embarrass my finances. Though my means are modest, though my position is expensive to keep up and my income is equally small and precarious owing to the state of the land market, my unemployed capital is increased by my economical living, and this is the source, as I may call it, from which I gratify my generosity. I have to husband it carefully lest the source should dry up if I draw on it too freely; but such caution is reserved for others. In your case I can easily justify my liberality, even though it be rather larger than usual. Farewell. ,To Lupercus. I have forwarded to you the speech which you have often asked for, and which I have often promised to send, but not the whole of it. A portion thereof is still undergoing the polishing process. Meanwhile, I thought it would not be out of place to submit to your judgment the parts which seemed to me to be more finished. I hope you will bestow on them the same critical attention that the writer has given them. I have never handled any subject that demanded greater pains from me, for whereas in other speeches I have submitted merely my carefulness and good faith to men's judgment, in this I submit my patriotism as well. It is out of that that the speech has grown, for it is a pleasure to sing the praises of one's native place and at the same time to do what I could to help its interests and its fame. But be sure you prune even these passages according to your judgment. For when I think of the fastidiousness of the general reader and the niceties of his taste, I understand that the best way to win praise is to keep within moderate limits. Yet at the same time, though I ask you to show this strictness, I feel bound to request you to display the opposite quality also and deal indulgently with many of the passages. For we must make certain concessions to our young readers, especially if the subject-matter allows of it. Descriptions of scenery, of which there are more than usual in this speech, should be treated not in a strict historical fashion, but with some approach to poetic licence. However, if anyone thinks that I have written more ornately than is warranted by the serious nature of the subject, the remaining portions of the address ought to mollify what one may call the austerity of such a man. I have certainly tried, by varying the character of the style, to get hold of all sorts and conditions of readers, and though I am afraid that each individual reader will not find every single passage to his liking, yet I think I may be pretty confident that the variety of styles will recommend the whole to all classes. For at a banquet, though we each one of us dislike certain dishes, yet we all praise the banquet as a whole, nor do the dishes which our palate declines make those we like any less enjoyable. I want my speech to be taken in the same spirit, not because I think I have succeeded in my aim, but because I have tried to succeed therein, and I believe my efforts will not have been in vain if only you will take pains now with what I enclose in this letter and afterwards with the remaining portions. You will say that you cannot do this sufficiently carefully until you have gone through the entire speech. That is so; but for the present you will be able to get a thorough acquaintance with what I send you, and there are sure to be certain passages that can be altered in part. For if you were to see the head or any limb of a statue torn from the trunk, though you might not be able to speak definitely of its symmetry and proportion to the rest of the body, you would at least be able to judge whether the part you were looking at was sufficiently well shaped. That is the only reason why authors send round to their friends specimens of their speeches, because any part can be judged to be perfect or not apart from the remainder. The pleasure of speaking with you has led me farther than I intended, but I will conclude for fear of exceeding in a letter the limits which I think ought to be set to a speech. Farewell. ,To Avitus. It would be a long story - and it is of no importance - to tell you how I came to be dining - for I am no particular friend of his - with a man who thought he combined elegance with economy, but who appeared to me to be both mean and lavish, for he set the best dishes before himself and a few others and treated the rest to cheap and scrappy food. He had apportioned the wine in small decanters of three different kinds, not in order to give his guests their choice but so that they might not refuse. He had one kind for himself and us, another for his less distinguished friends - for he is a man who classifies his acquaintances - and a third for his own freedmen and those of his guests. The man who sat next to me noticed this and asked me if I approved of it. I said no. "Then how do you arrange matters?" he asked. "I set the same before all," I answered, "for I invite my friends to dine not to grade them one above the other, * and those whom I have set at equal places at my board and on my couches I treat as equals in every respect.""What! even the freedmen?" he said. "Yes," I replied, "for then I regard them as my guests at table, not as freedmen." He went on ,To Macrinus. Yesterday, on the motion of the Emperor, a triumphal statue was decreed to Vestricius Spurinna. He is not one of those heroes, of whom there have been many, who have never stood in battle, never seen a camp, and never heard the call of the trumpets except at the public shows If I understand the matter aright, in conferring that dignity upon him, regard was had not only to the memory of the dead man and the grief of his father, but also to the effect it would have upon others. When such splendid rewards are bestowed upon young men - provided they deserve them - they will serve to sharpen the inclinations of the rising generation to the practice of the honourable arts; they will make our leading men more desirous of bringing up their children, increase the joy they will have in them if they survive, and provide a glorious consolation if they lose them. It is for these reasons that I rejoice on public grounds that a statue has been decreed to Cottius, and on personal grounds I am equally delighted. My affection for that most accomplished youth was as strong as is my ungovernable sorrow at his loss. So I shall find it soothing from time to time to gaze upon his statue, to look back upon it, to stand beneath it, and to walk past it. For if the busts of the dead that we set up in our private houses assuage our grief, how much more soothing should be the statues of our dead friends erected in the most frequented spots, which recall to us not only the form and face of our lost ones, but also their dignities and glory? Farewell. ,To Caninius. Are you at your books, or are you fishing, or hunting, or doing all three together? For the latter is possible in the neighbourhood of our Larian lake. The lake supplies fish in plenty, the woods that girdle its shores are full of game, and their secluded recesses inspire one to study. But whether you combine the three at once, or occupy yourself with either one of them, I cannot say "I grudge you your happiness," though I feel annoyed to think that I am debarred from pleasures which I long for as ardently as an invalid longs for wine, and the baths, and the fountains. If I cannot unloose the close meshes of the net that enfolds me, shall I never snap them asunder? Never, I am afraid, for new business keeps piling up on top of the old, and that without even the old being got rid of. Every day the entangling chain of my engagements seems to lengthen by acquiring additional links. Farewell. ,To Apollinaris. I am worried and anxious about the candidature of my friend Sextus Erucius. I am quite careworn, and feel for my second self, as it were, a solicitude that I did not feel on my own account. Besides, my honour, my reputation, my position are all at stake His father, Erucius Clarus, is a man of probity of the old-fashioned sort, full of learning and an experienced counsel, conducting his cases with splendid honesty, perseverance, and modesty as well. His uncle is Caius Septicius, than whom I never met any one more sterling, simple, frank, and trustworthy. They all see who can shower most affection upon me, though they all love me equally, and now I can repay the love of all in the person of young Erucius. So I am button-holing all my friends, begging them for their support, going round to see them and haunting their houses and favourite resorts, and I am putting both my position and influence to the test by my entreaties. I beg of you to think it worth your while to relieve me of some part of my burden. I will do the same for you whenever you ask the return favour; nay I will do so even if you do not ask me. You are a favourite with many, people seek your society, and you have a wide circle of friends. Do you but give a hint that you have a wish, and there will be plenty who will make your wish their desire. Farewell. ,To Octavius. What an indolent fellow you are, or perhaps I should say how hard-hearted you are and almost cruel to keep back so long such splendid volumes of verse! How long will you deprive yourself of the chorus of praise that awaits you, and us of the pleasure of reading them? Do let them be borne on the lips of men and circulate through all the wide regions where the Roman tongue is spoken. People have long been eagerly looking forward to your publishing them, and you really ought not to cheat and disappoint them any longer. Some of your verses have become known, and - no thanks to you - have broken down the barriers you set round them, and unless you rescue them and include them in the main body of your work they will one day, like vagrant slaves, find someone else to claim the ownership of them. Don't lose sight of the fact that you are but mortal, and that you can only defend yourself from being forgotten by such a monument as this ,To Arrianus. I know you are always delighted when the senate behaves in a way befitting its rank, for though your love of peace and quiet has caused you to withdraw from Rome, your anxiety that public life should be kept at a high level is as strong as it ever was. So let me tell you what has been going on during the last few days. The proceedings are memorable owing to the commanding position of the person most concerned; they will have a healthy influence because of the sharp lesson that has been administered; and the importance of the case will make them famous for all time. Marius Priscus, on being accused by the people of Africa, whom he had governed as proconsul, declined to defend himself before the senate and asked to have judges assigned to hear the case. * Cornelius Tacitus and myself were instructed to appear for the provincials, and we came to the conclusion that we were bound in honesty to our clients to notify the senate that the charges of inhumanity and cruelty brought against Priscus were too serious to be heard by a panel of judges, inasmuch as he was accused of having received bribes to condemn and even put to death innocent persons. Fronto Catius spoke in reply, and urged that the prosecution should be confined within the law dealing with extortion Well, the witnesses who were summoned came to Rome, viz., Vitellius Honoratus and Flavius Martianus. Honoratus was charged with having bribed Priscus to the tune of three hundred thousand sesterces to exile a Roman knight and put seven of his friends to death; Martianus was accused of having given Priscus seven hundred thousand sesterces to sentence a single Roman knight to still more grievous punishment, for he was beaten with rods, condemned to the mines, and then strangled in prison. Honoratus - luckily for him - escaped the investigation of the senate by dying; Martianus was brought before them when Priscus was not present. Consequently Tuccius Cerealis, a man of consular rank, pleaded senatorial privileges and demanded that Priscus should be informed of the attendance of Martianus, either because he thought that Priscus by being present would have a better chance of awakening the compassion of the senate or to increase the feeling against him, or possibly, and I think this was his real motive, because strict justice demanded that both should defend themselves against a charge that affected them both, and that both should be punished if they could not rebut the accusation. The subject was postponed to the next meeting of the senate, and a very august assembly it was. The Emperor presided in his capacity as consul; besides, the month of January brings crowds of people to Rome and especially senators, † and moreover the importance of the case, the great notoriety it had obtained, which had been increased by the delays that had taken place, and the ingrained curiosity of all men to get to know all the details of an unusually important matter, had made everybody flock to Rome from all quarters. You can imagine how nervous and anxious we were in having to speak in such a gathering and in the presence of the Emperor on such an important case. It was not the first time that I had pleaded in the senate, and there is nowhere where I get a more sympathetic hearing, but then the novelty of the whole position seemed to afflict me with a feeling of nervousness I had never felt before. For in addition to all that I have mentioned above I kept thinking of the difficulties of the case and was oppressed by the feeling that Priscus, the defendant, had once held consular rank and been one of the seven regulators of the sacred feasts, and was now deprived of both these dignities. † So I found it a very trying task to accuse a man on whom sentence had already been passed, for though the shocking offences with which he was charged weighed heavily against him, he yet was protected to a certain extent by the commiseration felt for a man already condemned to punishment that one might have thought final. However, as soon as I had pulled myself together and collected my thoughts, I began my address, and though I was nervous I was on the best of terms with my audience. I spoke for nearly five hours, for, in addition to the twelve water-clocks - the largest I could get - which had been assigned to me, I obtained four others. And, as matters turned out, everything that I thought before speaking would have proved an obstacle in the way of a good speech really helped me during my address. As for the Emperor, he showed me such kind attention and consideration - for it would be too much to call it anxiety on my behalf - that he frequently nodded to my freedman, who was standing just behind me, to give me a hint not to overtax my voice and lungs, when he thought that I was throwing myself too ardently into my pleading and imposing too great a burden on my slender frame. Claudius Marcellinus answered me on behalf of Martianus, and then the senate was dismissed and met again on the following day. For there was no time to begin a fresh speech, as it would have had to be broken off by the fall of night. On the following day, Salvius Liberalis, a man of shrewd wit, careful in the arrangement of his speeches, with a pointed style and a fund of learning, spoke for Marius, and in his speech he certainly brought out all he knew. Cornelius Tacitus replied to him in a wonderfully eloquent address, characterised by that lofty dignity which is the chief charm of his oratory. Then Fronto Catius made another excellent speech on Marius's behalf, and he spent more time in appeals for mercy than in rebutting evidence, as befitted the part of the case that he had then to deal with. The fall of night terminated his speech but did not break it off altogether, and so the proceedings lasted over into the third day. This was quite fine and just like it used to be for the senate to be interrupted by nightfall, and for the members to be called and sit for three days running. Cornutus Tertullus, the consul-designate, a man of high character and a devoted champion of justice, gave as his opinion that the seven hundred thousand sesterces which Marius had received should be confiscated to the Treasury, that Marius should be banished from Rome and Italy, and that Martianus should be banished from Rome, Italy, and Africa. Towards the conclusion of his speech he added the remark that the senate considered that, since Tacitus and myself, who had been summoned to plead for the provincials, had fulfilled our duties with diligence and fearlessness, we had acted in a manner worthy of the commission entrusted to us. The consuls-designate agreed, and all the consulars did likewise, until it was Pompeius Collega's turn to speak. He proposed that the seven hundred thousand sesterces received by Marius should be confiscated to the Treasury, that Martianus should be banished ‡ for five years, and that Marius should suffer no further penalty than that for extortion - which had already been passed upon him. Opinion was largely divided, and there was possibly a majority in favour of the latter proposal, which was the more lenient or less severe of the two, for even some of those who appeared to have supported Cornutus changed sides and were ready to vote for Collega, who had spoken after them. But when the House divided, those who stood near the seats of the consuls began to cross over to the side of Cornutus. Then those who were allowing themselves to be counted as supporters of Collega also crossed over, and Collega was left with a mere handful. He complained bitterly afterwards of those who had led him to make the proposal he did, especially of Regulus, who had failed to support him in the proposal that he himself had suggested. But Regulus is a fickle fellow, rash to a degree, yet a great coward as well. Such was the close of this most important investigation; but there is still another bit of public business on hand of some consequence, for Hostilius Firminus, the legate of Marius Priscus, who was implicated in the matter, had received a very rough handling. It was proved by the accounts of Martianus and a speech he made in the Council of the Town of Leptis that he had engaged with Priscus in a very shady transaction, that he had bargained to receive from Martianus 50,000 denarii and had received in addition ten million sesterces under the head of perfume money - a most disgraceful thing for a soldier, but one which was not at all inconsistent with his character as a man with well-trimmed hair and polished skin. It was agreed on the motion of Cornutus that the case should be investigated at the next meeting of the senate, but at that meeting he did not put in an appearance, either from some accidental reason or because he knew he was guilty. Well, I have told you the news of Rome, you must write and tell me the news of the country. How are your shrubs getting on, your vines and your crops, and those dainty sheep of yours? In short, unless you send me as long a letter I am sending you, you mustn't expect anything more than the scrappiest note from me in the future. Farewell. ,To Arrianus. As for the bit of public business which, as I told you in my last letter, arose out of the case of Marius Priscus, I don't know whether it has been thoroughly pruned, but it certainly has been trimmed. * When Firminus was called before the senate he replied to the charges brought against him. What they were you know. The two consuls-designate thereupon expressed their opinions as to the sentence and disagreed with one another. Cornutus Tertullus proposed that he should be degraded from his rank as senator; Acutius Nerva urged that when the provinces were allotted Firminus's claim should not be allowed, ** and his suggestion, as being the least severe, carried the day, though on the whole I think it is the harsher and more vindictive of the two. For what could be more wretched than to be cut off and debarred from all the privileges of senatorship, and yet not to be freed from its toil and trouble? What position can be more trying for a man with such a stain on his name than not to be allowed to hide himself from public view, but to have to show himself in a position of eminence to the gaze and pointing fingers of the world? Moreover, can you imagine anything, from the point of view of the public interest, less fitting or becoming than that a member of the senate who has been branded by that body should keep his seat among them, that he should retain equal rank with the very persons who branded him, that after being debarred from holding a proconsulship for disgraceful conduct as legate he should sit in judgment on other governors, and that after being found guilty of peculation he should pronounce the condemnation or acquittal of others? However, the majority approved this proposal, for votes are merely counted and are not weighed according to merit, and there is no other way possible in a public council. Yet in such cases this presumed equality of opinions is really most unequal, for all are equal in the right to vote though the judgment of the voters is a very unequal quantity. I have fulfilled my promise and made good my word contained in the earlier letter I sent you, which I reckon you will by this time have received, for I entrusted it to a fleet and conscientious messenger who must have reached you unless he has been hindered on the road. It now rests with you to recompense me for both these epistles with the very fullest letter that can be sent from where you are staying. Farewell. 0 ,To Priscus. I know you are only too pleased to seize an opportunity for doing me a service, and for my own part I would rather be in your debt than in that of any one else. So, for both these reasons, I have decided to choose you of all people as the one from whom to ask a favour which I am very anxious to have granted me. You are in command of a magnificent army, which gives you abundant material for conferring favours, and, moreover, has provided you with ample time during which you have advanced the interests of your own friends. Now give my friends a turn, please. There are not many of them, though you doubtless wish there were. But I am too modest to ask favours for more than one or two. Indeed there is only one, and that is Voconius Romanus. His father held a distinguished position in the equestrian order; his stepfather, or rather his second father, an even more distinguished place, for Voconius took the name of the latter out of his regard for him, while his mother belonged to one of the leading families of Hither Spain. You know how sound and weighty the opinion of that province is - well, Voconius was quite recently its flamen. * When we were students he and I were close and intimate friends; we spent our days together in Rome and in the country; he was my companion both in moments of work and play. You could not imagine a more trusty friend or a more delightful companion. He has wonderful conversational powers, and a remarkably sweet face and expression, and besides this he possesses a lofty intellect and is shrewd, pleasant, ready, and a clever advocate. The letters he writes are so good as to make you think the Muses speak Latin. I have the greatest affection for him, and he has the same for me. When we were both young I did all that I possibly could as a young man to advance him, and just lately I induced our excellent Emperor to grant him the privileges attached to the parentage of three children. ** That is a favour he bestows but sparingly and after careful choice, yet he acceded to my request as though the choice were his own. There is no better way by which I may keep up my services to him than by adding to their number, especially as he, the recipient, shows himself so grateful to me that by accepting former favours he earns others to come. I have told you what kind of a man he is, how thoroughly I esteem him and how dear he is to me, and I now ask you to use your wits and splendid opportunities for his advancement. Above all, give him your regard, for though you shower upon him your richest dignities you can give him nothing more valuable than your friendship. It was to assure you that he is worthy of even your closest intimacy that I have briefly set before you his tastes, his character and his whole life. I would spin out my request to greater length, but I know that you would rather I did not press you further and the whole of this letter is nothing but a request. For the best way of asking a favour is to give good reason for asking it. Farewell. 0 ,To Maximus. Yes, you are quite right; my time is fully taken up by cases in the centumviral court, * but they give me more worry than pleasure, for most of them are of a minor and unimportant character. Only rarely does a case crop up that stands out, owing either to the distinguished position of the persons in the suit or to the magnitude of the interests involved. Add to this that there are very few with whom I care to plead; all the other advocates are bumptious, and for the most part young men of no standing, who come over here to do their declamations with such utter want of respect and modesty that I think our friend Atilius just hit the nail on the head when he said that mere boys begin their forensic career with cases in the centumviral court, just as they begin with Homer in the schools. For here as there they make their first beginnings on the hardest subjects. Yet, by Heaven, before my time - to use an old man's phrase - not even the highest-born youths had any standing here, unless they were introduced by a man of consular rank. Such was the respect with which this noble profession was regarded, but now modesty and respect are thrown to the winds and one man is as good as another. So far from being introduced, they burst their way in. Their audiences follow them as if they were actors, bought and paid to do so; the agent is there to meet them in the middle of the basilica, where the doles of money are handed over as openly as the doles of food at a banquet; and they are ready to pass from one court to another for a similar bribe. So these hirelings have been rather wittily dubbed Sophocleses - from their readiness to call bravo, - and they have also been given the Latin name of Laudiceni - from their eagerness to applaud for the sake of getting a dinner. ** Yet this disgraceful practice gets worse from day to day, in spite of the terms of opprobrium applied to it in both languages. Yesterday two of my own nomenclators † - young men, I admit, about the age of those who have just assumed the toga †† - were enticed off to join in the applause for three denarii apiece. Such is the outlay you must make to get a reputation for eloquence! At that price you can fill the benches, however many there are, you can collect a great throng of bystanders and obtain thunders of applause as soon as the conductor gives the signal. For a signal is absolutely necessary for people who do not understand and do not even listen to the speeches, and many of these fellows do not listen at all, though they applaud as heartily as any. If you happen to be crossing through the basilica and wish to know how any one is speaking, there is no need for you to mount to the Bench or listen. It is perfectly safe to guess on the principle that he is speaking worst who gets the most applause. Largius Licinius was the first to introduce this new fashion of procuring an audience, but he went no further than asking people to go and hear him. At least I remember that Quintilian, my old tutor, used to tell me so. He told the story thus ,To Valerianus. How does your old Marsian property treat you? And your new purchase? Do you like the estate now that it is your own? It is rarely one does, for we never find things as nice when we have obtained them as when we wished to obtain them. My mother's property is giving me considerable trouble, but I like it because it was my mother's, and besides, I have put up with so much that I am now hardened. If people go on complaining long enough, they end in being ashamed to complain further. Farewell. ,To Annianus. * You, with your usual watchfulness on my behalf, advise me that the codicils of Acilianus, who left me heir to half his estate, may be treated as though they were non-existent, because they are not confirmed by the will. I was quite aware of the law on the subject, for even those who know nothing else know as much as that. But I have made a law of my own for such cases, which leads me to treat as valid the wishes of a dead man, even though they are not legally binding upon me. It is beyond question that the codicils in question were drawn up by Acilianus in his own hand. So, even though they are not confirmed by the will, I shall carefully carry out their intentions as though they were, especially as there is no loophole for an informer to meddle in the matter. For if there were any reason to be afraid of the money I have given being confiscated, I ought to act with perhaps greater hesitation and caution; but since an heir is at perfect liberty to give away what has reverted to him under an inheritance, there is no reason why I should not abide by my own law, which does not clash with the regulations of the State. Farewell. ,To Gallus. You are surprised, you say, at my infatuation for my Laurentine estate, or Laurentian if you prefer it so. * You will cease to wonder when you are told the charms of the villa, the handiness of its site, and the stretch of shore it commands. It is seventeen miles distant from Rome, so that after getting through all your business, and without loss or curtailment of your working hours, you can go and stay there. It can be reached by more than one route, for the roads to Laurentum and Ostia both lead in the same direction, but you must branch off on the former at the eleventh, and on the latter at the fourteenth milestone. From both of these points onward the road is for the most part rather sandy, which makes it a tedious and lengthy journey if you drive, but if you ride it is easy going and quickly covered. The scenery on either hand is full of variety. At places the path is a narrow one with woods running down to it on both sides, at other points it passes through spreading meadows and is wide and open. You will see abundant flocks of sheep and many herds of cattle and horses, which are driven down from the high ground in the winter and grow sleek in a pasturage and a temperature like those of spring. The villa is large enough for all requirements, and is not expensive to keep in repair. At its entrance there is a modest but by no means mean-looking hall; then come the cloisters, which are rounded into the likeness of the letter D, and these enclose a smallish but handsome courtyard. They make a fine place of refuge in a storm, for they are protected by glazed windows and deep overhanging eaves. Facing the middle of the cloisters is a cheerful inner court, then comes a dining-room running down towards the shore, which is handsome enough for any one, and when the sea is disturbed by the south-west wind the room is just flecked by the spray of the spent waves. There are folding doors on all sides of it, or windows that are quite as large as such doors, and so from the two sides and the front it commands a prospect as it were of three seas, while at the back one can see through the inner court, the cloisters, the courtyard, then more cloisters and the hall, and through them the woods and the distant hills. A little farther back, on the left-hand side, is a spacious chamber; then a smaller one which admits the rising sun by one window and by another enjoys his last lingering rays as he sets, and this room also commands a view of the sea that lies beneath it, at a longer but more secure distance. An angle is formed by this chamber and the dining-room, which catches and concentrates the purest rays of the sun. This forms the winter apartments and exercise ground for my household. No wind penetrates thither except those which bring up rain-clouds and only prevent the place being used when they take away the fine weather. Adjoining this angle is a chamber with one wall rounded like a bay, which catches the sun on all its windows as he moves through the heavens. In the wall of this room I have had shelves placed like a library, which contains the volumes which I not only read, but read over and over again. Next to it is a sleeping chamber, through a passage supported by pillars and fitted with pipes which catch the hot air and circulate it from place to place, keeping the rooms at a healthy temperature. The remaining part of this side of the villa is appropriated to the use of my slaves and freedmen, most of the rooms being sufficiently well furnished for the reception of guests. On the other side of the building there is a nicely decorated chamber, then another room which would serve either as a large bed-chamber or a moderate sized dining-room, as it enjoys plenty of sunshine and an extensive sea-view. Behind this is an apartment with an ante-room, suitable for summer use because of its height, and for winter use owing to it sheltered position, for it is out of reach of all winds. Another room with an ante-room is joined to this by a common wall. Next to it is the cold bath room, a spacious and wide chamber, with two curved swimming baths thrown out as it were from opposite sides of the room and facing one another. They hold plenty of water if you consider how close the sea is. ** Adjoining this room is the anointing room, then the sweating room, and then the heating room, from which you pass to two chambers of graceful rather than sumptuous proportions. Attached to these is a warm swimming bath which everybody admires, and from it those who are taking a swim can command a view of the sea. Close by is the ball court, which receives the warmest rays of the afternoon sun; on one side a tower has been built with two sitting rooms on the ground floor, two more on the first floor, and above them a dining-room commanding a wide expanse of sea, a long stretch of shore, and the pleasantest villas of the neighbourhood. There is also a second tower, containing a bedroom which gets the sun morning and evening, and a spacious wine cellar and store-room at the back of it. On the floor beneath is a sitting-room where, even when the sea is stormy, you hear the roar and thunder only in subdued and dying murmurs. It looks out upon the exercise ground, which runs round the garden. This exercise ground has a border of boxwood, or rosemary where the box does not grow well - for box thrives admirably when it is sheltered by buildings, but where it is fully exposed to wind and weather and to the spray of the sea, though it stands at a great distance therefrom, it is apt to shrivel. On the inside ring of the exercise ground is a pretty and shady alley of vines, which is soft and yielding even to the bare foot. The garden itself is clad with a number of mulberry and fig-trees, the soil being especially suitable for the former trees, though it is not so kindly to the others. On this side, the dining-room away from the sea commands as fine a view as that of the sea itself. It is closed in behind by two day-rooms, from the windows of which can be seen the entrance to the villa from the road and another garden as rich as the first one but not so ornamental. Along its side stretches a covered portico, almost long enough for a public building. It has windows on both sides, most of them facing the sea; those looking on the garden are single ones, and less numerous than those on the other side, as every alternate window was left out. All these are kept open when it is a fine day and there is no wind; when the wind is high, the windows only on the sheltered side are opened and no harm is done. † In front of the portico is a terrace walk that is fragrant with violets. The portico increases the warmth of the sun by radiation, and retains the heat just as it keeps off and breaks the force of the north wind. Hence it is as warm in front as it is cool behind. In the same way it checks the south-west winds, and similarly with all winds from whatever quarter they blow - it tempers them and stops them dead. This is its charm in winter, but in summer it is even greater, for in the mornings its shade tempers the heat of the terrace walk, and in the afternoon the heat of the exercise ground and the nearest part of the garden, the shadows falling longer and shorter on the two sides respectively as the sun rises to his meridian and sinks to his setting. Indeed, the portico has least sunshine when the sun is blazing down upon its roof. Consequently it receives the west winds through its open windows and circulates them through the building, and so never becomes oppressive through the stuffy air remaining within it. At the head of the terrace and portico successively is a garden suite of rooms, my favourite spot and well worthy of being so. I had them built myself. In this is a sunny chamber which commands the terrace on one side, the sea on another, and the sun on both; besides an apartment which looks on the portico through folding doors and on the sea through a window. In the middle of the wall is a neat recess, which by means of glazed windows and curtains can either be thrown into the adjoining room or be cut off from it. It holds a couch and two easy-chairs, and as you lie on the couch you have the sea at your feet, the villa at your back, and the woods at your head, and all these views may be looked at separately from each window or blended into one prospect. Adjoining is a chamber for passing the night in or taking a nap, and unless the windows are open, you do not hear a sound either of your slaves talking, or the murmur of the sea, or the raging of the storms; nor do you see the flashes of the lightning or know that it is day. This deep seclusion and remoteness is due to the fact that an intervening passage separates the wall of the chamber from that of the garden, and so all the sound is dissipated in the empty space between. A very small heating apparatus has been fitted to the room, which, by means of a narrow trap-door, either diffuses or retains the hot air as may be required. Adjoining it is an ante-room and a chamber projected towards the sun, which the latter room catches immediately upon his rising, and retains his rays beyond mid-day though they fall aslant upon it. When I betake myself into this sitting-room, I seem to be quite away even from my villa, and I find it delightful to sit there, especially during the Saturnalia, when all the rest of the house rings with the merriment and shouts of the festival-makers; for then I do not interfere with their amusements, and they do not distract me from my studies. The convenience and charm of the situation of my villa have one drawback in that it contains no running water, but I draw my supply from wells or rather fountains, for they are situated at a high level. Indeed, it is one of the curious characteristics of the shore here that wherever you dig you find moisture ready to hand, and the water is quite fresh and not even brackish in the slightest degree, though the sea is so close by. The neighbouring woods furnish us with abundance of fuel, and other supplies we get from the colony of Ostia. The village, which is separated only by one residence from my own, supplies my modest wants; it boasts of three public baths, which are a great convenience, when you do not feel inclined to heat your own bath at home, if you arrive unexpectedly or wish to save time. The shore is beautified by a most pleasing variety of villa buildings, some of which are close together, while others have great intervals between them. They give the appearance of a number of cities, whether you view them from the sea or from the shore itself, and the sands of the latter are sometimes loosened by a long spell of quiet weather, or - as more often happens - are hardened by the constant beating of the waves. The sea does not indeed abound with fish of any value, but it yields excellent soles and prawns. Yet our villa provides us with plenty of inland produce and especially milk, for the herds come down to us from the pastures whenever they seek water or shade. Well, do you think that I have just reasons for living here, for passing my time here, and for loving a retreat for which your mouth must be watering, unless you are a confirmed town-bird? I wish that your mouth did water! If it did, the many great charms of my little villa would be enhanced in the highest degree by your company. Farewell. ,To Mauricus. No, you could not have given me a pleasanter commission than to find a teacher of rhetoric for your brother's children. For, thanks to you, I go to school again, and, as it were, enjoy once more the happiest days of my life. I sit among young people, as I used to do, * and I can judge what authority I have among them owing to my literary pursuits. Just recently in a full class-room, before a number of members of our order, ** the boys were joking among themselves quite loudly; the moment I entered they were quiet as mice. I should not mention the incident except that it redounded more to their credit than to mine, and that I wish you to feel sure that your brother's sons can attend the lectures to their advantage. Moreover, when I have heard all the lectures, I will write and tell you what I think about each one of them, and so - as far as I can by a letter - I will make you think that you have heard them all yourself. I owe this to you, and I owe it to the memory of your brother to deal loyally by him and take this interest, especially on such an important subject. For what can touch you more closely than that these children - I should say your children, but that you love them more than if they were your own - should be found worthy of such a father and such an uncle as yourself. Even if you had not asked me to look after them, I should have done so on my own account. I do not forget that in choosing a public teacher one is apt to give offence, but on behalf of your brother's sons I must risk giving offence and even incurring animosity with as little compunction as a parent would in looking after his own children. Farewell. 0 ,To Cerealis. You urge me to recite my speech before a company of my friends. I will do so, because you ask me to, but I am exceedingly doubtful of the wisdom of the step. For I cannot help remembering that speeches which are recited lose all their spirit and passion and almost the right to the name of speeches - which are properly enhanced and fired by the bench of judges, the crowds of supporters, the waiting for the verdict, the reputation of the various counsel, and the divided partisanship of the audience. Besides all this, there are the gestures of the pleader, his moving to and fro, even his hurried strides, and every movement of his body which corresponds to some thought passing through his mind. Hence it is that those who plead sitting down, although they have practically the same environment as those who plead standing, are not so impressive and telling just because they happen to be seated. But when a man recites a speech, his eyes and hands - which are the most important aids to expression - are otherwise occupied, and so it is no wonder that the attention of the audience becomes languid, when there are no external graces to charm them and no thrills to stimulate them. Moreover, the address I am talking about is a fighting speech and full of contentious matter, and Nature has so ordained it that we think, if a subject has given us trouble to write, it will give an audience trouble to listen to it. How few conscientious listeners there are who prefer a stiff, closely-reasoned argument to honeyed and sonorous eloquence! It is wrong, I know, that there should be a difference of taste between judge and listener, but there is such a difference and it constantly crops up. The audience want one thing and the judges another, whereas, on the contrary, a listener ought to be impressed just by those points which would make most impression on him if he were judge. However, it is possible that in spite of these difficulties the speech may be recommended by a certain novelty - a novelty that is quite Roman, - for though the Greeks have a custom which does bear a remote resemblance to it, it is really quite different. For just as it was their practice, in showing that a law was opposed to earlier laws, to prove that it was so by comparing it with the others, so I had to show that my accusation was covered by the law against extortion by comparing it with other laws as well as by proving it from the law itself. Such a subject, though far from having any charm for the ears of the man in the street, ought to be as interesting to the learned as it is uninteresting to the unlearned. But if I make up my mind to recite the speech, I shall invite all the learned people to hear it. However, please think it over by all means and tell me whether you still consider that I ought to recite it; place on either side all the considerations I have raised, and choose the conclusion which has the weight of argument in its favour. It is from you, not from me, that a reason will be required; my apology will be that I did as I was told. Farewell. ,To Calvisius. Get ready your penny and I will tell you a golden story, nay, more than one, for the new one has reminded me of some old tales, and it does not matter with which I begin. Verania, the wife of Piso, was lying very ill - I mean the Piso who was adopted by Galba. Regulus paid her a visit. First mark the impudence of the man in coming to see the invalid, for he had been her husband's bitter enemy and she loathed and detested him. However, that might pass if he had only called, but he actually sat down beside her on the couch and asked her on what day and at what hour she had been born. On being told he puts on a grave look, fixes his eyes hard, moves his lips, works his fingers and makes his reckoning, but says nothing. Then after keeping the poor lady on tenterhooks, wondering what he would say, he exclaims That is Regulus's trick, and he has recourse to the scandalous device constantly, for he calls down the anger of the gods, whom he daily outrages, upon the head of his luckless son. Velleius Blaesus, the rich Consular, was stricken with the illness which carried him off, and was desirous of changing his will. Regulus, who was capable of hoping for anything from an alteration of the will because he had lately begun to haunt him on the chance of a legacy, begged and prayed of the doctors to prolong Blaesus's life by hook or by crook. But when the will was signed he took quite a different line. He changed his tone and said to the same doctors Two stories are quite enough. Or do you ask for a third, on the rhetoricians' principle? Well, I have one for you. When Aurelia, a lady of great means, was about to make her will, she put on for the occasion her most handsome tunics. When Regulus came to witness the signing he said, "I beg you to leave me these." Aurelia thought the man was joking, but he was serious and pressed the matter. Well, to cut the story short, he compelled the poor woman to open the tablets and leave to him the tunics she was wearing at the time. He watched her as she wrote, and looked to see whether she had written it rightly. Aurelia still lives, but he forced her to make that legacy as if she had been on the point of death. Yet this is the fellow who receives inheritances and legacies as though he deserved them. But why do I worry myself when I live in a country where villainy and rascality have long been getting not less but far more handsome rewards than modesty and virtue? Look at Regulus, for example, who, from being poor and lowly, has now become such a rich man by sheer villainy that he once told me that, when he was consulting the omens as to how soon he would be worth sixty millions of sesterces, he found double sets of entrails, which were a token that he would be worth 120 millions. So he will too, if only he goes on, as he has begun, dictating wills which are not their own to the very people who are making their wills, which is about the most disgraceful kind of forgery imaginable. Farewell. |
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| nan | To Calvisius. I don't think I ever spent a more delightful time than during my recent visit at Spurinna's house; indeed, I enjoyed myself so much that, if it is my fortune to grow old, there is no one whom I should prefer to take as my model in old age, as there is nothing more methodical than that time of life. Personally, I like to see men map out their lives with the regularity of the fixed courses of the stars, and especially old men. For while one is young a little disorder and rush, so to speak, is not unbecoming; but for old folks, whose days of exertion are past and in whom personal ambition is disgraceful, a placid and well-ordered life is highly suitable. That is the principle upon which Spurinna acts most religiously; even trifles, or what would be trifles were they not of daily occurrence, he goes through in fixed order and, as it were, orbit. In the morning he keeps his couch; at the second hour he calls for his shoes and walks three miles, exercising mind as well as body. If he has friends with him the time is passed in conversation on the noblest of themes, otherwise a book is read aloud, and sometimes this is done even when his friends are present, but never in such a way as to bore them. Then he sits down, and there is more reading aloud or more talk for preference; afterwards he enters his carriage, taking with him either his wife, who is a model lady, or one of his friends, a distinction I recently enjoyed. How delightful, how charming that privacy is! What glimpses of old times one gets! What noble deeds and noble men he tells you of! What lessons you drink in! Yet at the same time it is his custom so to blend his learning with modesty that he never seems to be playing the schoolmaster. After riding seven miles he walks another mile, then he again resumes his seat or betakes himself to his room and his pen. For he composes, both in Latin and Greek, the most scholarly lyrics. They have a wonderful grace, wonderful sweetness, and wonderful humour, and the chastity of the writer enhances its charm. When he is told that the bathing hour has come - which is the ninth hour in winter and the eighth in summer - he takes a walk naked in the sun, if there is no wind. Then he plays at ball for a long spell, throwing himself heartily into the game, for it is by means of this kind of active exercise that he battles with old age. After his bath he lies down and waits a little while before taking food, listening in the meantime to the reading of some light and pleasant book. All this time his friends are at perfect liberty to imitate his example or do anything else they prefer. Then dinner is served, the table being as bright as it is modest, and the silver plain and old-fashioned; he also has some Corinthian vases in use, for which he has a taste though not a mania. The dinner is often relieved by actors of comedy, * so that the pleasures of the table may have a seasoning of letters. Even in the summer the meal lasts well into the night, but no one finds it long, for it is kept up with such good humour and charm. The consequence is that, though he has passed his seventy-seventh year, his hearing and eyesight are as good as ever, his body is still active and alert, and the only symptom of his age is his wisdom. This is the sort of life that I have vowed and determined to follow, and I shall enter upon it with zest as soon as my age justifies me in beating a retreat. Meanwhile, I am distracted with a thousand things to attend to, and my only solace therein is the example of Spurinna again, for he undertook official duties, held magistracies, and governed provinces as long as it became him to do so, and earned his present leisure by abundant toil. That is why I set myself the same race to run and the same goal to attain, and I now register the vow and place it in your hands, so that, if ever you see me being carried beyond the mark, you may bring me to book, quote this letter of mine against me and order me to take my ease, so soon as I shall have made it impossible for people to charge me with laziness. Farewell. ,To Maximus. I think I am justified in asking you to grant to one of my friends a favour which I should certainly have offered to friends of yours, had I the same opportunity for conferring them as you have. Arrianus Maturus is the leading man in Altinum; and when I say that, I mean not that he is the richest man there - though he possesses considerable property - but I refer to his character, to his chastity, justice, weight, and wisdom. I turn to him in business for advice, and for criticism in literary matters, for he is wonderfully loyal, straightforward, and shrewd. He has the same regard for me as you have, and I cannot conceive a more ardent affection than that. He is by no means an ambitious man, and for that reason, though he might easily have attained the highest rank in the state, he has been content to remain in the equestrian order. Yet I feel that I must do something to add to his honours and give him some token of my regard. And so I am very anxious to heap some dignity upon him, though he does not expect it, knows nothing about it, and perhaps even would rather I did not - but it must be a real distinction and one that involves no troublesome responsibilities. So I ask you to confer upon him such a favour at your earliest opportunity, and I shall be profoundly obliged to you. And he will be also, for though he does not run after honours, he welcomes them as thankfully as if his heart were set upon them. Farewell. ,To Corellia Hispulla. I know not whether I regarded your father, who was a man of consummate judgment and rectitude of life, with greater love or reverence, and as I have a very special regard for you for his sake and also for your own, I feel bound to desire and even to do all that lies in my power to help your son to turn out like his grandfather. * For choice, I should prefer him to be like his grandfather on his mother's side, though his paternal grandfather was also a man of distinction and eminence, and his father and his uncle won conspicuous laurels. I feel sure that the only way to secure his growing up to be like them in all their good qualities is for him to drink deeply of the honourable arts, and the choice of a teacher from whom he may learn them is a matter of the highest importance. So far, his tender years have naturally kept him close by your side; he has had tutors at home, where there is little or no chance of his going wrong. But now his studies must take him out of doors, and we must look out for a Latin rhetorician with a good reputation for school discipline, for modesty, and above all, for good morals. For our young friend has been endowed, in addition to his other gifts of nature and fortune, with striking physical beauty, and at his slippery age we must find him not only a teacher but a guardian who will keep him straight. Well, I fancy I can recommend to you Julius Genitor. I have a regard for him, and my affection, which was based on judgment, does not blind my judgment of him. He is without faults, a man of real character, perhaps a little over-rugged and austere for this libertine age. You can learn from others what an accomplished speaker he is, for ability to speak is an open gift and is recognised at once when the power is displayed, but a man's private life is full of deep recesses and obscure mazes. For the latter in Genitor's case you may hold me as guarantor. From a man like him your son will hear nothing but what will be to his profit; he will learn nothing of which he had better have remained in ignorance, and Genitor will remind him, as often as you or I would, of the special obligations in his case of "noblesse oblige" and the dignity of the names he has to worthily uphold. So bid him God-speed and entrust him to a tutor who will teach him morals first and eloquence afterwards, for it is but a poor thing to learn the latter without the former. Farewell. ,To Macrinus. Although my course of action was approved in general estimation and by the friends who were with me at the time, I am anxious to know what you think of it. I should have liked to have had your opinion before finally deciding, so now that the matter is over I am exceedingly keen to hear your judgment. I had run down to my Tuscan estate to lay the foundations of a public building at my own expense, * after obtaining leave of absence as Praefect of the Treasury, when a deputation from the province of Baetica, who were about to lodge complaints against the governorship of Caecilius Classicus, petitioned the senate to appoint me to conduct their case for them. My colleagues, who are the best of fellows and devoted to my interests, pleaded the engagements and duties of the office we hold, and tried to get me off and make excuses for me. The senate passed a handsome resolution, saying that I should be allowed to champion the cause of the provincials if they succeeded in persuading me to take up the brief. Then the deputation was again introduced, when I was in my place in the senate, and asked for my assistance, appealing to my loyalty, of which they had previous experience in the action against Massa Baebius, ** and adducing their legal right to an advocate {patronus}. The senate responded to the appeal with the loud applause which usually precedes a decree of that body. Then I rose and said ,To Baebius Macer. I was delighted to find that you are so zealous a student of my uncle's books that you would like to possess copies of them all, and that you ask me to give you a complete list of them. I will play the part of an index for you, and tell you, moreover, the order in which they were written, for this is a point that students are interested to know. Throwing the Javelin from Horseback, one volume; this was composed, with considerable ingenuity and research, when he was on active service as a cavalry lieutenant {praefectus alae}. The Life of Pomponius Secundus, two volumes; - Pomponius was remarkably attached to my uncle, who, so to speak, composed this book to his friend's memory in payment of his debt of gratitude. The German Wars, twenty volumes; - this comprises an account of all the wars we have waged with the German races. He commenced it, while on service in Germany, in obedience to the warning of a dream, for, while he was asleep, the shade of Drusus Nero, who had won sweeping victories in that country and died there, appeared to him and kept on entrusting his fame to my uncle, beseeching him to rescue his name from ill-deserved oblivion. The Student, three volumes, afterwards split up into six on account of their length; - in this he showed the proper training and equipment of an orator from his cradle up. Ambiguity in Language, in eight volumes, was written in the last years of Nero's reign when tyranny had made it dangerous to write any book, no matter the subject, in anything like a free and candid style. A Continuation of the History of Aufidius Bassus, in thirty-one books. Natural History, in thirty-seven books; - a comprehensive and learned work, covering as wide a field as Nature herself. Does it surprise you that a busy man found time to finish so many volumes, many of which deal with such minute details? You will wonder the more when I tell you that he for many years pleaded in the law courts, that he died in his fifty-seventh year, and that in the interval his time was taken up and his studies were hindered by the important offices he held and the duties arising out of his friendship with the Emperors. But he possessed a keen intellect; he had a marvellous capacity for work, and his powers of application were enormous. He used to begin to study at night on the Festival of Vulcan, * not for luck but from his love of study, long before dawn; in winter he would commence at the seventh hour or at the eighth at the very latest, and often at the sixth. He could sleep at call, and it would come upon him and leave him in the middle of his work. Before daybreak he would go to Vespasian - for he too was a night-worker - and then set about his official duties. On his return home he would again give to study any time that he had free. Often in summer after taking a meal, which with him, as in the old days, was always a simple and light one, he would lie in the sun if he had any time to spare, and a book would be read aloud, from which he would take notes and extracts. For he never read without taking extracts, and used to say that there never was a book so bad that it was not good in some passage or another. After his sun bath he usually bathed in cold water, then he took a snack and a brief nap, and subsequently, as though another day had begun, he would study till dinner-time. After dinner a book would be read aloud, and he would take notes in a cursory way. I remember that one of his friends, when the reader pronounced a word wrongly, checked him and made him read it again, and my uncle said to him, "Did you not catch the meaning?" When his friend said "yes," he remarked, "Why then did you make him turn back? We have lost more than ten lines through your interruption." So jealous was he of every moment lost. In summer he used to rise from the dinner-table while it was still light; in winter always before the first hour had passed, as though there was a law obliging him to do so. Such was his method of living when up to the eyes in work and amid the bustle of Rome. When he was in the country the only time snatched from his work was when he took his bath, and when I say bath I refer to the actual bathing, for while he was being scraped with the strigil or rubbed down, he used to listen to a reader or dictate. When he was travelling he cut himself aloof from every other thought and gave himself up to study alone. At his side he kept a shorthand writer with a book and tablets, who wore mittens on his hands in winter, so that not even the sharpness of the weather should rob him of a moment, and for the same reason, when in Rome, he used to be carried in a litter. I remember that once he rebuked me for walking, saying, "If you were a student, you could not waste your hours like that," for he considered that all time was wasted which was not devoted to study. Such was the application which enabled him to compile all those volumes I have enumerated, and he left me one hundred and sixty commonplace books, written on both sides of the scrolls, and in a very small handwriting, which really makes the number of the volumes considerably more. He used to say that when he was procurator in Spain he could have sold these commonplace books to Largius Licinus for four hundred thousand sesterces, and at that time they were much fewer in number. Do you not feel when you think of his voluminous writing and reading that he cannot have had any public duties to attend to, and that he cannot have been an intimate friend of the Emperors? Again, when you hear what an amount of work he put into his studies, does it not seem that he neither wrote nor read as much as he might? For his other duties might surely have prevented him from studying altogether, and a man with his application might have accomplished even more than he did. So I often smile when some of my friends call me a book-worm, for if I compare myself with him I am but a shocking idler. Yet am I quite as bad as that, considering the way I am distracted by my public and private duties? Who is there of all those who devote their whole life to literature, who, if compared with him, would not blush for himself as a sleepy-head and a lazy fellow? I have let my pen run on, though I had intended simply to answer your question and give you a list of my uncle's works; but I trust that even my letter may give you as much pleasure as his books, and that it will spur you on not only to read them, but also to compose something worthy to be compared with them. Farewell. ,To Annius Severus, Out of a legacy which I have come in for I have just bought a Corinthian bronze, small it is true, but a charming and sharply-cut piece of work, so far as I have any knowledge of art, and that, as in everything else perhaps, is very slight. But as for the statue in question even I can appreciate its merits. For it is a nude, and neither conceals its faults, if there are any, nor hides at all its strong points. It represents an old man in a standing posture; the bones, muscles, nerves, veins, and even the wrinkles appear quite life-like; the hair is thin and scanty on the forehead; the brow is broad; the face wizened; the neck thin; the shoulders are bowed; the breast is flat, and the belly hollow. The back too gives the same impression of age, as far as a back view can. The bronze itself, judging by the genuine colour, is old and of great antiquity. In fact, in every respect it is a work calculated to catch the eye of a connoisseur and to delight the eye of an amateur, and this is what tempted me to purchase it, although I am the merest novice. But I bought it not to keep it at home - for as yet I have no Corinthian art work in my house - but that I might put it up in my native country in some frequented place, and I specially had in mind the Temple of Jupiter. For the statue seems to me to be worthy of the temple, and the gift to be worthy of the god. So I hope that you will show me your usual kindness when I give you a commission, and that you will undertake the following for me. Will you order a pedestal to be made, of any marble you like, to be inscribed with my name and titles, if you think the latter ought to be mentioned? I will send you the statue as soon as I can find anyone who is not overburdened with luggage, or I will bring myself along with it, as I dare say you would prefer me to do. For, if only my duties allow me, I am intending to run down thither. You are glad that I promise to come, but you will frown when I add that I can only stay a few days. For the business which hitherto has kept me from getting away will not allow of my being absent any longer. Farewell. ,To Caninius Rufus. News has just come that Silius Italicus * has starved himself to death at his villa near Neapolis. Ill-health was the cause assigned. He had an incurable tumour, which made him weary of life and resolved him to face death with a determination that nothing could shake, yet to his last day he was prosperous and happy, save that he lost the younger of his two children. The elder and the better of the two still survives him in prosperous circumstances and of consular rank. During Nero's reign Silius had injured his reputation, for it was thought that he voluntarily informed against people, but he had conducted himself with prudence and courtesy as one of the friends of Vitellius; he had returned from his governorship of Asia covered with glory, and he had succeeded in obliterating the stains on his character, caused by his activity in his young days, by the admirable use he made of his retirement. He ranked among the leading men of the State, though he held no official position and excited no man's envy. People paid their respects to him and courted his society, and, though he spent much of his time on his couch, his room was always full of company who were no mere chance callers, and he passed his days in learned and scholarly conversation, when he was not busy composing. He wrote verses which show abundant pains rather than genius, and sometimes he submitted them to general criticism by having them read in public. At last he retired from the city, prompted thereto by his great age, and settled in Campania, nor did he stir from the spot, even at the accession of the new Emperor. A Caesar deserves great credit for allowing a subject such liberty, and Italicus deserves the same for venturing to avail himself of it. ** He was such a keen virtuoso † that he got the reputation of always itching to buy new things. He owned a number of villas in the same neighbourhood, and used to neglect his old ones through his passion for his recent purchases. In each he had any quantity of books, statues and busts, which he not only kept by him but even treated with a sort of veneration, especially the busts of Virgil, whose birthday he kept up far more scrupulously than he did his own, principally at Naples, where he used to approach the poet's monument as though it were a temple. In these peaceful surroundings he completed his seventy-fifth year, his health being delicate rather than weak, and just as he was the last consul appointed by Nero, so too in him died the sole survivor of all the consuls appointed by that Emperor. It is also a curious fact that, besides his being the last of Nero's consuls, it was in his term of office that Nero perished. When I think of this, I feel a sort of compassion for the frailty of humanity. For what is so circumscribed and so short as even the longest human life? Does it not seem to you as if Nero were alive only the other day? Yet of all those who held the consulship during his reign not one survives at the present moment. But, after all, what is there remarkable in that? Not so long ago Lucius Piso, the father of the Piso who was most shamefully put to death in Africa by Valerius Festus, used to say that he did not see a single soul in the senate of all those whom he had called upon to speak during his consulship. Within such narrow limits are the powers of living of even the mightiest throng confined †† that it seems to me the royal tears are not only excusable but even praiseworthy. For the story goes that when Xerxes cast his eyes over his enormous host, he wept to think of the fate that in such brief space would lay so many thousands low. But that is all the more reason why we should apply all the fleeting, rushing moments at our disposal, if not to great achievements - for these may be destined for other hands than ours - at least to study, and why, as long life is denied us, we should leave behind us some memorial that we have lived. I know that you need no spurring on, yet the affection I have for you prompts me even to spur a willing horse, just as you do with me. Well, it is a noble contention when friends exhort one another to work and sharpen one another's desires to win an immortal name. Farewell. ,To Suetonius Tranquillus. It is just like your usual respectful regard for me that you beg me so earnestly to transfer the tribuneship, * which I obtained for you from that noble man ** Neratius Marcellus, to your relative Caesennius Silvanus. I should have been delighted to see you as tribune, but I shall be equally pleased to see another take the post through your generosity, for I do not think it would be becoming in me to grudge a man whom you desire to advance in dignity the fame of family affection, which is a greater distinction than any honorific titles. Besides, as it is a splendid thing both to deserve benefits and to confer them, I see that you will at one and the same time receive credit for both, now that you bestow on another what your own merits have won. Moreover, I quite understand that I too shall come in for some glory when it is known through your generous deed that friends of mine can not only fill the office of tribune, but can bestow it on others. For these reasons I bow to the wishes which do you the greatest credit. No name has yet been placed on the lists, and so we can quite well substitute that of Silvanus for yours. I hope that he will show himself as grateful to you as you have to me. Farewell. 0 ,To Cornelius Minicianus. I can now give you a full account of the enormous trouble entailed upon me in the public trial brought by the Province of Baetica. It was a complicated suit, and new issues kept constantly cropping up. Why this variety, and why these different pleadings? you well ask. Well, Caecilius Classicus - a low rascal who carries his villainy in his face - had during his proconsulship in Baetica, in the same year that Marius Priscus was Governor of Africa, behaved both with violence and rapacity. Now, Priscus came from Baetica and Classicus from Africa, and so there was a rather good saying among the people of Baetica, for even resentment often inspires wit I was acting for the Province, assisted by Lucceius Albinus, an eloquent and ornate speaker, and though we have long been on terms of the closest regard for one another, our association in this suit has made me feel vastly more attached to him. As a rule, and especially in oratorical efforts, people do not run well in double harness in their striving for glory, but he and I were not in any sense rivals and there was no jealousy between us, as we both did our level best, not for our own hand, but for the common cause, which was of such a serious character and of such public importance that it seemed to demand from us that we should not over-elaborate each single pleading. We were afraid that time would fail us, and that our voices and lungs would break down if we tied up together so many charges and so many defendants into one bundle. Again, we feared that the attention of the judges would not only be wearied by the introduction of so many names and charges, but that they would be confused thereby, that the sum-total of the influence of each one of the accused might procure for each the strength of all, and finally we were afraid lest the most influential of the accused should make a scapegoat of the meanest among them, and so slip out of the hands of justice at the expense of someone else - for favour and personal interest are strongest when they can skulk behind some pretence of severity. Moreover, we were advised by the well-known story of Sertorius, who set two soldiers - one young and powerful, and the other old and weak - to pull off the tail of a horse. You know how it finishes. And so we too thought that we could get the better of even such a long array of defendants, provided we took them one by one. Our plan was first to prove the guilt of Classicus himself; then it was a natural transition to his intimates and tools, because the latter could never be condemned unless Classicus were guilty. Consequently, we took two of them and closely connected them with Classicus, Baebius Probus and Fabius Hispanus, both men of some influence, while Hispanus possesses a strong gift of eloquence. To prove the guilt of Classicus was an easy and simple task that did not take us long. He had left in his own handwriting a document showing what profits he had made out of each transaction and case, and he had even despatched a letter couched in a boasting and impudent strain to one of his mistresses containing the words, "Hurrah! hurrah! I am coming back to you with my hands free; * for I have already sold the interests of the Baetici to the tune of four million sesterces." But we had to sweat to get a conviction against Hispanus and Probus. Before I dealt with the charges against them, I thought it necessary to establish the legal point that the execution of an unjust sentence is an indictable offence, for if I had not done this it would have been useless for me to prove that they had been the henchmen of Classicus. Moreover, their line of defence was not a denial. They pleaded that they could not help themselves and therefore were to be pardoned, arguing that they were mere provincials and were frightened into doing anything that a proconsul bade them do. Claudius Restitutus, who replied to me, a practised and watchful speaker who is equal to any emergency however suddenly sprung up upon him, is now going about saying that he never was so dumbfounded and thrown off his balance as when he discovered that the ground on which he placed full reliance for his defence had been cut from under him and stolen away from him. Well, the outcome of our line of attack was as follows In the third action, we thought our best course was to lump the defendants together, fearing lest, if the trial were to be spun out to undue length, those who were hearing the case would grow sick and tired of it, and their zeal for strict justice and severity would abate. Besides, the accused persons, who had been designedly kept over till then, were all of comparatively little importance, except the wife of Classicus, and, although suspicion against her was strong, the proofs seemed rather weak. As for the daughter of Classicus, who was also among the defendants, she had cleared herself even of suspicion. Consequently, when I reached her name in the last trial - for there was no fear then as there had been at the beginning that such an admission would weaken the force of the prosecution - I thought the most honourable course was to refrain from pressing the charge against an innocent person, and I frankly said so, repeating the idea in various forms. For example, I asked the deputation of the Baetici whether they had given me definite instructions on any point which they felt confident they could prove against her; I turned to the senators and inquired whether they thought I ought to employ what eloquence I might possess against an innocent person, and hold, as it were, the knife to her throat; and, finally, I concluded the subject with these words Well, the conclusion of this trial, with its crowd of defendants, was that a certain few were acquitted, but the majority were condemned and banished, some for a fixed term of years, and others for life. In the same decree the senate expressed in most handsome terms its appreciation of our industry, loyalty, and perseverance, and this was the only possible worthy and adequate reward for the trouble we had taken. You can imagine how worn out we were, when you think how often we had to plead, and answer the pleadings of our opponents, and how many witnesses we had to cross-question, encourage, and refute. Besides, you know how trying and vexatious it is to say "no" to the friends of the accused when they come pleading with you in private, and to stoutly oppose them when they confront you in open court. I will tell you one of the things I said. When one of those who were acting as judges interrupted me on behalf of one of the accused in whom he took a special interest, I replied I have brought you up to date as well as I could. You will say, "It was not worthwhile, for what have I to do with such a long letter?" If you do, don't ask again what is going on at Rome, and bear in mind that you cannot call a letter long which covers so many days, so many trials, and so many defendants and pleadings. I think I have dealt with all these subjects as briefly as I am sure they are exactly dealt with. But no, I was rash to say "exactly"; I remember a point which I had omitted, and I will tell you about it even now, though it is out of its proper place. Homer does this, and many other authors have followed his example - with very good effect too - though that is not my reason for so doing. One of the witnesses, annoyed at being summoned to appear, or bribed by some one of the defendants in order to weaken the prosecution, laid an accusation against Norbanus Licinianus, a member of the deputation, who had been instructed to get up the case, and charged him with having acted in collusion with the other side in relation to Casta, the wife of Classicus. It is a legal rule in such instances that the trial of the accused must be finished before inquiry is made into a charge of collusion, on the ground that one can best form an opinion on the sincerity of the prosecution by noticing how the case has been carried through. However, Norbanus reaped no advantage from this point of law, nor did his position as member of the deputation, nor his duties as one of those getting up the action stand him in good stead. A storm of prejudice broke out against him, and there is no denying that his hands were crime-stained, that he, like many others, had taken advantage of the evil times of Domitian, and that he had been selected by the provincials to get up the case, not as a man of probity and honour, but because he had been a personal enemy of Classicus, by whom, indeed, he had been banished. He demanded that a day should be fixed for his trial, and that the charge against him should be published; both were refused, and he was obliged to answer on the spot. He did so, and though the thorough badness and depravity of the fellow make me hesitate to say whether he showed more impudence or resolution, he certainly replied with great readiness. There were sundry things brought against him which did him much greater damage than the charge of collusion, and two men of consular rank, Pomponius Rufus and Libo Frugi, severely damaged him by giving evidence to the effect that during the reign of Domitian he had assisted the prosecution of Salvius Liberalis before the judge. He was convicted and banished to an island. Consequently, when I was accusing Casta, I especially pressed the point that her accuser had been found guilty of collusion. But I did so in vain, and we had the novel and inconsistent result that the accused was acquitted though her accuser was found guilty of collusion with her. You may ask what we were about while this was going on. We told the senate that we had received all our instructions for this public trial from Norbanus, and that the case ought to be tried afresh if he were proved guilty of collusion, and so, while his trial was proceeding, we sat still. Subsequently Norbanus was present every day the trial lasted, and showed right up to the end the same resolute or impudent front. I wonder if I have forgotten anything else. Well, I almost did. On the last day Salvius Liberalis bitterly assailed the rest of the deputation on the ground that they had not brought accusations against all whom they were commissioned to accuse by the province. He is a powerful and able speaker, and he put them |
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| nan | To Tiro. While I was staying across the Po and you were in Picenum, I did not miss you so much ; but since I have been in Rome, and you are still away in Picenum, I have missed you much more. Perhaps it is that the places where we are usually in one another's society remind me of you more sharply, or else it must be that there is nothing like being in the neighbourhood of absent friends to make you miss them, and the nearer you get to hoping to enjoy their society, the more impatiently you bear their absence. However, whatever the cause may be, do relieve me from my torment. Either come to me or I shall return to the place which I left rather hurriedly and foolishly. If I do, my only reason will be just this, to see whether you will send me letters like the one I am now writing, when you begin to find yourself in Rome without me. Farewell. ,To Arrianus. When I am in the courts I frequently find myself regretting Marcus Regulus, though I hardly mean to say that I want him back again. Why then, you may ask, do I regret him? For these reasons. He used to hold the profession in great respect; he used to be nervous and anxious to succeed and write out his speeches beforehand, though he could never thoroughly commit them to memory. Even his practice of smearing ointment over either his right or left eye - the former if he were appearing for the plaintiff, and the latter when he was pleading for a defendant - and his habit of changing the white patch from one eyebrow to the other, and consulting the soothsayers as to how his cases would go, though due to gross superstition on his part, were also to be partly explained by the great regard in which he held our profession. Again, his other practice of always demanding that we should be allowed to speak as long as we desired, and the way in which he succeeded in getting an audience together, were very gratifying to those who were engaged in the same cases as he was. For what can be more pleasant than to go on speaking to your heart's content, when someone else gets all the odium, and to speak at your leisure to an audience which another has brought together, as though you had no choice in the matter ? However, be that as it may, Regulus did well to die, and he would have done better still if he had died earlier, for he might have lived without any harm to the public under an emperor in whose reign he could do no damage. And so I am justified in now and then regretting his loss, for after his death the custom gradually crept in and became firmly established for counsel to ask for, and for the judges to grant, a time-limit for speeches of two water-clocks, * or even one apiece, and sometimes only half a one. Those who plead prefer to get their speeches over rather than go on pleading, and those who listen to them are more anxious to have done than to come to a right decision. Such is the general carelessness, laziness, and disrespect of our profession, and of the hazards which we advocates undergo. Are we wiser than our ancestors were ? Are we more just than the very laws which apportion so many hours, days, and adjournments for each case? Were they dull-witted and slow-coaches, or are we clearer speakers, quicker thinkers, and more conscientious judges than they, that we should hurry through a case in fewer water-glasses than they took days for the finishing of them? O Regulus! to think that your ambition should have gained you from all sides the favour which is rarely accorded to the most conscientious pleader! For my own part, whenever I am on the bench, and I am oftener there than pleading, I grant counsel as much time ** as they desire, no matter what amount they ask for. For I consider it rash to form any opinion as to what time a case will take while it has yet to be heard, and to set a fixed time-limit to a trial, the length of which you do not now, especially as the first duty of a conscientious judge is to show patience, a virtue which forms no small part of justice itself. But, people argue, a good deal of irrelevant matter is spoken. It may be so, but it is better that it should be so than that any necessary points should be omitted; and again, there are no means of telling whether an argument is irrelevant or not until you have heard it. However, it will be better to discuss these matters, as well as numerous other public shortcomings, in person, for you, like myself, have such a regard for the common good that you desire to see many things put straight which will be no easy undertaking at this time of day. But just a word for our private affairs ! Is everything going on well with you at home? With me there is no news, but I am all the better pleased with my good fortune because it continues, and as for the inconveniences of life, well, they seem to grow lighter, because I am getting well used to them. Farewell. 0 ,To Verus. I am much obliged to you for undertaking to look after the plot of land which I gave to my old nurse. When I made her a present of it it was worth a hundred thousand sesterces, but afterwards its value diminished as the produce from it grew less. However, now that you are looking after it, it will pick up again. I want you to remember that I am commending to your care, not so much the trees and the soil - though I do not forget these - as the present itself, for she to whom it belongs cannot be more anxious that it should produce good crops than I am who gave it to her. Farewell. ,To Calpurnia. Never before have I chafed so much at being so busy that I could not accompany you when you set out for Campania to recover your health, nor yet follow and overtake you after you had started. For now especially I should like to be with you to see with my own eyes how much strength you are gaining, what weight that delicate frame of yours is putting on, and whether you are enjoying yourself without let or hindrance in the relaxation and among the rich, generous pleasures of Campania. I am quite anxiously longing to hear that you are strong again, for it makes one nervous and troubled to get no news of those whom we love very dearly, when they are away from us, and your absence, coupled with your weak state of health, keeps me constantly upon the rack. I am afraid of all sorts of things; I fancy anything may have happened, and, like all anxious people, I am especially given to conjuring up the thoughts that I most dread. I entreat you, therefore, to remember how nervous I am about you, and write me once, or even twice a day. For while I am reading your letters, I shall feel easier in my mind, though, when I have read through to the end, my fears will immediately recur. Farewell. ,To Ursus. I have already told you * that Varenus was given permission to bring witnesses on his behalf from his province. This seemed just to a majority of the senate, but unjust to certain others, and the latter clung obstinately to their view, especially Licinius Nepos, who at the next meeting of the senate, on a debate dealing with a totally different subject, began to discuss the resolution of the previous sitting, and re-opened a matter which was already closed. He even went on to say that the consuls should be asked to bring in a motion relating to the law against extortion, under the head of the law against bribery, and say whether they thought it right that an addition should be made to the law, giving those who were accused of the offence the same powers to make inquiries and denounce the guilty parties as were granted to the accusers and to the witnesses. Many considered that this speech of Nepos was belated, untimely, and quite out of place, inasmuch as he had allowed the proper time for opposing the proposal to pass by, and now declaimed against it after it had been carried, though he might have done so before. The praetor Juventius Celsus vehemently upbraided him in a long speech, in which he taunted him with seeking to reform the senate. Nepos replied; Celsus answered him back, and neither spared reproaches and insults. I do not wish to repeat the words which pained me when I heard them spoken, but I blame even more some of our number who kept running first to Celsus and then to Nepos, according as one or other was speaking, in their desire to hear every word. At one moment they seemed to be encouraging and inflaming their passions, at another to be seeking to reconcile them and smooth matters over, and then they kept on appealing to Caesar to take the side of each, or even of both, just as actors do in a farce. What annoyed me most of all was that each was told what his opponent was going to say, for Celsus replied to Nepos from his note-book, and Nepos answered Celsus from his tablets. The friends of each kept talking to such an extent that the two disputants knew exactly what each was going to say, as though it had all been arranged beforehand. Farewell. ,To Fundanus. If ever I wished you to be in Rome it is now, and I do hope you may come. I want a friend to second my desires and share my labours and anxieties. Julius Naso is seeking office, and there are a number of excellent candidates. It will be a splendid thing for him to beat them, but he will find it a very difficult matter. So I am all on tenterhooks of hope and fear, and I can hardly realise that I have been consul, for it seems to me that I am a candidate again for all the offices which I have held in turn. Naso's long attachment to me justifies the worry I am going through. I can hardly say that I am bound to him as a friend of his father - for I was too young to enjoy such friendship - yet, when I was quite a young man, people used to point his father out to my notice, and speak of him in the highest terms. He was not only a scholar himself, but was devoted to other scholars, and almost every day he used to go to hear the discourses of Quintilian * and Nicetes Sacerdos, ** which I at that time regularly attended. He was, moreover, a distinguished and honourable man, and his reputation ought to stand his son in good stead. However, there are now many members of the senate to whom he was unknown, and many again who knew him yet pay no honour to any except those who are alive. Consequently the son will have to struggle and work all the harder now that the high position gained by his father is lost to him. It will, doubtless, be a great ornament to him, but its practical value, as influencing votes, is nearly nil. Naso has always been sensible of this, and with an eye to a time like the present, he has made friends and cultivated their acquaintance. Myself in particular he chose as a person to be loved and imitated as soon as he allowed himself to trust his own judgment. Whenever I am pleading he is careful to stand at my side ; when I give a recital he always sits near me; whenever I am planning and beginning a new work he always takes the greatest interest therein. Of late he has done so alone, but previously his brother used to join him, and now that the brother is dead I must take his place and fill the part he played. For I grieve to think of his untimely death, and of Naso being deprived of the assistance of such an excellent brother, and dependent solely upon the good offices of friends. This is why I beg you to come and join your solicitations to mine. It will be of the utmost value to me to take you round with me and show you as my backer. Your influence is such that I think I shall be more sure of being successful, even with my own friends, if you are with me. If any engagements detain you, break them 0 ,To Calpurnia. You say that you are quite distressed at my absence, and that your only solace is to embrace my writings instead of me, and to constantly put them in the place I usually occupy. I am glad you miss me, and glad too that you find comfort in such consolations, while I in my turn continually read over your letters, and take them up again and again as though they were new ones. Yet this only makes me feel your absence the more keenly, for if your letters have such a charm for me, you can imagine how sweet I find your conversation. However, do not fail to write as often as you can, even though your letters torture as well as delight me. Farewell. ,To Priscus. You know Atilius Crescens, and love him too, for who is there held in any respect at all who fails to know and love him ? But my affection for him is that of an intimate friend, not of a mere acquaintance. The townships where we reside are only a day's journey apart, and our regard for one another began when we were young men, and when love burns strongest. It has lasted till now, nor has it cooled with riper judgment, but rather grown in strength, and this is well known to all our intimate friends. For he always boasts of my friendship in the most open manner, and I too am proud to declare how highly I value his modesty, how anxious I am that his quiet and security should not be disturbed. When on one occasion he was afraid of being treated in a high-handed way by a person who was about to become tribune of the plebs, and communicated his fears to me, I replied, "No-one shall harm you as long as I live." * But why tell you all this? you ask. It is that you may know that Atilius is protected from injury as long as I am safe. But what of that? you say again. Well, Valerius Varus owed him a sum of money, and the heir of Varus is our friend Maximus, whom I have a great regard for, though he is a closer friend of yourself. I beg you, therefore, in fact I insist, as my friendship entitles me to do, that you will see to it that my Atilius not only gets back his capital intact, but also the interest due over several years. He is a man who never nibbles at anyone else's property ; he is careful of his own ; he has no business to support him and no income save that which he saves by his frugal living. For though he is an admirable scholar, he studies only for pleasure and reputation. Even the slightest loss is a serious matter to him, because it is always a tax upon a man to have to make good what he has lost. So do remove my anxieties and his in this matter, and enable me to continue to enjoy his sweet disposition and charming wit. I cannot bear to see a friend sad whose cheerfulness forbids sadness in me. In brief, you know what a witty man he is, and I want you to take care that no injury shall sour his good spirits and turn them to gall and bitterness. You may be sure that, if he is wronged, his resentment will be as strong as his affection, for his noble and independent spirit will not brook a monetary loss coupled with an affront. Moreover, however he may bear it, I shall consider the loss as mine, and the affront a personal one, but my wrath will be even greater than if mine were the actual loss. But there, why am I indulging in these fiery warnings, which sound almost like threats ? It is better that I should ask you, as I did at the outset of this letter, and implore you to do what you can to prevent him from thinking - as I am very much afraid he will - that have neglected him, and also prevent me from thinking that you have neglected me. I am sure you will do so, if you are as anxious to obviate the latter as I am the former. Farewell. ,To Tacitus. You commend to my notice the candidature of Julius Naso. But fancy commending Naso to me ! Why, it is like commending to me a candidature of my own ! However, I don't mind, and I forgive you. I should have sent a similar recommendation to you, if I had been out of Rome and you had been staying in town. When one is really anxious, one thinks that everything is of pressing importance. Nevertheless, I think you had better go on asking others for their interest, and I will back your entreaties, and second them and assist them as far as I can. Farewell. ,To Albinus. When I visited the country house of my mother-in-law at Alsium, which at one time belonged to Rufus Verginius, the place revived painful memories of the loss I suffered in the death of that excellent and noble man. * For it was here that he sought retirement, and he even used to speak of it as the nest of his old age. Whichever way I turned, my spirit sought his presence, my eyes looked to find him. It even gave me pleasure to see his monument, though I was sorry I had seen it, for it is still unfinished, not because of any difficulty in executing the work, which is on a very modest, and I might say meagre scale, but because of the negligence of the person to whom it was entrusted. I felt grieved and indignant that ten years should have elapsed since his death, and that his remains and neglected ashes should still be lying without an inscription and a name, though his memory and fame have traversed the whole world. Moreover, he had particularly left instructions that his glorious and immortal behaviour should be inscribed in the verses ,To Maximus. What a joyful day this has been ! The prefect of the city called me in to assist him in hearing his cases, and I listened to two young men of the highest promise and conspicuous abilities pleading against each other. They were Fuscus Salinator and Ummidius Quadratus, a striking pair, who will prove not only an ornament to our age, but also to literature. Both of them are wonderfully upright, steady of purpose, and modest in their dress. They have the true Latin countenance, manly voices, strong memories, conspicuous wit, and level judgment. I was delighted with each and all of these qualities, and especially with the way in which they kept looking up to me, as their adviser and teacher, while those who listened to them thought they were imitating me and walking in my footsteps. Again let me say it was a delightful day, and one that I shall long treasure in my memory. For what could be of happier augury for the public interest than that young men of the highest rank should seek reputation and glory in a learned profession what more gratifying to me than to find myself taken as an example by those who are pressing on towards an honourable goal ? I pray Heaven that this may be a joy I shall continually receive, and I call you to witness that I implore the gods that all who set such store on imitating me may desire to be even better men than myself. Farewell. ,To Fabatus. You of all people should not hesitate a moment about commending to my favour any persons whose interests you think I ought to look after, for it becomes you to assist as many as you can, and me to undertake anything in which you are interested. So I will do all I possibly can for Vettius Priscus, especially in my particular sphere of interest, which is the court of the centumviri. You bid me think nothing more of the letter in which, as you put it, you unburdened your heart to me, but, on the contrary, there is none which I shall more gladly keep in remembrance. For it is that letter more than any other which shows me how much you love me, inasmuch as you treated me therein as you used to treat your own son. Nor will I refrain from telling you that it was all the more gratifying to me just because I felt I had a perfectly clear conscience in the matter, for I had worked my very hardest to carry out your wishes. So I earnestly desire that you will always take me to task in exactly the same straightforward way whenever you think I have been at all remiss - I say whenever you think I have been remiss, for I never shall be so in reality. If you do, I shall understand that your scolding proceeds from the deep affection you bear me, and that you will rejoice to find I did not deserve it. Farewell. ,To Ursus. Did you ever see any one so much harried and worried as my friend Varenus? He has had to fight hard to retain the concession which was granted him, and practically had to sue for it over again. * The Bithynians have had the audacity to go before the consuls and complain about the decree of the senate, and seek to get it set aside, and they have even appealed against it to the Emperor, who is away from Rome. He referred them back to the senate, and yet they have not ceased their efforts. Claudius Capito's speech may be described as a piece of impertinence rather than dogged resolution, for he impeached the senate for its own decree. Catius Fronto answered him with dignity and firmness, and the senate acted amazingly well, for even those members who were opposed to granting the petition of Varenus, spoke in favour of confirming the grant after it had once been made, on the ground that, while it was open for any individual member to express dissent before a decision had been arrived at, all should observe the wishes of the majority when the decision had once been reached. Only Acilius Rufus and seven or eight others - seven I should say - continued to stand by their previous opinions, and some members of this little handful were much laughed at for their temporary gravity, or rather for their assumption of it. However, you may judge for yourself what a tussle is in store for us when the real struggle begins, if the prelude and opening exchanges, as it were, have occasioned such squabbling as this. Farewell. ,To Mauricus. You press me to stay with you at your villa near Formiae. Well, I will come on condition that you do not inconvenience yourself at all - a stipulation in which I consult my own interest as well as yours. For it is not the sea and the shore which will tempt me, but yourself and retirement, and leave to do as I please. Otherwise it were better to remain in town, for one ought to refer everything either to someone else's judgment or to one's own, and, as far as I am personally concerned, my taste is to desire nothing, unless it is perfect and flawless. * Farewell. ,To Romanus. You have missed being present at a wonderfully funny scene. I was not there myself, but I heard all about it just after it had taken place. Passennus Paullus, a distinguished Roman knight, and a man of real learning, is given to writing elegiacs. The habit runs in the family, for he belongs to the same township as Propertius did, * and he even reckons that poet among his ancestors. He was about to give a reading, and began thus 0 ,To Tacitus. You ask me to send you an account of my uncle's death, so that you may be able to give posterity an accurate description of it. I am much obliged to you, for I can see that the immortality of his fame is well assured, if you take in hand to write of it. For although he perished in a disaster which devastated some of the fairest regions of the land, and though he is sure of eternal remembrance like the peoples and cities that fell with him in that memorable calamity, though too he had written a large number of works of lasting value, yet the undying fame of which your writings are assured will secure for his a still further lease of life. For my own part, I think that those people are highly favoured by Providence who are capable either of performing deeds worthy of the historian's pen or of writing histories worthy of being read, but that they are peculiarly favoured who can do both. Among the latter I may class my uncle, thanks to his own writings and to yours. So I am all the more ready to fulfil your injunctions, nay, I am even prepared to beg to be allowed to undertake them. My uncle was stationed at Misenum, where he was in active command of the fleet, with full powers. On the 24th of August *, about the seventh hour, my mother drew his attention to the fact that a cloud of unusual size and shape had made its appearance. He had been out in the sun, followed by a cold bath, and after a light meal he was lying down and reading. Yet he called for his sandals, and climbed up to a spot from which he could command a good view of the curious phenomenon. Those who were looking at the cloud from some distance could not make out from which mountain it was rising - it was afterwards discovered to have been Mount Vesuvius - but in likeness and form it more closely resembled a pine-tree than anything else, for what corresponded to the trunk was of great length and height, and then spread out into a number of branches, the reason being, I imagine, that while the vapour was fresh, the cloud was borne upwards, but when the vapour became wasted, it lost its motion, or even became dissipated by its own weight, and spread out laterally. At times it looked white, and at other times dirty and spotted, according to the quantity of earth and cinders that were shot up. To a man of my uncle's learning, the phenomenon appeared one of great importance, which deserved a closer study. He ordered a Liburnian galley to be got ready, and offered to take me with him, if I desired to accompany him, but I replied that I preferred to go on with my studies, and it so happened that he had assigned me some writing to do. He was just leaving the house when he received a written message from Rectina, the wife of Tascus, who was terrified at the peril threatening her - for her villa lay just beneath the mountain, and there were no means of escape save by shipboard - begging him to save her from her perilous position. So he changed his plans, and carried out with the greatest fortitude the task, which he had started as a scholarly inquiry. He had the galleys launched and went on board himself, in the hope of succouring, not only Rectina, but many others, for there were a number of people living along the shore owing to its delightful situation. He hastened, therefore, towards the place whence others were fleeing, and steering a direct course, kept the helm straight for the point of danger, so utterly devoid of fear that every movement of the looming portent and every change in its appearance he described and had noted down by his secretary, as soon as his eyes detected it. Already ashes were beginning to fall upon the ships, hotter and in thicker showers as they approached more nearly, with pumice-stones and black flints, charred and cracked by the heat of the flames, while their way was barred by the sudden shoaling of the sea bottom and the litter of the mountain on the shore. He hesitated for a moment whether to turn back, and then, when the helmsman warned him to do so, he exclaimed, "Fortune favours the bold ; try to reach Pomponianus." The latter was at Stabiae, separated by the whole width of the bay, for the sea there pours in upon a gently rounded and curving shore. Although the danger was not yet close upon him, it was none the less clearly seen, and it travelled quickly as it came nearer, so Pomponianus had got his baggage together on shipboard, and had determined upon flight, and was waiting for the wind which was blowing on shore to fall. My uncle sailed in with the wind fair behind him, and embraced Pomponianus, who was in a state of fright, comforting and cheering him at the same time. Then in order to calm his friend's fears by showing how composed he was himself, he ordered the servants to carry him to the bath, and, after his ablutions, he sat down and had dinner in the best of spirits, or with that assumption of good spirits which is quite as remarkable as the reality. In the meantime broad sheets of flame, which rose high in the air, were breaking out in a number of places on Mount Vesuvius and lighting up the sky, and the glare and brightness seemed all the more striking owing to the darkness of the night. My uncle, in order to allay the fear of his companions, kept declaring that the country people in their terror had left their fires burning, and that the conflagration they saw arose from the blazing and empty villas. Then he betook himself to rest and enjoyed a very deep sleep, for his breathing, which, owing to his bulk, was rather heavy and loud, was heard by those who were waiting at the door of his chamber. But by this time the courtyard leading to the room he occupied was so full of ashes and pumice-stones mingled together, and covered to such a depth, that if he had delayed any longer in the bedchamber there would have been no means of escape. So my uncle was aroused, and came out and joined Pomponianus and the rest who had been keeping watch. They held a consultation whether they should remain indoors or wander forth in the open; for the buildings were beginning to shake with the repeated and intensely severe shocks of earthquake, and seemed to be rocking to and fro as though they had been torn from their foundations. Outside again there was danger to be apprehended from the pumice-stones, though these were light and nearly burnt through, and thus, after weighing the two perils, the latter course was determined upon. With my uncle it was a choice of reasons which prevailed, with the rest a choice of fears. They placed pillows on their heads and secured them with cloths, as a precaution against the falling bodies. Elsewhere the day had dawned by this time, but there it was still night, and the darkness was blacker and thicker than any ordinary night. This, however, they relieved as best they could by a number of torches and other kinds of lights. They decided to make their way to the shore, and to see from the nearest point whether the sea would enable them to put out, but it was still running high and contrary. A sheet was spread on the ground, and on this my uncle lay, and twice he called for a draught of cold water, which he drank. Then the flames, and the smell of sulphur which gave warning of them, scattered the others in flight and roused him. Leaning on two slaves, he rose to his feet and immediately fell down again, owing, as I think, to his breathing being obstructed by the thickness of the fumes and congestion of the stomach, that organ being naturally weak and narrow, and subject to inflammation. When daylight returned - two days after the last day he had seen - his body was found untouched, uninjured, and covered, dressed just as he had been in life. The corpse suggested a person asleep rather than a dead man. Meanwhile my mother and I were at Misenum. But that is of no consequence for the purposes of history, nor indeed did you express a wish to be told of anything except of my uncle's death. So I will say no more, except to add that I have given you a full account both of the incidents which I myself witnessed and of those narrated to me immediately afterwards, when, as a rule, one gets the truest account of what has happened. You will pick out what you think will answer your purpose best, for to write a letter is a different thing from writing a history, and to write to a friend is not like writing to all and sundry. Farewell. ,To Restitutus. I cannot contain the indignation which I felt when I attended the reading of a certain friend of mine, and I feel I must give vent to it in a letter, as I have no opportunity of so doing in conversation with you. The piece he was reading was really perfect, but two or three clever persons - at least they and a few others think they are clever - listened to it as though they were deaf mutes. They never parted their lips, or raised a hand, nor did they rise from their places even after they were tired of sitting. What meant this gravity of demeanour and this profound wisdom ? Or, I should say, how can people be so lazy, so arrogant, so perverse, and such lunatics as to spend a whole day in giving offence, and leave the man your enemy whom you came to see as a close friend? Is it because of superior learning? Yet that would be all the more reason not to be envious, for the man who envies another shows his inferiority. But the fact is, that whether a man is superior, inferior, or on the same level, he should have a word of praise for his inferiors, superiors, and equals. He should praise those who excel him, because he will not get praise himself, unless he praises them, and his inferiors and equals, because it is a good thing for his reputation to stand as high as possible in the regard of those who are on a lower or on the same level as himself. For my own part, I make a practice of paying respectful attention to all who do anything at all in literature, and I tender them my admiration. For she is a difficult, arduous, and disdainful mistress, who speedily shows her contempt for those who hold her in slight respect. I feel sure that you thoroughly agree with me, for who is there possesses a greater reverence for learning than yourself, and who takes a kindlier estimate of its worth ? That is why I have chosen you of all people as the confidant of my indignation, for I would rather have you to share my sentiments than anyone else. Farewell. ,To Sabinus. You ask me to undertake the cause of the town of Firmum, and, though I am up to the eyes in work, I will do my best, for I am anxious to lay under an obligation to me so distinguished a colony by pleading in its behalf, and yourself by obliging you in a matter in which you are so interested. For inasmuch as you regard our friendship as an advantage and honour to yourself, and constantly say so to others, there is no favour which I ought to deny you, especially when you ask it for the sake of your birthplace. For what can be more honourable than the dutiful entreaties of a patriotic citizen, and what more efficacious than those of a devoted friend? So you may pledge my loyalty to your, or rather our good people of Firmum. Their reputation is sufficient guarantee that they are worthy of my best work and skill, but a still better proof that they are excellent folk is the fact that a man like you lives in their midst. Farewell. ,To Nepos. You know that the price of land, especially in the suburbs of Rome, has gone up. The cause of this sudden increase in value has been the theme of general discussion. At the last elections the senate passed the following wholesome resolutions; "That no candidates should provide public entertainments, send presents, and deposit sums of money.'' The first two practices had gone on openly, and been carried beyond all reasonable lengths ; the last-named had been indulged in secretly, but still to every one's knowledge. So our friend Homullus clearly availed himself of the unanimity of the senate, and, instead of making a speech, he asked that the consuls should acquaint the Emperor with the wishes of the whole body of senators, and beg him to take steps to devise means to put a stop to this evil, as he had already done to other scandals. He has done so, for by means of the Corrupt Practices Act he has restricted the shameful and scandalous expenses which candidates used to incur, and he has issued orders that all candidates shall have invested a third of their patrimony in land. He very justly took the view that it was disgraceful that candidates for public offices should regard Rome and Italy, not as their mother country, but as a mere inn or lodging-place, in which they were staying as travellers. So the candidates are busy running about buying up whatever they hear is on sale, and they are forcing a number of estates into the market. Consequently if you are tired of your Italian estates, now is the real good time to sell them and buy others in the provinces, for the candidates have to sell their provincial properties to enable them to purchase here. Farewell. ,To Tacitus. You say that the letter which I wrote to you at your request, describing the death of my uncle, * has made you anxious to know not only the terrors, but also the distress I suffered while I remained behind at Misenum. I had indeed started to tell you of these, but then broke off. Well, "though my mind shudders at the recollection, I will essay the task". ** After my uncle had set out I employed the remainder of the time with my studies, for I had stayed behind for that very purpose. Afterwards I had a bath, dined, and then took a brief and restless sleep. For many days previous there had been slight shocks of earthquake, which were not particularly alarming, because they are common enough in Campania. But on that night the shocks were so intense that everything round us seemed not only to be disturbed, but to be tottering to its fall. My mother rushed into my bedchamber, just as I myself was getting up in order to arouse her if she was still sleeping. We sat down in the courtyard of the house, which was of smallish size and lay between the sea and the buildings. I don't know whether my behaviour should be called courageous or rash - for I was only in my eighteenth year - but I called for a volume of Titus Livius, and read it, as though I were perfectly at my ease, and went on making my usual extracts. Then a friend of my uncle's, who had but a little time before come to join him from Spain, on seeing my mother and myself sitting there and me reading, upbraided her for her patience and me for my indifference, but I paid no heed, and pored over my book. It was now the first hour of the day, but the light was still faint and weak. The buildings all round us were beginning to totter, and, though we were in the open, the courtyard was so narrow that we were greatly afraid, and indeed sure of being overwhelmed by their fall. So that decided us to leave the town. We were followed by a distracted crowd, which, when in a panic, always prefers someone else's judgment to its own as the most prudent course to adopt, and when we set out these people came crowding in masses upon us, and pressed and urged us forward. We came to a halt when we had passed beyond the buildings, and underwent there many wonderful experiences and terrors. For although the ground was perfectly level, the vehicles which we had ordered to be brought with us began to sway to and fro, and though they were wedged with stones, we could not keep them still in their places. Moreover, we saw the sea drawn back upon itself, and, as it were, repelled by the quaking of the earth. The shore certainly was greatly widened, and many marine creatures were stranded on the dry sands. On the other side, the black, fearsome cloud of fiery vapour burst into long, twisting, zigzag flames and gaped asunder, the flames resembling lightning flashes, only they were of greater size. Then indeed my uncle's Spanish friend exclaimed sharply, and with an air of command, to my mother and me, "If your brother and your uncle is still alive, he will be anxious for you to save yourselves; if he is dead, I am sure he wished you to survive him. Come, why do you hesitate to quit this place?" We replied that we could not think of looking after our own safety while we were uncertain of his. He then waited no longer, but tore away as fast as he could and got clear of danger. Soon afterwards the cloud descended upon the earth, and covered the whole bay ; it encircled Capri and hid it from sight, and we could no longer see the promontory of Misenum. Then my mother prayed, entreated, and commanded me to fly as best I could, saying that I was young and could escape, while she was old and infirm, and would not fear to die, if only she knew that she had not been the cause of my death. I replied that I would not save myself unless I could save her too, and so, after taking tight hold of her hand, I forced her to quicken her steps. She reluctantly obeyed, accusing herself for retarding my flight. Then the ashes began to fall, but not thickly A gleam of light now appeared, which seemed to us not so much daylight as a token of the approaching fire. The latter remained at a distance, but the darkness came on again, and the ashes once more fell thickly and heavily. We had to keep rising and shaking the latter off us, or we should have been buried by them and crushed by their weight. I might boast that not one groan or cowardly exclamation escaped my lips, despite these perils, had I not believed that I and the world were perishing together - a miserable consolation, indeed, yet one which a mortal creature finds very soothing. At length the blackness became less dense, and dissipated as it were into smoke and cloud ; then came the real light of day, and the sun shone out, but as blood-red as it appears at its setting. Our still trembling eyes saw that everything had been transformed, and covered with a deep layer of ashes, like snow. Making our way back to Misenum, we refreshed our bodies as best we could, and passed an anxious, troubled night, hovering between hope and fear. But our fears were uppermost, for the shocks of earthquake still continued, and several persons, driven frantic by dreadful prophecies, made sport of their own calamities and those of others. For our own part, though we had already passed through perils, and expected still more to come, we had no idea even then of leaving the town until we got news of my uncle. You will not read these details, which are not up to the dignity of history, as though you were about to incorporate them in your writings, and if they seem to you to be hardly worth being made the subject of a letter, you must take the blame yourself, inasmuch as you insisted on having them. Farewell 0 ,To Caninius. I am one of those who admire the ancients, but not to the extent of despising the genius of our own times, like some people do. For nature is not so exhausted and worn out that she can no longer produce anything worthy of our praise. So, a short time ago, I attended a reading by Vergilius Romanus, who was reading a comedy of his to a few people, and it was so skilfully modelled on the lines of the old comedy, that in days to come it may very well serve as a model itself. I am not sure whether you know the author, though you certainly ought to have made his acquaintance, for he is a man quite out of the common, owing to the uprightness of his conduct, the elegance of his wit, and the versatility of his genius. He has written some mimiambi, * graceful, smart, polished, and containing as much eloquence as that style of poem permits of. Indeed, there is no sort of composition which may not be described as eloquent if it be perfect of its kind. He has also written comedies in the style of Menander and other poets of the same period, and these are well worthy of being classed with those of Plautus and Terence. Now he has tried his hand for the first time in public with the old comedy, but it is not as if it were his first attempt in it. In his play neither force, dignity, neatness, satire, charm, nor wit was wanting; he made virtue more lovely, and assailed vice ; when he made use of an assumed name, he did so with propriety; when he utilised a real one, he did so without travesty. Only so far as I was concerned did his good nature lead him to overstep the mark, but then poets are privileged to draw on their imagination. In short, I will coax the volume out of him, and send it on to you for you to read, or rather, learn by heart, for I am quite sure that you will not put it down if once you take it up. Farewell. ,To Tiro. A case has just been heard which is of great importance to all who are to govern provinces, and to all who entrust themselves too implicitly to their friends. Lustricius Bruttianus, after detecting Montanus Atticinus, his colleague, in a number of criminal offences, wrote a letter to Caesar. Atticinus thereupon added to his misdeeds by accusing the friend whom he had deceived. A judicial examination was granted, and I was one of the judges. Each party pleaded his own case, but in a summary fashion and without going into detail, a method of pleading by which the truth is easily got at. Bruttianus produced his will, which he declared was in the handwriting of Atticinus, for, by so doing, he proved the intimacy of their friendship, and the necessity he was under of complaining of one who had previously been so dear to him. He read a list of disgraceful offences, which were clearly proved, and when Atticinus found that he could not disprove them, he dealt with him in such a way as to appear a rascal when he was excusing himself, and a villain when he was accusing Bruttianus. For it transpired that he had bribed the slave of Bruttianus's secretary, intercepted the diaries and cut out passages therefrom, thus, by a piece of shameful wickedness, making capital out of his own offences against his friend. Caesar acted most nobly, for he at once put the question, not about Bruttianus, but Atticinus. The latter was found guilty and banished to an island, while Bruttianus received a well-earned tribute to his integrity, and he also won a reputation for the way he saw the matter through. For after he had cleared his good name as quickly as possible, he carried the war boldly into the enemy's camp and thus proved himself to be as resolute as he was honourable and upright. I have written you this letter to warn you, now that you have gone out to be a provincial governor, * to rely as far as possible on yourself, and to trust no one too implicitly. I also want you to know that if - which Heaven forbid - anyone should play you false, there is punishment ready waiting for the offender. However, be continually on your guard that the necessity may not arise, for though it is gratifying to get one's revenge, the gratification is no compensation for the annoyance of having been tricked. Farewell. ,To Triarius. You ask me as a great favour to plead in a case in which you are closely interested, and a case which is honourable in itself and will bring the advocate reputation. I will do so, but not for nothing. "How comes it," you will say, "that Pliny demands a fee?" Well, it is so, for I shall demand a price which will be more to my honour than if I consented to plead for nothing. I want - indeed I stipulate - that Cremutius Ruso shall plead with me. This is an old custom of mine, and I have acted upon it in favour of a number of young men of distinction. For I take great pleasure in introducing worthy young men to the forum and starting them on the road to fame. I owe this service to my friend Ruso, above all others, both on account of his lineage and the great affection which he bears me, and I think it is important that he should be seen and heard in the same court and on the same side as myself. So oblige me in this matter, and do so before he speaks, for after he has spoken you will, I am sure, thank me. I can answer for him that he will neither disappoint your anxiety to win nor my hopes, and that he will not fail to rise to the importance of the case. He has splendid natural talents, and will soon be introducing others to the bar when once he has been introduced there by us. For no one, however clever, can rise to distinction unless he gets his opportunity, and a chance of displaying his abilities, as well as the recommendation and encouragement of a friend. Farewell. ,To Macer. How much our estimation of any deed depends upon the doer ! For the self-same actions may be lauded to the skies or looked down upon with contempt according to whether those who perform thorn are famous or obscure. I was sailing across our Larian Lake, * when a friend, who is well on in years, pointed out to me a villa, and more especially a bedchamber which was built out over the lake. "From that window," he said, "a townswoman of ours some years ago threw herself into the lake with her husband." I asked the cause. It appears that the husband had been suffering for a long time from festering ulcers in the private parts. His wife begged him to let her see the sore, and promised that she would tell him faithfully whether or not a cure was possible. After an examination she saw there was no hope, and advised him to die, not only sharing death with him but taking the lead, inspiring him by her example, and leaving him no loophole for escape ; for she tied herself to her husband, and then they hurled themselves into the lake. Yet I never heard of this incident until just recently, although I was born in the same town; not because her deed was less heroic than the famous deed of Arria, ** but because she herself was a person of less distinction. Farewell. 0 ,To Hispanus. You say that Robustus, a Roman knight of distinction, travelled as far as Ocriculum in the company of my friend Atilius Scaurus, and from that point nothing has been heard of him, and you ask that Scaurus may come, and, if possible, put us on the track of the missing man and help in the search. He certainly shall, but I am afraid that he will do little good ; for I suspect that Robustus has met something like the same fate which befell some years ago Metilius Crispus, a fellow-townsman of mine. I had obtained for him a military appointment, and on his departure had presented him with 40,000 sesterces towards the purchase of his arms and accoutrements, but I never afterwards heard from him, nor did I ever get news of his death. Whether he was waylaid by his servants, or whether the latter perished with him, no one knows; for certainly neither he nor any of his slaves have ever been seen since. I pray Heaven that we may not find that Robustus has met a like fate ! However, let us hasten Scaurus's arrival. That is the least I can do in answer to your entreaties, and the very proper entreaties of the excellent young man who is showing such remarkable filial love and sagacity in trying to find his father. I do hope he may be as successful in finding him as he was in discovering in whose company he was travelling. Farewell. ,To Servianus. I am delighted to congratulate you on having betrothed your daughter to Fuscus Salinator. He comes of a patrician family, his father was a most honourable man, and his mother was equally universally respected, while he himself is devoted to study, well read and even learned, with the frankness of a boy, the pleasant manners of a youth, and the gravity of old age. Nor do I let my love for him bias my judgment. It is true that my affection is very great, and he deserves it for the attentions and respectful regard he has shown me, but I still retain my powers of judgment, and exercise them the more keenly the more my love for him grows. So I speak as one who knows every feature of his character, and I can assure you that you will have for a son-in-law one whose superior you could not imagine, even if your dearest hopes were fulfilled. I only hope that he may soon make you a grandfather, and present you with grandchildren like himself. Happy indeed will be the day when I shall be able to lift off your knees his children and your grandchildren - or rather my children or grandchildren - and embrace them as though they were my very own. Farewell. ,To Severus. You ask me to think out for you the headings of the speech you will deliver as consul-designate in praise of the Emperor. It is no difficult matter to find what to say, but it is difficult to know what to choose, for his virtues afford such wide scope for an address. However, I will write as you require, or - as I should prefer - will tell you in private conversation, as soon as I have shown you my chief reason for hesitating to do so. For I am doubtful whether I ought to persuade you to make the same sort of speech that I did. When I was consul-designate I carefully refrained from everything which looked like adulation, even though it was not, not so much to prove my independence and resolution as to show that I fully understood our sovereign's worth, for I saw that it would redound most to his praise if I avoided the appearance of being obliged to propose the honours I did. I even recalled the fact that honours had been showered on the very worst emperors, from whom our excellent emperor could not better be distinguished than by a different form of addressing him in the senate, and my reason for not passing over this point in silence was to prevent his thinking that it was forgetfulness on my part rather than my settled opinion. Such was the course I took ; but the same line of argument does not please or suit all speakers. Moreover, not only do men differ, but circumstances and times change, and the wisdom of following or not following a certain course of action depends entirely on these mutations of men and things. The recent achievements of our most noble Emperor * offer a new, abundant, and justifiable theme for panegyric. For these reasons, as I said before, I am not sure whether to recommend you to adopt the line which I took, but I am quite sure that it was my duty to lay before you the method which I pursued, in order to help you to a decision. Farewell. ,To Pontius. I know the reason which prevented your being able to welcome me on my arrival in Campania, but though you were absent you still managed to make your way there and your influence felt. So abundant were the supplies of town and country produce offered me in your name, and I was unconscionable enough to accept them all ! For your people begged me to do so, and I was afraid you would be cross both with them and me if I did not. For the future, however, unless you set some bounds to your hospitality, I shall have to, and I have even warned your people that, if they bring such a load of things again, I shall send them all back. You will say that I ought to help myself to your property as though it were my own. Quite so, but I do so as sparingly as though it were mine. Farewell ,To Quadratus. Avidius Quietus, who loved me like a brother, and - what was equally gratifying to me - approved my general conduct, used to quote a number of the sayings of Thrasea, with whom he was on terms of intimacy. Among them was this maxim - a favourite one of his - that a pleader ought to undertake either the causes of his friends, or those which others refused to touch, or those which were likely to be quoted as precedents. No explanation is needed why one should espouse the cause of one's friends, while the second class of causes should be undertaken as the best means of proving one's resolution and humanity, and the third class because it is a matter of the highest importance whether a good or bad precedent is created. Personally, though it may seem rather ambitious on my part, I should add to these separate classes a fourth - viz., causes which are distinguished and eminent in themselves. For it is only right that a pleader should sometimes work for glory and fame - that is to say, should plead his own cause. As you have asked my advice, these are the bounds which I should set to your dignity and modesty. I do not forget that practice both is and is considered to be the best teacher of the art of pleading, and I see many persons who, with little natural ability and absolutely no literary skill, have by constant practice acquired the art of speaking well. None the less, I find that the saying of Pollio, or the saying which is attributed to him, is perfectly true So my advice is ,To Fabatus. I really must keep your birthday as strictly as my own, since the happiness of mine depends upon yours, and it is thanks to your diligence and forethought that we are cheerful here and have no anxieties in our other home. Your Camillan * villa in Campania is rather the worse for wear and age, but the more valuable portions of it are still quite sound, or but slightly damaged. So I am looking after its being put in a state of thorough repair. I appear to have a multitude of friends, but hardly one of the kind which you care for, and that the business in hand really requires. For they are all persons of quality and city men, while to look after a country estate one wants a country-bred person of a rougher type, who will not think the work onerous, or the duties beneath his dignity, or the quiet of the country depressing. Your good estimate of Rufus is quite sound and just, for he was an intimate friend of your son. But whether he can fulfil the duties for you out there I don't know, though I feel confident he is all anxiety to do his best. Farewell. ,To Cornelianus. I was greatly delighted when our Emperor sent for me to Centum Cellae - for that is the name of the place - to act as a member of his Council. For what could be more gratifying than to be privileged to witness the justice, dignity, and charming manners of the Emperor in his country retreat, where he allows these qualities the freest play? There were a variety of cases to be heard, and they were of a kind to bring out the virtues of the judge in different ways and forms. Claudius Aristo, the leading citizen at Ephesus, a man of great generosity, and who had won popularity by innocent means, pleaded his own case. His popularity had made people envious of him, and some of his enemies, who were utterly unlike him in character, had suborned a man to lay information against him. So he was acquitted, and his reputation vindicated. On the following day was taken the case of Galitta, who was accused of adultery. She was the wife of a military tribune, who was about to stand for public office, and she had compromised her own reputation and her husband's by intriguing with a centurion. The husband had reported the matter to the consular legate, and the latter had reported it to Caesar. After carefully examining the proofs, the Emperor degraded the centurion, and even banished him. Still the punishment was not complete, for adultery is an offence in which two perils are necessarily concerned, but the husband's affection for his wife, whom he allowed to remain in his house even I after discovering her adultery - content as it were to have trot his rival out of the way - led him to delay the prosecution, in spite of the scandal to which his forbearance gave rise. He was summoned to carry the charge through, and did so against his will. However, it was necessary that she should be condemned, even though her accuser did not wish her to be, and she was declared guilty, and sentenced to the punishment inflicted by the Julian Law. * Caesar affixed to the sentence both the name of the centurion and a statement of the rules of military discipline on the point, lest people should think that he reserved the right to hear all such cases himself. On the third day began the inquiry into the will of Julius Tiro, a case which had been greatly talked about, and had given rise to conflicting reports, inasmuch as it was known that the will was genuine in part, and in part a forgery. The accused were Sempronius Senecio, a Roman knight, and Eurythmus, one of Caesar's freedmen and agents. When the Emperor was in Dacia, the heirs had written a joint letter, asking him to undertake an inquiry into the will, and he had consented. On his return he appointed a day, and when some of the heirs were in favour of letting the accusation drop, as though out of consideration for Eurythmus, he very finely said, "Eurythmus is not Polyclitus, and I am not Nero." ** Yet at their request he favoured them with a postponement, and when the day had at length arrived, he took his seat to hear the case. On the side of the heirs only two put in an appearance, and they demanded that as all had joined in the accusation, they should all be forced to go on with the action, or else that they too should be allowed to withdraw. Caesar spoke with great gravity and moderation, and when the advocate for Senecio and Eurythmus remarked that the accused would be left open to suspicion unless they were heard in their own behalf, he said, "I don't care whether they are left open to suspicion or not, I certainly am myself." Then turning to us, he said You see in what a strictly honourable and arduous manner we spent our days, though they were followed by the most agreeable relaxations. Every day we were summoned to dine with the Emperor, and modest dinners they were for one of his imperial position. Sometimes we listened to entertainers, sometimes we had delightful conversations lasting far into the night. On the last day, just as we were setting out, Caesar sent us parting presents, such is his thoughtfulness and courtesy. As for myself, I delighted in the importance of the cases heard, in the honour of being summoned to the Council, and in the charm and simplicity of his mode of life, while I was equally pleased with the place itself. The villa, which is exquisitely beautiful, is surrounded by meadows of the richest green; it abuts on the sea-shore, in the bight of which a harbour is being hastily formed, the left arm having been strengthened by masonry of great solidity, while the right is now in course of construction. In the mouth of the harbour an island rises out of the sea, which by its position breaks the force of the waves that are carried in by the wind, and affords a safe passage to ships on either side. The island has been artificially constructed, and is not a natural formation, for a broad barge brings up a number of immense stones, which are thrown into the water, one on top of the other, and these are kept in position by their own weight, and gradually become built up into a sort of breakwater. The ridge of stones already overtops the surface, and when the waves strike upon it, it breaks them into spray and throws them to a great height. That causes a loud-resounding roar, and the sea all round is white with foam. Subsequently concrete will be added to the stones, to give it the appearance of a natural island as time goes on. This harbour will be called - and indeed it already is called - after the name of its constructor, and it will prove a haven of the greatest value, inasmuch as there is a long stretch of shore which has no harbour, and the sailors will use this as a place of refuge. Farewell. 0 ,To Quintilian. Although you yourself are most modest in your requirements, and you have brought up your daughter to be the same - as indeed was becoming in a daughter of yours and a granddaughter of Tutilius - yet as she is about to marry a man of such position as that held by Nonius Celer, who is bound to keep up a certain style owing to his civic offices, she ought to have clothes and a staff of servants to tally with her husband's position. For though these things will not add to her worth, yet they do set off and enhance her virtues. I know that you are exceedingly rich in mental endowments, but that your means are limited, and so I have taken upon myself to discharge part of the expenses, and make a present of 50,000 sesterces to her whom I consider to be my daughter as well as yours. I would give more, but I know your modesty to be such that the smallness of the present will be the only inducement to you not to refuse to accept it. Farewell. ,To Romanus. Away with it all, cried Vulcan, "and cease the task you have begun." * Whether you are writing or reading, bid your people take away your pens and books, and receive this speech of mine, which is as divine as the arms made by Vulcan. Could conceit go further? But frankly, I think it is a fine speech, as compared with my other efforts, and I am satisfied to try and beat my own record. It is on behalf of Attia Viriola, and is worth attention owing to the lady's high position, the singular character of the case, and the importance of the trial. She was a person of high birth, was married to a man of praetorian rank, and was disinherited by her octogenarian father within eleven days after he had fallen violently in love, married a second time, and given Attia a step-mother. She sued for her father's effects in the Four Courts. ** A hundred and eighty judges sat to hear the case, for that is the number appointed for the Four Chambers ; there was a crowd of advocates on both sides, and the benches were packed, while there was also a dense ring of people standing many deep around the whole spacious court. Moreover, the tribunal was closely filled, and even in the upper galleries of the hall men and women leant over both to see and hear what was going on, the former being easy but the latter difficult of accomplishment. Fathers, daughters, and step-mothers were on the tip-toe of expectation. The fortunes of the day varied, for in two courts we were victorious, and in two we were beaten. It seemed an extraordinary and remarkable thing, that with the same judges and the same advocates there should be such different verdicts at one and the same time, and that this should be due to chance, though it did not so appear to be. The step-mother, who had been made heir to a sixth of the property, lost, and so too did Suberinus, † who, in spite of having been disinherited by his own father, had the amazing impudence to claim the property of someone else's father, but did not dare to claim that of his own. I have entered into these explanations, in the first place to acquaint you by letter of certain facts which you could not gather from the speech, and secondly - for I will be frank, and tell you my little tricks - to make you the more willing to read the speech, by leading you to imagine that you are not merely reading it, but are actually present at the trial. Though the speech is a long one, I am in some hope that it will meet with as kind a reception as a very short one. For the interest is constantly renewed by the fullness of the subject-matter, the neat way in which it is divided, the number of digressions, and the different kinds of eloquence employed. Many parts of it - I would not venture to say so to anyone but yourself - are of sustained dignity, many are controversial, many are closely argued. For constantly, in the midst of my most passionate and lofty passages, I was obliged to go into calculations, and almost had to call for counters and a table to carry them through, the consequence being that the court of law was suddenly turned into a sort of private counting-house. I gave free play to my indignation, to my anger, to my resentment, and so I sailed along, as it were, in this long pleading, as though I were on a vast sea, with a variety of winds to fill my sails. In fine, to say what I said before, some of my intimate friends repeatedly tell me that this speech of mine is as much above my previous efforts as Demosthenes' speech on behalf of Ctesiphon is above his others. Whether they are right in their judgment you will have no difficulty in deciding, for your memory of all my speeches is so good that by merely reading this one you can institute a comparison with them all. Farewell ,To Maximus. You did quite right in promising a gladiatorial display to my clients at Verona, for they have long loved you, looked up to you, and honoured you. You took from that city your dearly loved and most estimable wife, and you owe to her memory some public work or festival, and a gladiatorial show is most suitable for a funeral honour. Besides, as the people were so unanimous in asking for that form of entertainment, you would have appeared boorish rather than consistent had you refused. Whereas now it stands to your credit that you were not only lavish in giving the show, but were easily persuaded to do so, and it is in matters such as these that magnanimity is disclosed. I wish that the numerous African panthers you had bought had turned up by the appointed day, but it may be that they were detained by stress of weather. At any rate you have deserved the fullest credit for them, for it was not your fault that the exhibition was not complete. Farewell. |
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| nan | To Maximus. I have often advised you to publish at the earliest possible opportunity the speeches which you composed either in your defence or against Planta, * or, I should rather say, in your defence and against Planta, for so the subject-matter required. Now that I hear of his death, I do most earnestly beg and advise you to publish them. For though you have read them to a number of people and lent them to others, I should not like any one to think that you had not begun to write them until after his death, when they were already finished during his lifetime. Take care to preserve your reputation for firmness of character, as you will if you make it known both to your friends and enemies that you did not wait until your antagonist was dead before plucking up confidence enough to write, but that the edition was already prepared, and that he died before it could be published, by so doing, you will also escape the odium of glorying over the dead, which, as Homer says, ** is not seemly. For what has been written about a man in his lifetime may, if it be issued without delay, be published against him after he is dead, just as though he were still alive. If, therefore, you have any other work on your hands, postpone it for the time being, and carry through the publication of the speeches in question, which seemed to us who read them to be quite finished long ago. I hope you will now take the same view of it, for the matter is one which calls for no delay; indeed, the circumstances are such as to demand promptness. Farewell. 0 ,To Sabinus. It is very kind of you to press me to write to you as many letters as possible, and as long as possible. I have been chary in so doing, partly because I was afraid you were very busy, and partly because I myself have been kept going with dull, dreary work, which not only distracts, but deadens one's energies. Besides, I have not really had anything to write about at greater length. For my position is vastly different from that of Marcus Tullius, whom you exhort me to take as my model. He not only had abundant wit, but his wit was kept well supplied with a variety of all-important subjects on which to exercise it. Whereas you can see for yourself, without my telling you, within what narrow limits I am confined, unless, indeed, I choose to send you letters full of points of philosophy and mere exercises of the study. But I fancy that would be scarcely suitable, when I think of you in your armour, living in camp, with the military horns and trumpets sounding round you, amid the sweat and dust, and heat of the sun. That, I consider, is a valid excuse for me, but I don't know whether I quite want you to think it valid. For when a man has a strong affection for his friends, he is apt to refuse all excuses for their letters being short, though he knows that their apologies are perfectly reasonable. Farewell. ,To Paulinus. Whatever view other people may take, I think he is the happiest man who enjoys in his lifetime the certain knowledge that his fame is good and lasting, and, sure of the judgment of posterity, lives and enjoys the glory that will be his in time to come. Had I not this reward of immortality before my eyes, nothing would please me more than a life of luxurious and profound repose. For I think that all men ought to consider that their reputation may be either imperishable or perishable; that those who desire the former ought to live laborious days, and the latter take things easily and slackly, and not worry their short lives with work that is bound to crumble away, as I see so many men do, who, after wasting their energies in a miserable and thankless kind of industry, only come to realise that their work is worthless. I am speaking to you as I speak to myself every day, though I may change my tone of converse with myself if you disagree with me. However, I know you will not, for you are for ever scheming out some noble and immortal work. Farewell. ,To Macrinus. I should be afraid of your thinking the speech which you will receive with this letter to be of undue length, were it not one of those which seem to be constantly beginning afresh and coming to new terminations. For each accusation may be considered a fresh subject. So, wherever you begin and wherever you leave off, you will be able to take up the thread of what follows as though you were commencing anew and it all hung together ; and, though the work as a whole may seem very long, its separate parts are very short. Farewell. ,To Tiro. You are doing splendidly - you see I make inquiries about you - and I hope you will continue to commend your love of justice to the provincials with courtesy and kindness to all. One of the principal tokens of justice is to make friends of all persons of merit, and to acquire the affection of your inferiors, while securing for yourself that of your superiors. There are many people who, in their anxiety not to appear to be standing too well with those in power, acquire a reputation for awkwardness and sour temper. That is a fault from which you are far removed, I know; but I cannot refrain, in expressing my approval of your conduct, from urging you to be careful to recognise distinctions of class and rank, for, if they be confused, and mixed up and jumbled together, nothing can be more unequal than the appearance of equality which is thus produced. Farewell. ,To Calvisius. I have been spending all my time here among my tablets and books as quietly as I could wish. "How is that possible," you ask, "in Rome?" Well, the Circensian games have been on, and that is a kind of spectacle which has not the slightest attraction for me. There is no novelty, no variety in it, nothing which one wants to see twice. Hence I am the more amazed that so many thousands of men * should be eager, like a pack of children, to see horses running time after time, and the charioteers bending over their cars. There might be some reason for their enthusiasm if it was the speed of the horses or the skill of the drivers that was the attraction, but it is the racing-colours which they favour, and the racing-colours that fire their love. If, in the middle of the course and during the race itself, the colours were to be changed, their enthusiasm and partisanship would change with them, and they would suddenly desert the drivers and the horses, whom they recognise afar and whose names they shout aloud. Such is the influence and authority vested in one cheap tunic, I don't say with the common crowd, - for that is even cheaper than the tunic, - but with certain men of position; and when I consider that they can sit for so long without growing tired, looking on at such a fruitless, cheerless, and tedious sport, I really feel a sort of pleasure in the thought that what they take delight in has no charm for me. Thus it is that I have been only too glad to pass my leisure time among my books during the race-meeting, while others have been wasting their days in the most idle occupations. Farewell. ,To Romanus. You tell me that you are building. That is well, and gives me the support I wanted, for I shall be able to justify my building, now that we are both in the same boat. Moreover, there is this further similarity, that while you are building by the sea-side, I am building by the Larian Lake. I have several villas on its shores, but there are two in particular which are special favourites of mine, and at the same time exercise my mind a good deal. One is situated on a rocky spur and overlooks the lake, like the villas at Baiae, and the other is on the margin of the lake, equally after the Baiae fashion. I like to call the one "Tragedy" and the other "Comedy," because the former is supported, as it were, by the buskin, and the latter by the sock. * Each has special charms of its own, and each seems the pleasanter when one lives in it by reason of its dissimilarity from the other. The one has a closer, the other a more extensive view of the lake; the one commands a single gently-curving bay, the other, perched on its lofty ridge, lies between two bays ; in the one there is a long, level exercise ground stretching along the shore, in the other there is a spacious terrace with an easy slope; the one does not feel the contact of the waves, the other breaks their progress ; from the one you can look upon the people fishing, from the other you can fish yourself, and may throw your line from your bedroom, and almost from your bed, as though you were in a small boat. Such are the reasons which lead me to build on to these villas the additions they require, just because they are so charming as they are. But why should I give you a reason, when the fact that I am following your example is reason sufficient for you ? Farewell. ,To Augurinus. If I begin to sing your praises after the way you have sung mine, I am afraid you will fancy that I am merely returning the compliment and not saying what I really think. Well, I must risk that, for I consider all your writings are most charming, especially those in which you refer to myself. And this comes about for one and the same reason, for you are at your best when you are writing about your friends; and I, as I read, think you write best when you refer to me. Farewell. ,To Colonus. I quite understand and appreciate how deeply you are upset by the death of Pompeius Quintianus, so much so that your sense of his loss seems to make the dead man all the dearer to you. You are not like the majority of people, who only love the living, or rather pretend that they love them, and do not even make that pretence, unless they see that their friends are prosperous, for they forget the unfortunate just as they forget the dead. But your loyalty is abiding, and your love is so constant that it can only be ended by your death. Then again, Heaven knows how well Quintianus deserved to be loved just as he loved others. He loved his friends in their prosperity; if they were in trouble, he protected them ; when they died, he missed them sorely. How you could read his honesty in his face ; how carefully he weighed his words in conversation ; how evenly he mingled gaiety and gravity of demeanour! An earnest student, a man of ripe judgment, with what filial affection he lived with a father whose character was the very opposite of his, and yet his excellence as a son did not prevent people acknowledging his excellences as a man. But why do I make your trouble harder to bear? Yet, after all, your love for this young man was such that you would prefer me to write as I have done rather than say nothing about him, me of all people, inasmuch as you think that a few words of praise from me will be an ornament to his life, will help to perpetuate his memory, and will restore to him the youth from which he has been snatched away. Farewell. ,To Tacitus. I am anxious to obey your injunctions, but there is such a scarcity of wild boars that it is quite impossible for me to pay equal attention, as you say I ought, to both Minerva and Diana. And so I needs must serve Minerva alone, but in a dainty way, as it is summer time and I am holidaymaking. On my journey hither I wrote a few light pieces, fit only to be torn up at once, in the bubbling strain with which people gossip together in a carriage. I have added some others here in my country house when I had nothing else to do. And so the poems which you think ought to be finished off to best advantage amid the groves and woods are taking a rest. I have revised one or two little speeches, though that is not an agreeable or charming class of work, and more resembles the hard labour of the country than its pleasures. Farewell. ,To Geminus. I received your letter, which afforded me great pleasure, especially as you say that you wish me to write you something to be inserted in your books. I shall find a subject, either the one you suggest or some other, for there are certain objections to yours, as you will see if you look around you. I did not think that there were any booksellers at Lugdunum, and I am delighted to hear from you that my books are being sold there, for it is gratifying to find that they retain in foreign parts the popularity they have won at Rome. I begin to think that they must be fairly perfect when there is such unanimity about their merits in lands so far apart and in the judgment of persons so dissimilar. Farewell. ,To Junior. A friend of mine was thrashing his son for spending money too lavishly in buying horses and dogs. When the youth had gone, I said to the father ,To Quadratus. The more carefully and closely you have read the books I composed to vindicate the character of Helvidius, the more anxious, you say, you are for me to write an account of the whole affair from beginning to end, which you were too young to take any part in, giving you details which do not appear in my volumes as well as those which do. When Domitian was put to death, I took counsel with myself and came to the conclusion that there was now a splendid and glorious opportunity for prosecuting the guilty, vindicating the oppressed, and at the same time bringing myself into prominence. It seemed to me that of all the many crimes committed by that crowd of wretches, there was none more atrocious than that a senator should have laid violent hands upon another senator in the senate-house, that a man of praetorian rank should have assaulted a man of consular rank, and a judge an accused person. Besides, Helvidius and I were friends, so far as friendship was possible with one who, owing to the terrorism that prevailed, tried to conceal his illustrious name and equally illustrious virtues in strict retirement; and I was also a friend of Arria and Fannia, * the former of whom was the step-mother of Helvidius, and the latter the mother of Arria. But it was not so much my feelings as a friend, but my sense of public duty, my indignation at what had taken place, and the importance of the precedent, which stirred me. For the first few days after liberty had been restored each man was busy in his own interests impeaching his own private enemies - at least the more unimportant of them - and at once obtaining their condemnation, but all was being done with uproar and turbulence. I considered it would show greater modesty and boldness not to overthrow the worst criminal of them all on the general odium against the practices of the late reign, but to attack him on a specific charge, after the first furious outburst had worn itself out and the general rage was daily abating, and when men were beginning again to think of what was just. So, though I was in great distress at the time, for I had just recently lost my wife, ** I sent to Anteia - who was the wife of Helvidius - asking her to come and see me, as the bereavement I had recently suffered kept me still confined to my house. When she came, I said It was my unfailing practice to consult Corellius on all matters, for I looked upon him as the most far-seeing and the wisest man of our time ; but in this business I was satisfied with my own judgment, for I was afraid that he would try and dissuade me from my design, as he was always rather prone to hesitation and caution. However, I could not make up my mind to refrain from giving him a hint, when the day came, of what I was going to do, though I did not ask his advice as to whether I should proceed with my intention, for I have found by experience that, when you have decided on a course of action, it is a mistake to consult as to its wisdom those whose advice you ought to follow when once you ask them for it. I entered the senate ; I craved permission to address the house, and for a little time everyone agreed with what I said. But when I began to touch upon the charge I was bringing and foreshadow whom I was accusing - though I had not yet named him - there were loud cries of dissent from all sides. One exclaimed, "Let us know who it is that you are denouncing out of order? " ; another, "Who is it that is being put on his trial before he has been impeached ?" ; another, "Let us who survive remain in security." I listened without fear or trepidation, sustained by the righteousness of the cause I had undertaken, while it always materially contributes to one's confidence or fear whether one's audience is merely unwilling to hear your case or actively disapproves of it. It would be tedious to relate all the exclamations which were flung from side to side, but at last the consul said By this time the time for recording opinions had arrived. Among the speakers were Domitius Apollinaris, the consul-designate, Fabricius Veiento, Fabius Maximinus, Vettius Proculus, the colleague of Publicius Certus, who was the subject of debate, and the father-in-law of the wife whom I had just lost. After these Ammius Flaccus spoke. They all defended Certus, just as if I had already named him, which I had not, and took up and defended his cause, though the charge had been left vague. †† I need not tell you the substance of their speeches, for you have them in my books, just as I took them down in their own words. They were opposed by Avidius Quietus and Cornutus Tertullus. Quietus urged that it was most unjust to refuse to hear the complaints of the aggrieved persons, and, therefore, Arria and Fannia ought not to be robbed of their right to lodge a complaint. It did not matter, he said, what class a person belonged to, the point was whether his case was just. Cornutus said that he had been appointed guardian by the consuls to the daughter of Helvidius at the request of her mother and step-father, and that he could not think of failing in his duties at such a moment. However, he would set a limit to his own personal resentment and only support the very moderate request of these excellent ladies, who would be satisfied with bringing before the notice of the senate the crime-stained servility of Publicius Certus, and asking that, though the penalty for his most iniquitous crime might be foregone, he might at least be branded with some mark of disgrace similar to being officially degraded by the censors. Satrius Rufus followed with an equivocal speech, the meaning of which was by no means clear. "I consider," he said, "Publicius Certus will be wronged unless he is acquitted ; he has been impeached by the friends of Arria ; and Fannia, and by his own friends. Nor ought we to be anxious on his account, for we, who think well of him, are also to act as his judges. If he is innocent, as I hope and prefer to think he is, and as I shall continue to believe until something is proved against him, you will be able to acquit him." Such were the sentiments delivered, in the order in which the speakers were severally called upon to speak. Then my turn came ; I rose to my feet, and opening my remarks as you will find in my book, I replied to all, one by one. It was wonderful to notice with what attention and applause all my points were received by those who a little before were shouting me down. This sweeping change of view was due either to the importance of the subject under debate, or to the success of my speech, or to the boldness of the speaker. At length I concluded; Veiento began to answer me, but no one suffered him to speak ; he was greeted with such interruptions and clamours that he exclaimed, "I beg of you, conscript fathers, not to force me to appeal to the tribunes for protection." Immediately the tribune Murena broke in with, "I permit you, most honourable Veiento, to speak." At that the tumult broke out again. In the pauses between the outcries the consul read over the names and took the votes by a division, and then adjourned the House, leaving Veiento still on his feet and struggling to deliver his speech. He complained bitterly of the indignity - as he called it - which had been shown him, quoting the line from Homer Certus was not present when all this took place, either owing to his having some suspicion of what was about to happen, or else he was ill, which was the reason he assigned for his absence. It is true that Caesar never referred to the senate the inquiry into Certus's crimes, yet I gained the point for which I had striven. For it was a colleague of Certus who gained the consulship, and Certus's place was taken by someone else, and so the sentence at the close of my speech was fulfilled, where I said, "Let him give back, now that we have a model emperor to reign over us, the prize which was conferred upon him by the worst of emperors." Subsequently, I recalled the speech to my memory as best I could, and added a good deal. By a coincidence, which looked rather more than a coincidence. Certus was taken ill and died a very few days after I published my book. I have heard people say that he was haunted by a phantom which was for ever presenting itself to his mind and gaze, and that he thought he saw me threatening him with a sword. I should not like to say that this actually was the case, but it adds to the moral that it should be considered as true. Well, I have written you a letter which, judged by the standard length of a letter, is about as long as the books you have read, but you have only yourself to blame, inasmuch as you were not content with the published books. Farewell. ,To Tacitus. Though you never praise your own work, I, for my part, never write with such confidence as when I am writing about you. I don't know whether posterity will trouble itself about us, but we assuredly deserve that it should pay us some attention, I will not say because of our genius - for that would hardly be modest - but because of our studies, our hard work, and the respect we have always shown to the generations which will succeed us. So let us go on in the old way, which has certainly lifted a number of people out of the gloom and silence of obscurity, though it may only have brought a few into the full light of a great reputation. Farewell. ,To Falco. I took refuge on my Tuscan estate, thinking to pass my days just as I pleased, but I find that this is not possible even here in the Tuscan region, for I am for ever being disturbed by shoals of appeals from the country people round about, each of whom has his special grievance. I read them even more unwillingly than I do my own papers, and these latter are irksome enough. For I am revising certain minor pleadings of mine, which is a very chilly and uncongenial task, considering the time which has elapsed since they were delivered. My business accounts are being as much neglected as they would be if I were away. Occasionally I mount a horse and to that extent play the role of a paterfamilias, in that I ride round some part of my estate, but I do so only to obtain exercise. As for yourself, I hope you will keep up your custom of writing and telling all the news of the town to us down here, who are living this clodhopping existence. Farewell. ,To Mamilianus. I am not surprised that you have been immensely pleased with your sport, considering how productive it was, for you are like the historians when they say that the number of the slain was beyond all computation. Personally, I have neither time nor inclination for sport; no time, because the grape harvest is now on, and no inclination, because it is a poor crop. However, I am drawing off some new verses instead of new must, and as soon as I see that they have fermented I will send them to you, as you have very kindly asked for them. Farewell. ,To Genitor. I have received your letter in which you complain how offensive to you a really magnificent banquet was, owing to the fact that there were buffoons, dancers, and jesters going round from table to table. Ah ! will you never relax that severe frown of yours even a little ? For my own part, I do not provide any such entertainments like those, but I can put up with those who do. Why then do I not provide them myself? For this reason, that if any dancer makes a lewd movement, if a buffoon is impudent, or a jester makes a senseless fool of himself, it does not amuse me a whit, for I see no novelty or fun in it. I am not giving you a high moral reason, but am only telling you my individual taste. Yet think how many people there are who would regard with disfavour, as partly insipid and partly wearisome, the entertainments which charm and attract you and me. When a reader, or a musician, or a comic actor enters the banqueting-room, how many there are who call for their shoes or lie back on their couches just as completely bored as you were, when you endured what you describe as those monstrosities ! Let us then make allowances for what pleases other people, so that we may induce others to make allowances for us ! Farewell. ,To Sabinus. Your letter proves how attentively, how studiously, and with what powers of memory you have read my books, but you are only bringing work upon your own shoulders when you coax and invite me to send on to you as many of my compositions as I possibly can. I will do so, and will forward them in portions and piecemeal, so to speak, so that I may not fatigue that memory of yours, to which I am so much indebted, by throwing upon it too frequent or too heavy a load. I don't wish to compel you, when you are staggering under the burden, to quit each particular portion for the whole and leave the beginning in hastening on to what follows. Farewell. ,To Ruso. You say that you have read in one of my letters that Verginius Rufus ordered the following inscription to be placed on his tomb I, who enjoyed his intimate regard and approval, can bear witness that only on one occasion did he in my presence refer to his own actions, and that came about in the following way 0 ,To Venator. Your letter was all the more agreeable to me on account of its length, and because it referred throughout to my books. I am not surprised that they please you, inasmuch as you extend the love you bear me to my writings. I am at present chiefly occupied in getting in my grape harvest, which, though light, is still more plentiful than I had expected - if you can describe as getting in a grape harvest the plucking of an occasional grape, a visit to the wine-press, a taste of the must from the vat, and surprise visits to the domestic servants I brought from the city, who are now superintending my country servants and have left me to my secretaries and readers. Farewell. ,To Sabinianus. That freedman of yours, with whom you told me you were angry, came to me and begged for my pardon, as earnestly as he would have done from you. He shed many tears ; he made many entreaties, and, at times, he kept a discreet silence - in fine, he convinced me of his penitence. I really and truly believe that he has turned over a new leaf, because he is conscious of having done wrong. I know you are angry, and I also know you are justly angry, but clemency deserves most praise just when the cause anger is most unimpeachable. You have in the past entertained some affection for the man, and I hope you will again ; in the meantime, it will be enough for you to allow yourself to be won over to forgiveness. Make some consideration for his youth, for his tears, and make some also for your own good nature ; do not keep him on the rack any longer, nor yourself either. I am afraid that, if I Join my entreaties to his, you will think that I am not so much asking as forcing you to forgive, yet join them I will, and the more fully and unreservedly as I have sharply and severely reprimanded him and given him a plain warning that I will never ask such a favour again. That is what I told him, - for it was necessary to frighten him, - but, of course, I do not use the same language to you, for it may 1be that I shall repeat my present request. Indeed, I certainly shall, provided that the case be one in which it is becoming for me to ask and for you to grant the favour. Farewell. ,To Severus. I have been terribly anxious about the ill-health of Passennus Paullus, and that for a host of excellent reasons. He is a splendid fellow, the soul of integrity, and devotedly attached to me, and, besides, he not only rivals the ancient authors, but recalls and brings them back to life again for us, especially Propertius, from whom he claims descent and is indeed truly descended, inasmuch as the similarity is greatest in the points wherein Propertius chiefly excelled. If you take up his elegies and read them you will find the workmanship is polished, smooth, and full of charm, and the poems were obviously written by one belonging to the family of Propertius. Just recently, he has been experimenting with lyrics, in which he as successfully reproduces Horace as he did Propertius in his elegiacs. You would fancy that he was also related to Horace, if relationship is of any value in literary matters. There is plenty of variety and abundant movement. The love passages ring true and sincere; there is most passionate grief, most genial praise, and most sparkling playfulness; in short, he depicts all feelings as perfectly as he does any one of them. The illness of such a true and so accomplished a friend has occasioned me as much mental trouble as it gave him bodily pain, but at length he is restored to me and I am restored to myself. Congratulate me and congratulate literature also, to which his dangerous illness threatened as much peril as his recovery promises glory. Farewell. ,To Maximus. When I have been pleading, it has often happened that the centumviri, after strictly preserving for a long time their judicial dignity and gravity, have suddenly leaped to their feet en masse and applauded me, as if they could not help themselves but were obliged to do so. I have often again left the senate-house with just as much glory as I had hoped to obtain, but I never felt greater gratification than I did a little while ago at something which Cornelius Tacitus told me in conversation. He said that he was sitting by the side of a certain individual at the last Circensian games, and that, after they had had a long and learned talk on a variety of subjects, his acquaintance said to him ,To Sabinianus. You have done well to take back into your household and favour, on the intercession of my letter, * the freedman who was once dear to you. This will afford you pleasure, and it certainly pleases me, first, because I see that you are so tractable that, even when you are angry, you are open to guidance, and, secondly, because you pay me the handsome compliment either of yielding to my influence or of indulging my requests. That is why I applaud your conduct, and thank you. At the same time I advise you for the future to be ready to pardon the faults of your household, though there be no one to deprecate your wrath. Farewell. ,To Mamilianus. You complain that your camp duties keep you exceedingly busy, yet, as though your time were all your own, you read my sportive trifles, approve them, ask for more, and spur me on with great importunity to compose others like them. I am beginning to seek not only amusement from this kind of literary work, but fame as well, now that I read your verdict on them, considering the weight of your judgment and learning, and, above all, your character for truth. At present I have some law cases which take up not my entire time, but a considerable part of it; when they are finished, I will send some more products of the same Muses to your kindly lap. You will give my little sparrows and doves leave to fly among your eagles, if such is their pleasure and yours; but, if they fail to please you, you will see to it that they are confined with a cage or a nest. Farewell. ,To Lupercus. When referring to a certain orator of our own times, who was a straightforward and level-headed speaker, but lacked the grand manner and ornateness, I said, rather neatly in my opinion, "He has no faults, except it be a fault that he has none." For an orator ought to soar to great heights and be carried away by his feelings, and, on some occasions, he ought to rage and storm, and frequently get near the brink of a precipice, for precipices usually lie near high and exalted places. One travels more safely along level ground, but the road is low and undistinguished, and those who run are more likely to stumble than those who creep, yet the latter get no credit for not falling, while the former, despite their fall, often do. It is exactly the same with oratory as with other arts; it is the difficulty of the task which makes the credit of the achievement. You may notice how the tight-rope walkers, who are struggling along at a great height, evoke the loudest applause just when they seem to be on the point of falling, for those events create most wonder which are least expected, most hazardous, and, as the Greeks still better express it, are most recklessly daring. The skill of a helmsman is by no means so great when he is sailing on a smooth sea as when a tempest is raging; in the former case, there is no one to wonder at his skill as he enters the harbour unheeded and without applause; it is only when the ropes are creaking, and the mast is bent, and the helm is groaning, that the pilot appears in all his glory, and seems most like one of the deities of the sea. I am writing in this strain, because I think you have marked some passages in my works as turgid which I consider lofty, and others, as indiscreet and overdone, which seem to me to be boldly and adequately dealt with. But it makes all the difference whether the marks you have made signify your disapproval of a passage, or merely that it is a striking one. For anything which stands out conspicuously catches the eye, but it requires careful attention to decide whether it is out of proportion or cast on a grand scale, whether it is lofty or disproportionately high. But let me refer to Homer for examples, for who can fail to notice the extreme differences of style between "The great heaven trumpeted around,""His lance rested on the clouds," and all the passage beginning, "Not so loud thunders the wave of the sea" ? * One needs the most delicate pair of scales to decide whether these are empty marvels, which no one should credit, or magnificent and divinely inspired passages. I do not, of course, say that I have ever uttered parallel passages to these, or that I ever could utter them. I am not so mad as all that, but the point I do wish to make is that sometimes eloquence must be given a free rein, and that the rush of genius must not be restrained within too narrow a circuit. But, you will say, there is one rule for orators, and another for poets. Still, Marcus Tullius showed just the same daring as Homer - and yet I will say no more about Tullius, for, with respect to him, there is no possibility of dispute. However, take the case of Demosthenes, who is the pattern and model of all orators. Does he rein and curb himself in that well-known passage, "these scoundrels, flatterers, and polluted wretches," or again, "Not with walls of stone or brick did I fortify the city," or again, "Did I not set Euboea to be a bulwark to Attica on the side of the sea" ? or again, "For my own part, men of Athens, I swear I think he is intoxicated by the vastness of his own achievements"? ** What could be more daring than the fine digression beginning, "For a disease ..." or than this passage, shorter than those I have quoted above, but equally bold, "Then indeed I resisted the audacity of Python's eloquence, which was rushing like a tide upon you"? † In the same style he writes I am arguing against my argument, and you will say that Demosthenes is censured for these extravagances of his. But just notice how much finer Demosthenes is than his critic, and finer just because of his extravagances. Elsewhere, he shows his force, in these passages he shows how much he towers above others. Besides, did Aeschines abstain from the faults which he carped at in Demosthenes? What about this sentence ,To Paternus. I have often felt the dignity, the majesty, and, in a word, the divine splendour of history, and quite lately I had another proof thereof. A certain person had given a reading of a book, which he had compiled with the greatest devotion to truth, and he had reserved part of it for another day. When lo and behold! the friends of a certain other party begged and implored him not to read the remainder; such was the shame they felt at hearing a recital of their deeds, though they had felt none at committing actions which they blushed to hear spoken of. He granted their request, as he was perfectly entitled to do. But the book remains just as it was written, and will remain so, and it will always find readers, the more so because it was not immediately published, inasmuch as delay only sharpens the curiosity of men to know. Farewell. ,To Romanus. After a long delay I have received your letters, but the three came together. All were charmingly written in a most affectionate strain, and they were just the kind of letters that ought to have come from you, especially when I had looked for them for so long. In one of them you lay upon me the very pleasant duty of sending on your letter to that model of women, Plotina. * It shall be forwarded as you desire. In the same one you commend to my good will Pompilius Artemisius. I immediately granted his request. You tell me also that your grape harvest has been but a poor one; I can join you in your grumble in this respect, though we live so far apart. ** In another letter you announce that you are now dictating and writing a good deal, and by so doing you recall me to your remembrance. I am much obliged, and should be more so, if you had been good enough to let me read what you are writing or dictating. It is only fair that you should let me read your compositions, as I let you read mine, even though they relate to some other person than myself. At the close of your letter you promise that, when I give you a more exact account of the way I am spending my time, you will play truant from your own domestic duties and at once rush to see me, and I warn you that I am even now forging chains to hold you, which you will find impossible to break through. Your third letter mentions that you have received my speech in defence of Clarius, and that it seems to you to contain more matter than it did when I read it before you. That is so, for I subsequently inserted many passages. You add that you have sent me other letters over which you took greater pains than usual, and you ask whether I have received them. I have not, but I am exceedingly anxious to. So send them on to me at the earliest possible opportunity with interest for the delay, which I shall reckon at twelve per cent, for I really cannot let you off more lightly. Farewell. 0 ,To Rusticus. Just as it is preferable to do one thing really well than many things only fairly well, so it is better to attain moderate proficiency, if one cannot produce a masterpiece. That is the principle I have gone on in experimenting with various kinds of literary studies, owing to the fact that I do not feel sure of myself in any one of them. So, when you read either one piece or another, I hope you will judge each leniently, remembering that I have written many more. In other arts, excuses are made for failure, when a number of examples are produced, and surely there ought not to be any harder standard in literature, especially as success is more difficult of accomplishment in that art than in any other, but why do I talk about making allowances, like a thankless, ungrateful person? If you receive my last volume as kindly as you did my previous ones, I ought rather to hope for praise than beg you to make allowances for shortcomings. However, I shall be quite content with the latter. Farewell. ,To Geminus. When you are with me, and now again by letter, you often praise your friend Nonius to me for the generosity he has shown to certain persons, and I myself join in those praises, provided that these are not the sole recipients of his bounty. For I like a man who is really generous to show that virtue to his country, to his neighbours, to his relations, and his friends, that is to say to his poor friends, unlike the people who are most ready to give to those who can best return their gifts. Presents of that sort are, in my judgment, mere bird-lime and baited hooks ; they are not offers of one's own substance so much as tricks to catch the substance of others. Very similar in point of character to these are the people who take from one person to give to another, and thus seek a reputation for generosity by practising greed. But a man's first duty is to be content with what he has, and his second is to go round the circle of his friends, and give assistance - and help to those whom he knows to need it most. If Nonius observes all these rules, he deserves unqualified praise; if he observes only one of them, he deserves some praise, but not so much. So rare is it to find a model even for imperfect generosity, for the greed of possession has so seized upon men that they seem rather to be possessed by their wealth than to be the possessors of it. Farewell. ,To Sardus. After I had left you I enjoyed your society just as much as when I was with you, for I read your book, and perused it again and again, especially those passages - for I won't tell you any fibs - in which you have written about me. In these you have let your pen run freely on. How fully, yet with what variety, you have handled the same theme, and have avoided repetition, though the points made are the same ! Should I praise as well as thank you for this ? I cannot do either sufficiently for your deserts, and, even if I could, I should be afraid of seeming to be a rogue, if I were to applaud you for the passages for which I thank you. I will add only one word more, and that is to say that the whole book appeared to me to deserve extra praise for the charm with which it is written, and that its charm has been increased by the fact that it merits so much praise. Farewell. ,To Titianus. How do you spend your time? What are your plans? For my own part, I am leading a most delightful existence, that is to say, I am enjoying complete idleness. Hence it is that I am disinclined to write letters of any length, while very much inclined to read such letters from my friends; the former showing my self-indulgence, the latter my laziness. For there is nothing more lazy than a self-indulgent creature, and no one is more inquisitive than a man with nothing to do. Farewell. ,To Caninius. I have come upon a true story - though it sounds very like a fable - which is quite worthy of engaging the attention of a mind so happy, so lofty, and so poetical as yours, * and I came across it at the dinner-table, while the guests were telling various marvellous tales. The author is a man you can implicitly credit, though what has a poet to do with fact? Yet I can assure you that the narrator was one whom you would have trusted, even if you were going to write history. ** There is in Africa a colony called Hippo, quite close to the sea, while hard by is a navigable expanse of water, out of which flows a channel like a river, which, according ns the tide is either ebbing or flowing, is carried into the sea or borne back into the stagnant sheet of water. In this place the people of all ages are devoted to fishing, sailing, and swimming, especially the boys, who are tempted thereto by having nothing to do, and by their love of play. They think it a fine thing to show their pluck by swimming out as far as possible, and he is looked upon as the champion who swims the longest way out and leaves the shore and those who are swimming with him farthest behind. While engaged in one of these contests a certain boy, more daring than the rest, kept swimming on and on. A dolphin met him, and first swam in front of the boy, then behind him, then round him, then came up beneath to carry him, put him off, and again came under him, and carried the lad, who was much afraid, first to the open sea, and then, turning to the shore, restored him to dry land and to his playmates. The story spread through the colony, and every one flocked to the spot to gaze upon the lad, as though he were a marvel, to ask him questions, hear the tale, and tell it over again. On the following day they crowded to the shore, and scanned the sea and the sheet of water. The boys began to swim, and among them was the hero of the adventure, but he showed less daring than before. Again the dolphin returned at the same time and approached the boy, but he fled with the rest. As though inviting him to approach, and calling him to return, the dolphin leaped out of the sea, then dived and twisted and turned itself into various shapes. This was repeated on the next day, and the day after, and on subsequent days, until the men, who had been bred to the sea, began to be ashamed of being afraid. They approached the dolphin, played with him, and gave him a name, and, when he offered himself to their touch, they stroked and handled him. Their boldness grew as they got to know him. In particular, the boy who was the hero of the first adventure with him, leaped on his back as he swam about, and was carried out to sea and brought back again, the boy thinking that the dolphin recognised and was fond of him, while he too grew attached to the dolphin. Neither showed fear of the other, and thereby the boy grew bolder, and the dolphin still more tame. Moreover, other boys swam with them on the right hand and on the left, urging and encouraging them on, and, curiously enough, another dolphin accompanied the first one, but only as a spectator of the fun, and for company's sake, for he did not follow the other dolphin's example, and would not allow anyone to touch him, but merely led the way for its companion out to sea, and back again, as the boy's playmates did for him. It is almost incredible, but yet every bit as true as the details just given, that the dolphin which thus carried the lad on his back and played with the boys, used to make his way up from the sea on to dry land, and, after drying himself on the sand and getting warm with the heat of the sun, would roll back again into the sea. It is well known too that Octavius Avitus, the proconsular legate, moved by some absurd superstition, poured a quantity of perfume upon the dolphin as he lay on the shore, and that the fish lied fur refuge from this novel treatment and the smell of the perfume out to the deep sea, and only appeared again at the end of several days, in a limp and melancholy condition. Afterwards, however, it recovered its strength, and resumed its former playfulness and attendance upon the boy. All the magistrates flocked to see the sight, and, as they came and stayed, the finances of the little state were seriously embarrassed by its new expenses, while the place itself began to lose its peaceful and tranquil character. So it was decided to put to death secretly the object which drew the people thither. I can imagine how you will regret this sad ending, how eloquently you will bewail it, and adorn and magnify the tale. Yet there is no need to add a single fictitious incident, or work it up ; all it requires is that none of the true details shall be omitted. Farewell. 0 ,To Tranquillus. Please help me out of my dilemma. I am told that I read badly, at least verses. Speeches I can read fairly well, but my reading of poetry is much inferior. I am thinking therefore, as I am about to give a reading to some intimate friends, of trying the experiment of having one of my freedmen to read for me. The fact that I have chosen one who reads, not perhaps well, but certainly better than I can, will show that I am treating my audience as old friends, provided that he is not flurried, for he is as used to reading as I am to poetry. For my own part, I do not know what I ought to do while he is reading, whether I should sit glued to my seat, without opening my lips like an idle spectator, or whether, as some people I know do, I should follow the words he utters with my lips, eyes, and hands. But in that case I fancy I should not accompany him any better than I should read. So I ask you again to help me out of my dilemma, and write and tell me truly whether it is better for me to read execrably badly, or whether or not I ought to do as I propose. Farewell. ,To Atrius. I have received the book you sent me, and I am much obliged for it, but just for the present I am exceedingly busy. So I have not yet lead it, though I am most anxiously looking forward to do so, but such is the respect due both to your letters and to your writings that I should think it a crying shame if I took it up when my mind was not free to give it undivided attention. I have nothing but praise for the minuteness with which you revise your work, yet there are limits to revision, inasmuch as too much nicety rather impairs than improves, and then again revision takes us away from an up-to-date subject, and neither allows us to finish off an old theme, nor begin a new one. Farewell. ,To Fuscus. You ask me how I spend the day on my Tuscan villa in summer time. Well, I wake at my own sweet will, usually about the first hour, though it is often before, and rarely later. I keep my windows shut, for it is remarkable how, when all is still and in darkness, and I am withdrawn from distracting influences and am left to myself, and free to do what I like, my thoughts are not led by my eyes, but my eyes by my thoughts; and so my eyes, when they have nothing else to look at, only see the objects which are present before my mind. If I have anything on hand, I think it over, and weigh every word as carefully as though I were actually writing or revising, and in this way I get through more or less work, according as the subject is easy or difficult to compose and bear in mind. I call for a shorthand writer, and, after letting in the daylight, I dictate the passages which I have composed, then he leaves me, and I send for him again, and once again dismiss him. At the fourth or fifth hour, according as the weather tempts me - for I have no fixed and settled plan for the day - I betake myself to my terrace or covered portico, and there again I resume my thinking and dictating. I ride in my carriage, and still continue my mental occupation, just as when I am walking or lying down. My concentration of thought is unaffected, or rather is refreshed by the change. Then I snatch a brief sleep and again walk, and afterwards read aloud a Greek or Latin speech, as clearly and distinctly as I can, not so much to exercise the vocal organs as to help my digestion, though it does at the same time strengthen my voice. I take another walk, then I am anointed, and take exercise and a bath. While I am at dinner, if I am dining with my wife or a few friends, a book is read to us, and afterwards we hear a comic actor or a musician; then I walk with my attendants, some of whom are men of learning. Thus the evening is passed away with talk on all sorts of subjects, and even the longest day is soon done. Sometimes I vary this routine, for, if I have been lying down, or walking for any length of time, as soon as I have had my sleep and read aloud, I ride on horseback instead of in a carriage, as it takes less time, and one gets over the ground faster. My friends come in from the neighbouring towns to see me, and take up part of the day, and occasionally, when I am tired, I welcome their call as a pleasant relief. Sometimes I go hunting, but never without my tablets, so that though I may take no game, I still have something to bring back with me. Part of my time too is given to my tenants - though in their opinion not enough - and their clownish complaints give me a fresh zest for my literary work and my round of engagements in town. Farewell. ,To Paulinus. You are not one of those people who require ceremonial attendance and public attention from their intimate friends when it is inconvenient for them to give it, and my regard for you is too strong for me to fear that you will take it amiss if I fail to wait upon you as soon as you are elected consul on the Kalends, * especially as I am detained here because I find it absolutely necessary to let my farms on longer leases than usual, and have to make arrangements accordingly, which will require me to form new plans. For during the last five years the arrears have increased in spite of the great abatements I have made, and for that reason, many of my tenants are now not taking the slightest trouble to reduce their debts, inasmuch as they despair of being able to meet the whole of them. They even seize and consume the produce of their farms, as though they had quite made up their minds not to stint themselves in any respect. I must therefore grapple with this evil, which is growing worse daily, and find some remedy for it. One way of so doing would be to let the farms not for rent but for a proportion of the produce, and in that case, I should have to appoint some of my household as overseers to see the work was done and to take care of my share of the produce. I think there can be no better form of rent than the produce of the soil, the climate, and the seasons. This would require great honesty, sharp eyes, and many pairs of hands, but the experiment has to be made, and now that the disease has taken a firm hold, some change in the treatment must be tried. You will see that it is no self-indulgent reason which prevents me from greeting you on the first day of your consulship, but I promise you that I will celebrate the day here, as though I were with you in Rome, with prayers for your prosperity and with joyous congratulation. Farewell. ,To Saturninus. Our friend Rufus has won my praise, not because you asked me to praise him, but because he so richly deserved it. For I read his book, which was a perfectly finished production, and the affection he bears me made me still more pleased with it. However, I judged it quite impartially, for it is quite a mistake to suppose that it is only those who read a book with spiteful motives who give a critical estimate of it. Farewell. ,To Mustius. I have been warned by the haruspices to put into better repair and enlarge the temple of Ceres, which stands on my estate, as it is very old and cramped for room, and on one day in the year attracts great crowds of people. For on the Ides of September all the population of the country-side flocks thither; much business is transacted, many vows are registered and paid, but there is no place near where people can take refuge either from storm or heat. I think, therefore, that I shall be showing my generosity, and at the same time display my piety, if I rebuild the temple as handsomely as possible and add to it a portico, the former for the use of the goddess, the latter for the people who attend there. So I should like you to buy me four columns of any kind of marble you think fit, as well as sufficient marble for the pavement and walls. I shall also have to get made or buy a statue of the goddess, for the old one, which was made of wood, has lost some of its limbs through age. As for the portico, I don't think there is anything that I need ask you for at present, unless it be that you should sketch me a plan to suit the situation of the place. The portico cannot be carried all round the temple, inasmuch as on one side of the floor of the building there is a river with very steep banks, and on the other there runs a road. Beyond the road, there is a spacious meadow which would be a very suitable place to build the portico, as it is right opposite the temple, unless you can think of a better plan - you who make a practice of overcoming natural difficulties by your professional skill. Farewell. ,To Fuscus. You say that you were very pleased to receive my letter * describing how I spend my leisure time in summer at my Tuscan villa, and you ask what changes I make in my routine in winter time at my Laurentine house. None at all, unless it be that I do without a sleep at midday and steal a good deal of the night, either before daybreak or after sunset, and if, as often happens in winter, I find I have some urgent business on hand, then I forego listening to a comic actor or music after dinner, and instead, I revise again and again what I have dictated, and at the same time improve my memory by making frequent corrections. So now you know my routine both in summer and winter, and to these you may add the spring and autumn, which come between the two other seasons. During these I take care to lose nothing of the days, and also nibble a little bit off the nights. Farewell. %%% |
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