Book 1

1.1. You have often urged me to gather together and publish any of my letters that I had written with rather more than usual care. I have collected them, though not in the order in which they were composed — for I was not writing a history — but just as each one came to hand.

1.2. It remains only that neither you should regret your advice nor I my compliance. For so it will come about that I shall seek out those that still lie neglected, and shall not suppress any I may add to them. Farewell.

2.1. Since I foresee that your arrival will be later than I had hoped, I am sending you the book I had promised in my earlier letters. I ask you, as is your custom, both to read it and to correct it, the more so because I think I have never before written anything with the same ardour. For I have tried to imitate Demosthenes, your perpetual model, and Calvus, my recent one, at least in their figures of speech; the force of such great men only a few can attain, "the few whom kindly Fortune . . ."

2.3. Nor did the subject itself resist this rivalry — I am afraid to call it that, lest it sound presumptuous — for it was almost entirely a contest of argument, which roused me from the long lethargy in which I had been drowsing, if indeed I am the kind of man who can be roused.

2.4. Yet I have not altogether avoided the little flourishes of our friend Marcus, whenever I was tempted to turn aside a little from the road to some agreeable bypath: for I wished to be incisive, not severe.

2.5. And do not suppose that under this reservation I am asking your indulgence. For the more to sharpen your file upon it, I will confess that both I and my companions are not averse to publication, if only you should perhaps add your white pebble to our error.

2.6. For something must clearly be published — and would that it were this very piece, which is ready! You hear the wish of a lazy man. Published it must be, for several reasons, chiefly because the little books I have already issued are said to be still in people's hands, although by now they have lost the charm of novelty — unless the booksellers are flattering my ears. But let them flatter, so long as by this falsehood they commend my work to me. Farewell.

3.1. How fares Comum, the delight of us both? And that most charming villa near the town, and the colonnade that is always like spring, the deeply shaded plane grove, the canal green and gleaming like a jewel, the lake spread out below and at your service, the path at once soft and firm, the bath that the sun fills and circles all day long, the dining rooms — some for the many, some for the few — the bedrooms for day and for night? Do they hold you and divide you among them by turns?

3.2. Or are you, as you used to be, carried off by frequent excursions to attend to the management of your estate? If they hold you, you are fortunate and blessed; if not, you are "one of the crowd."

3.3. Why not — for it is high time — hand over to others those low and sordid cares, and claim yourself for study in that deep and fruitful retreat? Let this be your business and your leisure, your labour and your rest; in this let your waking hours, and even your sleep, be spent.

3.4. Shape and forge something that may be yours forever. For the rest of your possessions will fall, after you, to one master and then another, but this will never cease to be yours, once it has begun to be.

3.5. I know what spirit, what gifts of mind I am urging on; only strive to set yourself at the value which others will set on you, if you have first valued yourself. Farewell.

4.1. What stores of provisions there are at your place at Ocriculum, at Narnia, at Carsulae, at Perusia — and at Narnia even a bath! This I learn from my own letters, for there is no longer any need of yours: that single brief and true note is enough.

4.2. By Hercules, what is mine is not so much mine as what is yours; but in this they differ, that your people welcome me with more anxious and attentive care than my own. The same will perhaps happen to you, if ever you turn aside to one of my houses.

4.3. And I should be glad if you would do so, first that you may enjoy my property just as I do yours, and next that my people may at last rouse themselves, who now await me in careless and almost negligent fashion.

4.4. For with easygoing masters the very habit of familiarity wears away the servants' awe; they are stirred by new faces, and take more pains to win approval from their masters by serving guests than by serving the masters themselves. Farewell.

5.1. Have you ever seen anyone more timid and abject than Marcus Regulus since Domitian's death? Under that emperor he had committed crimes no less than under Nero, only more secretly. He began to fear that I was angry with him, and he was not mistaken: I was angry.

5.2. He had fanned the danger that threatened Arulenus Rusticus, and had exulted in his death — so much so that he read aloud and published a book in which he attacks Rusticus and even calls him "the ape of the Stoics," adding that he was "branded with the Vitellian scar." You recognize the eloquence of Regulus.

5.3. He mangles Herennius Senecio so intemperately that Mettius Carus said to him, "What have you to do with my dead men? Do I trouble Crassus or Camerinus?" — men whom Regulus had accused under Nero.

5.4. Regulus believed that I had taken all this hard, and so had not invited me even to the reading of his book. Besides, he remembered how mortally he had once attacked me before the Court of the Hundred.

5.5. I was acting for Arrionilla, the wife of Timon, at the request of Arulenus Rusticus; Regulus was on the other side. We were resting part of our case on an opinion of Mettius Modestus, that excellent man, who was then in exile, banished by Domitian. Up gets Regulus: "I ask you, Secundus," he says, "what is your view of Modestus?" You see the danger if I had answered "a good one," the disgrace if "a bad one." I can only say that at that moment the gods were on my side. "I will answer," I said, "if the Court is going to give judgment upon this." Again he: "I ask what is your view of Modestus."

5.6. Once more I: "Witnesses used to be questioned about defendants, not about men already condemned." A third time he: "I no longer ask what is your view of Modestus, but what is your view of the loyalty of Modestus."

5.7. "You ask," I said, "what I think; but I hold it is not even lawful to put a question about a man on whom sentence has been pronounced." He fell silent; praise and congratulation followed me, because I had neither damaged my own reputation by an answer that might have been useful but was dishonourable, nor entangled myself in the snares of so insidious a question.

5.8. So now, terrified by his conscience, he lays hold of Caecilius Celer, then of Fabius Iustus, and begs them to reconcile me to him. Not content with that, he goes on to Spurinna; to him he says abjectly — for he is utterly grovelling when afraid — "I beg you to see Pliny at his house in the morning, but quite early — for I cannot endure my anxiety any longer — and by any means contrive that he should not be angry with me."

5.9. I had already woken; a message came from Spurinna: "I am coming to you." "No, I to you." We met in the Colonnade of Livia, each on his way to the other. He delivered Regulus's commission, added his own entreaties, but sparingly, as became so good a man pleading for so unlike a one. To him I said: "You yourself shall judge what answer you think should be given to Regulus.

5.10. It is not right that you should be deceived by me. I am waiting for Mauricus" — he had not yet returned from exile — "and therefore I can give you no answer either way, since I shall do whatever he decides; for it is fitting that he be the leader in this counsel and I the follower."

5.11. A few days later Regulus himself met me at a praetor's levee; he followed me there, asked for a private word, and said he was afraid that something he had once said in the Court of the Hundred had stuck deep in my mind — when in reply to me and to Satrius Rufus he had said: "Satrius Rufus, who has no rivalry with Cicero and is content with the eloquence of our own age."

5.12. I answered that I now understood the remark had been malicious, since he himself confessed it; though otherwise it might have been thought complimentary. "For I do," I said, "rival Cicero, and am not content with the eloquence of our own age;

5.13. for I think it the height of folly not to set before oneself the very best models for imitation. But you, who remember this case, why have you forgotten the other, in which you asked me what I thought of the loyalty of Mettius Modestus?" He turned noticeably pale — though he is always pale — and stammered: "I asked the question not to harm you, but to harm Modestus." See the cruelty of the man, who does not even conceal that he wished to harm an exile.

5.14. He added a fine excuse: "He wrote," said he, "in a letter that was read aloud before Domitian, 'Regulus, the basest of all two-legged creatures'" — which indeed Modestus had written with perfect truth.

5.15. Here was about the end of our conversation; for I did not wish to go further, so as to keep all my options free until Mauricus came. Nor do I forget that Regulus is "hard to dislodge"; for he is rich, intriguing, courted by many and feared by more — which is generally a stronger force than love.

5.16. Yet it may happen that these supports are shaken and give way; for the favour of the wicked is as treacherous as they are themselves. But, to repeat myself, I am waiting for Mauricus. He is a man of weight and prudence, schooled by many trials, and able to foresee the future from the past. By his guidance I shall have a settled plan, whether to attempt something or to keep quiet.

5.17. I have written this to you because it was only fair that, in our mutual affection, you should know not only all my deeds and words but my plans as well. Farewell.

6.1. You will laugh, and you may. I — yes, the man you know — have caught three boars, and very fine ones too. "You yourself?" you ask. I myself; yet not so as to depart altogether from my indolence and quiet. I was sitting by the nets; near at hand were not a hunting spear or lance, but my stylus and tablets; I was meditating something and making notes, so that, even if I brought back empty hands, my tablets at least might be full.

6.2. There is no reason to despise this manner of study; it is wonderful how the mind is roused by bodily exercise and movement. The woods all around, the solitude, and the very silence that the chase requires are great spurs to thought.

6.3. So, when next you hunt, on my advice you may carry, along with your bread basket and flask, your tablets too: you will find that Minerva no less than Diana ranges the hills. Farewell.

7.1. See to what a height you have raised me, in granting me the same power and the same sovereignty that Homer gives to Jupiter, best and greatest: "the one the Father granted him, the other he refused."

7.2. For I too can answer your wish with a like nod and refusal. It is right for me, especially at your request, to excuse myself from acting on behalf of the people of Baetica against a single man; but it is consistent neither with my good faith nor with that steadfastness you value to appear against a province which I have bound to me by so many services, so many labours, and even so many perils of my own.

7.3. I shall therefore keep to this mean: that of the two courses, one of which you ask of me, I shall choose rather the one in which I may satisfy not only your wishes but your judgment. For I must consider not so much what an excellent man wishes at the moment, as what he will always approve.

7.4. I hope to be in Rome about the Ides of October, and to confirm all this in person to Gallus, on my word and yours; to whom even now you may pledge my intentions: "he nodded too with his dark brows."

7.5. For why should I not deal with you throughout in Homer's verses? — since you will not let me deal with you in yours, for which I burn with such longing that I think I could be bribed by this reward alone, even to appear against the Baetici.

7.6. I almost passed over what I should least have passed over: that I have received the excellent dates you sent, which must now contend with my figs and mushrooms. Farewell.

8.1. Most opportunely your letter reached me, in which you demanded that I send you some of my writings, just when I had resolved upon that very thing. So you have applied spurs to a horse already running, and at once relieved yourself of any excuse for refusing the task, and me of any scruple in pressing it.

8.2. For it is not fitting that I should be timid in using what was offered, nor that you should grudge what you yourself demanded. Yet you must not expect any new work from so idle a man. I am going to ask you to give your attention once more to the address I delivered before my fellow townsmen when I dedicated a library.

8.3. I remember indeed that you have already made some notes, but only in a general way; so now I ask you not only to attend to the whole, but to go over the particulars too with the file you usually employ. For even after revision it will still be open to me either to publish or to withhold it.

8.4. Indeed, perhaps the very process of revision will resolve this hesitation of mine one way or the other: it will either find the piece unworthy of publication while it goes over it again and again, or make it worthy by the very act of testing it.

8.5. Though the reasons for my hesitation lie not so much in the writing as in the very nature of the subject: for it is somewhat boastful and lofty. This will burden my modesty, even if the style itself be restrained and subdued, since I am compelled to speak both of my parents' generosity and of my own.

8.6. This is a delicate and slippery ground, even when necessity offers a kind of excuse. For if even other men's praises are commonly received with little patience, how hard it is to keep from giving offence in a speech about oneself or one's own! For we envy excellence itself, and still more its proclamation and renown; and indeed we distort and carp at none of the things rightly done less than at those laid up in obscurity and silence.

8.7. For this reason I have often asked myself whether I composed this, whatever it is, for myself alone, or owed it to others as well. That it was for myself, I am reminded by this: that many things necessary to the doing of a deed, once the deed is done, retain neither equal usefulness nor equal favour.

8.8. And, not to fetch examples from far off, what could have been more useful than to pursue my reasons for the donation even with the pen? For by this I attained, first, that I dwelt upon honourable thoughts; next, that by a longer treatment I came to see their beauty fully; and last, that I guarded against the regret which is the companion of sudden generosity. From all this there arose a certain practice in despising money.

8.9. For whereas Nature has bound all men to the guarding of it, in me, on the contrary, a love of liberality, long and much weighed, was loosing the common bonds of avarice; and my generosity seemed likely to be the more praiseworthy because I was drawn to it not by any impulse, but by deliberation.

8.10. To these reasons was added that I was promising not games or gladiators, but a yearly outlay for the maintenance of freeborn children. The pleasures of eye and ear, moreover, are so far from needing recommendation that they should be checked rather than urged on by a speech;

8.11. but to make a man willingly take up the wearisome labour of education, one must win him over not only by rewards but by carefully chosen exhortations.

8.12. For if physicians coax a man with gentle words to take wholesome but unpleasant foods, how much more did it befit one consulting the public good to recommend, by the graciousness of his speech, a most useful service that was not equally popular — especially as I had to strive that what was given to parents should also be approved by the childless, and that the rest should patiently both await and earn the honour granted to a few.

8.13. But just as then I aimed at the common good rather than at private display, since I wished the purpose and effect of my benefaction to be understood, so now, in the matter of publishing, I am afraid that I may seem to have served not the interests of others but my own glory.

8.14. Besides, I remember how much greater the reward of virtue is when laid up in one's own conscience than in fame. For glory ought to follow virtue, not to be pursued; and even if by some chance it does not follow, that which has deserved glory is no less fine for that.

8.15. But those who adorn their good deeds with words are believed to proclaim them not because they did them, but to have done them in order to proclaim them. So what would have been splendid if reported by another loses all its lustre when recounted by the very man who did it; for when men cannot belittle the deed itself, they attack the boasting of it. Thus, if you do what should be kept silent, the deed itself is blamed; if you do not keep silent about what deserves praise, you yourself are blamed.

8.16. But in my case a peculiar circumstance stands in the way. For I delivered this very address not before the people, but before the town councillors; not in the open, but in the council chamber.

8.17. So I am afraid it may not be quite consistent, having in the speaking avoided the applause and acclamation of the crowd, now to court those very things by publication; and having shut off by the threshold and walls of the chamber the very common people for whose sake the provision was made, lest I should fall into any appearance of vainglory, now to seek out by a kind of open display even those to whom nothing of my benefaction belongs except the example.

8.18. You have the reasons for my hesitation; yet I shall yield to your counsel, whose authority will serve me in place of a reason. Farewell.

9.1. It is strange how, on each single day in the city, the reckoning is, or seems to be, exact, but when many days are taken together it does not balance.

9.2. For if you ask anyone, "What did you do today?" he might answer: "I attended a ceremony of the coming-of-age; I went to a betrothal or a wedding; one man asked me to witness his will, another to act as his advocate, another to sit on his council."

9.3. These things, on the day you do them, seem necessary; but the same, if you reflect that you do them every day, seem empty — much more so when you have withdrawn into the country. For then comes the recollection: "How many days I have wasted on how cold and trivial matters!"

9.4. This is what happens to me, once I am at my Laurentine villa and either read something, or write, or even attend to the body, by whose support the mind is sustained.

9.5. I hear nothing that I should be sorry to have heard, I say nothing that I should be sorry to have said; no one before me carps at anyone with slanderous talk, I myself reproach no one, except perhaps myself, when I write with too little success; no hope, no fear disturbs me, no rumours trouble me: I talk only with myself and with my books.

9.6. O upright and sincere life! O sweet and honourable leisure, almost fairer than any business! O sea, O shore, true and secret haunt of the Muses, how much you reveal, how much you dictate!

9.7. So you too, as soon as the chance comes, leave that din and empty bustle and those most foolish labours, and give yourself to study or to leisure.

9.8. For it is better, as our friend Atilius once said, with as much learning as wit, to be at leisure than to do nothing. Farewell.

10.1. If ever our city flourished in liberal studies, it flourishes most of all now.

10.2. There are many famous examples; one would suffice — Euphrates the philosopher. Him I came to know intimately and at home in Syria, when as a young man I was serving in the army, and I took pains to be loved by him, though there was no need to take pains. For he is approachable and open, and full of that humanity which he teaches.

10.3. And would that I had fulfilled the hope he then conceived of me as fully as he himself has added to his own virtues! Or perhaps I admire them more now because I understand them more.

10.4. And yet even now I do not understand them well enough; for as no one but an artist can judge a painter, a sculptor, or a modeller, so none but a wise man can perceive a wise man.

10.5. As far, however, as it is given me to discern, there are many qualities in Euphrates so eminent and shining that they catch and impress even the moderately learned. He argues subtly, weightily, ornately, and often reproduces that Platonic sublimity and breadth. His speech is rich and varied, sweet above all, and such as to draw and impel even the reluctant.

10.6. To this are added a tall and stately frame, a handsome face, flowing hair, and a long, white beard; which, though they may be thought accidental and of no account, yet win him great reverence.

10.7. There is no roughness in his dress, no gloom, but much gravity; you would revere his presence, not dread it. His life is of the utmost purity, his courtesy equal to it: he attacks vices, not men, and does not chastise those who err but reforms them. You would follow his admonition, attentive and hanging on his words, and long to be persuaded even after he has persuaded you.

10.8. Then he has three children, two of them sons, whom he educates with the greatest care. His father-in-law Pompeius Iulianus was great and famous in the rest of his life, and in this one thing above all: that, being himself the foremost man of his province, he chose for son-in-law, from among the highest matches, a man foremost not in honours but in wisdom.

10.9. Yet why say more of a man whom I am not allowed to enjoy? Only to torment myself the more, because I am not allowed it? For I am held fast by duty — a duty as great as it is irksome: I sit at the tribunal, I countersign petitions, I draw up accounts, I write very many letters, but most unliterary ones.

10.10. Sometimes — for how rarely does even that happen! — I complain to Euphrates of these occupations. He consoles me, and even affirms that this is a part of philosophy, and indeed its fairest part: to conduct public business, to hear and judge cases, to bring forth and exercise justice, and to put into practice what philosophers themselves teach.

10.11. Yet of this one thing he does not persuade me: that it is better to do these things than to spend whole days with him in listening and learning. So all the more I urge you, who have leisure, when next you come to the city — and come earlier for this very reason — to give yourself over to him to be polished and refined.

10.12. For I do not, like many, envy others a good thing of which I myself am deprived; on the contrary, I feel a certain pleasure and delight when I see in abundance among my friends what is denied to me. Farewell.

11.1. For a long time now you have sent me no letters. "There is nothing," you say, "for me to write." Well, write just that — that there is nothing to write; or even that single line with which our forefathers used to begin: "If you are well, it is well; I am well."

11.2. That is enough for me; for it is the greatest thing. Do you think I am joking? I ask in earnest. Let me know what you are doing, which I cannot fail to know without the deepest anxiety. Farewell.

12.1. I have suffered a most grievous loss, if loss is the word for the death of so great a man. Corellius Rufus is dead, and dead by his own choice, which makes my grief the sharper. For that is the most painful kind of death which seems neither in the course of Nature nor due to fate.

12.2. For in the case of those who are ended by disease, there is great consolation in the very necessity of it; but in those whom a summoned death carries off, the grief is past healing, because they are believed to have been able to live long.

12.3. Corellius indeed was driven to this resolve by that supreme reason which for the wise stands in place of necessity, although he had very many reasons for living — an excellent conscience, an excellent reputation, the greatest authority, and besides a daughter, a wife, a grandson, sisters, and among so many dear ones, true friends.

12.4. But he was harassed by so long and so unjust an illness that these great prizes of life were outweighed by the reasons for death. In his thirty-third year, as I have heard him say, he was seized with gout in the feet. This he had from his father; for diseases too, like other things, are often passed down by a kind of inheritance.

12.5. This he overcame and subdued by abstinence and pure living while his years were green; in the end, as it grew heavier with age, he bore it up by strength of mind, even while he endured incredible torments and most undeserved agonies.

12.6. For by then the pain had settled not in his feet alone, as before, but ranged through all his limbs. I came to him in Domitian's time, as he lay in his suburban villa.

12.7. The slaves withdrew from the bedchamber — it was his custom, whenever a more trusted friend came in — and even his wife, though most capable of keeping any secret, would leave.

12.8. He turned his eyes round and said, "Why do you suppose I bear these great pains so long? — to outlive that brigand, even by a single day." Had you given a body to match that spirit, he would have done what he desired. But God granted his prayer, and once master of it, ready now to die secure and free, he broke off the many but lesser ties that held him to life.

12.9. The illness had grown worse, and he tried to moderate it by temperance; when it persisted, he escaped it by resolution. Already a second day, a third, a fourth: he abstained from food. His wife Hispulla sent to me our common friend Gaius Geminius with the saddest of messages: that Corellius had resolved to die, and could not be moved by the entreaties either of his family or of his daughter; that I alone was left, by whom he might be called back to life.

12.10. I ran. I had reached the neighbouring house when the same Hispulla sent Iulius Atticus to tell me that now even I should obtain nothing: so obstinately had he hardened more and more. He had said indeed to the physician who offered him food, "I have decided" — words that left in my heart as much admiration as longing.

12.11. I think what a friend, what a man I have lost. He completed his sixty-seventh year, an age long enough even for the most robust; I know it. He escaped a lifelong illness; I know it. He died with his family surviving him, and the commonwealth flourishing, which was dearer to him than all of them; this too I know.

12.12. Yet I grieve for his death as if for that of a young man in the fullest vigour, and I grieve — you may think me weak — on my own account. For I have lost, I have lost the witness, the guide, the master of my life. In short, I will say what I said to my companion Calvisius in the freshness of my grief: "I am afraid I shall live more carelessly now."

12.13. So offer me consolations — not these: "He was old, he was infirm" — for these I know — but some new ones, some great ones, which I have never heard, never read. For what I have heard and read comes to my mind unbidden, but is overwhelmed by so great a grief. Farewell.

13.1. This year has brought a great crop of poets: through the whole month of April there was scarcely a day on which someone did not give a public reading. I am glad that learning thrives, that men's talents come forth and display themselves, even though people are sluggish to gather and listen.

13.2. Most sit about in the lounges and waste the time of the reading in gossip, ordering word to be brought them from time to time whether the reader has yet come in, whether he has spoken his preface, whether he has unrolled a good part of his book; then at last, and even then slowly and reluctantly, they come, yet do not stay to the end, but withdraw before it — some by stealth and on the sly, others openly and without disguise.

13.3. Yet, by Hercules, in our fathers' memory they say that the Emperor Claudius, when he was walking in the Palace and heard a shout and asked the reason, on being told that Nonianus was giving a reading, came in upon the reader, sudden and unlooked for.

13.4. Nowadays even the idlest man, though asked long beforehand and reminded again and again, either does not come, or, if he comes, complains that he has lost a day — because he did not lose it.

13.5. But all the more are those to be praised and approved whom this indifference or arrogance of their hearers does not deter from the pursuit of writing and reciting. For my part, I have failed scarcely anyone. Most, to be sure, were friends;

13.6. for there is hardly anyone who loves learning without also loving me. For these reasons I have spent more time in the city than I had intended. Now I can return to my retreat and write something that I shall not recite, lest I should seem to have been not a listener but a creditor to those at whose readings I was present. For in this, as in other things, the favour of attending a reading is lost if it is demanded back. Farewell.

14.1. You ask me to look out for a husband for your brother's daughter; and you do rightly to lay this charge especially upon me. For you know how greatly I looked up to and loved that excellent man, with what exhortations he encouraged my youth, and by what praises he made me seem worthy of praise.

14.2. There is nothing that you could lay upon me either greater or more welcome, nothing that I could more honourably undertake, than to choose a young man worthy to father grandchildren for Arulenus Rusticus.

14.3. He would indeed have had to be sought long, had not Minicius Acilianus been ready and as it were provided beforehand. He loves me most intimately, as one young man another — for he is younger by a few years — and reveres me as an elder.

14.4. For he desires to be formed and trained by me as I used to be by you. His native place is Brixia, in that Italy of ours which still keeps and preserves much of its old-time modesty, frugality, and even rustic simplicity.

14.5. His father is Minicius Macrinus, a leading man of the equestrian order, who wished for nothing higher; for though enrolled by the deified Vespasian among the men of praetorian rank, he most steadfastly preferred honourable quiet to this — shall I call it the striving for office, or the dignity of it?

14.6. He has a maternal grandmother, Serrana Procula, from the town of Patavium. You know the manners of that place: yet Serrana is a model of strictness even to the people of Patavium. He has too an uncle, Publius Acilius, of almost singular gravity, prudence, and good faith. In short, there is nothing in the whole household that would not please you as if it were your own.

14.7. As for Acilianus himself, he has the greatest vigour and energy, joined with the utmost modesty. He has held the quaestorship, tribunate, and praetorship most honourably, and has already spared you the necessity of canvassing on his behalf.

14.8. He has a frank, open countenance, deeply suffused with colour and a healthy flush; the whole body has a natural beauty and a certain senatorial dignity. These things I by no means think should be disregarded; for they are owed, as a kind of reward, to a girl's chastity.

14.9. I do not know whether to add that his father has ample means. For when I picture you and those for whom we seek a son-in-law, I think I should keep silent about means; but when I consider public manners and even the laws of the state, which hold that men's wealth is among the first things to be looked at, it seems that this too should not be passed over. And indeed, to one who thinks of posterity, and of these in their numbers, this consideration too must be weighed in the choosing of a match.

14.10. You perhaps may think that I have indulged my affection and exalted these things beyond what the case warrants. But I pledge you on my honour that you will find everything far ampler than I have proclaimed. I love the young man indeed most ardently, as he deserves; but it is the very mark of a lover not to overload him with praises. Farewell.

15.1. Ho there! You promise to come to dinner, and then do not come? Justice shall be done: you shall pay to the last penny the cost I was at, and no small one either.

15.2. There had been made ready, for each of us, a lettuce apiece, three snails, two eggs, barley water with mead and snow — for this too you shall reckon, indeed reckon first of all, since it melts away on the dish — olives, beetroots, gourds, onions, and a thousand other things no less elegant. You would have heard comedians, or a reader, or a lyre player, or — such is my generosity — all of them.

15.3. But you preferred, at someone or other's house, oysters, sow's matrix, sea urchins, and Spanish dancing girls. You shall pay the penalty — I will not say what. You acted harshly: you grudged — yourself perhaps, certainly me, but yourself too. How we should have laughed and joked and pursued our studies! You can dine more sumptuously at many houses, but nowhere more merrily, more simply, more freely.

15.4. In short, make trial of it; and unless thereafter you excuse yourself to others rather than to me, excuse yourself to me forever. Farewell.

16.1. I used to love Pompeius Saturninus — our friend, I mean — and to praise his talent, even before I knew how varied, how flexible, how manifold it was; but now he holds, possesses, and masters me entirely.

16.2. I have heard him plead causes keenly and ardently, and no less elegantly and with grace, whether he brought forth what was prepared or what was extemporary. Apt and frequent epigrams are at hand, a weighty and graceful structure, sonorous and ancient words. All these things wonderfully please when they are borne along with a kind of rush and flood; they please too when reconsidered.

16.3. You will feel what I feel when you take up his speeches in your hands, which you will readily compare with any of the ancients, whose rival he is.

16.4. Yet the same man will satisfy you still more in history, whether by brevity, or clarity, or sweetness, or even splendour and sublimity of narration. For in his speeches to the assembly there is the same force as in his orations, only more compressed, more confined, more taut.

16.5. Besides, he writes verses such as my Catullus or Calvus wrote — really such as Catullus or Calvus. How much charm, sweetness, bitterness, and love there is in them! He does insert, but deliberately, among smooth and light lines some that are a little harsh; and this too in the manner of Catullus or Calvus.

16.6. He read me lately some letters; he said they were his wife's. I thought I was hearing Plautus or Terence read in prose. Whether they are his wife's, as he asserts, or his own, as he denies, he is worthy of equal glory, whether for composing them, or for having made the wife he received as a maiden so learned and so polished.

16.7. So he is with me through the whole day; the same man before I write, the same when I have written, the same even when I rest; and though it is the same man, I do not read him as the same.

16.8. And I urge and advise you to do likewise; for it ought not to harm his works that he is alive. If he had flourished among those whom we have never seen, should we not be hunting out not only his books but his portraits too — yet now the honour and favour due to him as a living man languishes, as it were, from satiety?

16.9. But it is perverse and grudging not to admire a man most worthy of admiration, just because it is our lot to see him, to speak with him, to hear him, to embrace him, and not only to praise but to love him. Farewell.

17.1. There is still among men a care for good faith and duty; there are those who act as friends even of the dead. Titinius Capito has obtained from our emperor leave to set up in the Forum a statue of Lucius Silanus.

17.2. It is a fine thing, deserving great praise, to use the friendship of the prince for this, and to test by the honours of others how much influence one has.

17.3. It is altogether Capito's habit to honour famous men; it is wonderful with what reverence and zeal he keeps, where he can, in his house, the busts of the Bruti, the Cassii, the Catos. He also adorns the life of each most distinguished man with excellent verses.

17.4. You may be sure that one who so loves the virtues of others abounds in many virtues himself. To Silanus has been rendered the honour due to him, for whose immortality Capito has provided, and at the same time for his own. For it is no more honourable and distinguished to have a statue in the Forum of the Roman people than to set one up. Farewell.

18.1. You write that, terrified by a dream, you fear you may suffer some setback in your case; you ask me to seek a postponement, and to excuse you for a few days, at least the next one. It is difficult, but I will try, "for the dream too is from Zeus."

18.2. Yet it matters whether you are accustomed to dream of things that will come to pass, or of their opposites. To me, reflecting on this dream of mine, the very thing you fear seems to portend an excellent outcome.

18.3. I had undertaken the case of Iunius Pastor, when in my sleep I seemed to see my mother-in-law fall at my knees and implore me not to plead; and I was about to plead, still a very young man, in a case before all four panels of the court, against the most powerful men of the state and even friends of Caesar — any single one of which things might have shaken my resolve after so gloomy a dream.

18.4. Yet I pleaded, reasoning thus: "One omen is best, to fight for one's country." For my country, and anything dearer than my country, seemed to me to be my good faith. It turned out well, and indeed that case opened to me men's ears, and threw wide the door to fame.

18.5. So consider whether you too, on this precedent, may turn that dream of yours to good; or, if you think it safer to follow the maxim of every most cautious man, "What you doubt of, do not do," then write back just that.

18.6. I shall find some shift and plead your cause, so that you may plead it later when you wish. For your case is certainly different from what mine was. A trial before the Court of the Hundred can in no way be postponed; this one can, with difficulty but still it can. Farewell.

19.1. You are a fellow townsman of mine, my schoolfellow, and my companion from earliest youth; your father was a friend both to my mother and to my uncle, and to me too, so far as the difference of our ages allowed: great and weighty reasons why I should undertake to advance your standing.

19.2. That your fortune amounts to a hundred thousand sesterces is sufficiently shown by your being a town councillor among us. Therefore, that I may enjoy you not only as a councillor but as a Roman knight, I offer you, to make up the equestrian fortune, three hundred thousand sesterces.

19.3. That you will remember this gift, the long duration of our friendship guarantees; and I do not even remind you of what I should be bound to remind you, did I not know you would do it of your own accord — that you should use the rank I have given you as modestly as befits one given by me.

19.4. For an honour must be guarded the more anxiously when in it a friend's kindness too must be cherished. Farewell.

20.1. I often dispute with a certain learned and skilful man, who likes nothing in the pleading of cases so much as brevity.

20.2. This, I admit, must be observed if the case permits; but otherwise it is a betrayal of one's duty to pass over what should be said, a betrayal too to touch only cursorily and briefly on what should be driven home, fixed fast, and repeated.

20.3. For to most matters a certain force and weight is added by a longer handling; and as iron is impressed upon the body, so a speech upon the mind, not so much by a single blow as by sustained pressure.

20.4. Here he confronts me with authorities, and parades before me, from the Greeks, the speeches of Lysias, from our own people those of the Gracchi and Cato, of which indeed very many are clipped and short. To Lysias I oppose Demosthenes, Aeschines, Hyperides, and many besides; to the Gracchi and Cato, Pollio, Caesar, Caelius, and above all Marcus Tullius, whose best speech is said to be his longest. And, by Hercules, as with other good things, so a good book, the larger it is, the better.

20.5. You see how statues, figures, paintings, and the forms of men and of many animals, and of trees too, provided they are well shaped, nothing commends more than size. The same holds of speeches; indeed, even to the very volumes magnitude adds a certain authority and beauty.

20.6. These things, and many others which I am wont to say to the same effect, he — being in argument elusive and slippery — so parries as to contend that those very men, on whose speeches I rely, said less than they published.

20.7. I think the contrary. The witnesses are many speeches of many men, and Cicero's For Murena and For Varenus, in which a brief and bare summary, as it were, of certain charges is indicated by the headings alone. From these it appears that he said a great deal which he omitted when he published.

20.8. The same man says, in For Cluentius, that he alone, by ancient custom, pleaded the whole case; and that in For Gaius Cornelius he pleaded for four days — so that we cannot doubt that what he spoke more fully over several days, as was necessary, he afterwards pruned and cleaned up and compressed into one large but single book.

20.9. But a good performance is one thing, a good speech another. I know that some hold this view; but I — perhaps I am mistaken — am persuaded that it can happen that a performance is good which is not a good speech, but that a performance cannot fail to be good which is a good speech. For the speech is the model and, as it were, the archetype of the performance.

20.10. Therefore in every best speech we find a thousand impromptu figures, even in those we know only as published, as in the speech against Verres: "What artist? Which one? You rightly remind me; they said it was Polyclitus." It follows, then, that the most perfect performance is the one that has most expressed the likeness of a speech, provided only it receives its just and due time; and if this is denied, it is no fault of the orator and the greatest fault of the judge.

20.11. The laws support this opinion of mine, which grant the longest times, and counsel speakers not to brevity but to fullness — that is, to thoroughness — which brevity cannot provide except in the narrowest cases.

20.12. I will add what experience, that excellent teacher, has taught me. I have often pleaded, often judged, often sat on a council: one thing moves one man, another another, and very often small matters draw great ones after them. Men's judgments are various, their inclinations various. Hence those who have heard the same case together often think differently, sometimes the same thing but from different motions of the mind.

20.13. Besides, each man favours his own discovery, and embraces it as the strongest point when something he himself foresaw is uttered by another. To all, then, must be given something they may hold, something they may recognize.

20.14. Regulus once said to me, when we were acting together, "You think everything in a case must be pursued; I see the throat at once, and there I press." He presses, indeed, what he has chosen, but in choosing he often errs.

20.15. I answered that it might be the knee or the ankle where he thought the throat was. "But I," said I, "who cannot perceive the throat, try everything, test everything — in short, I leave no stone unturned;

20.16. and as in the cultivation of a field I tend and work not only the vineyards but the orchards too, and not only the orchards but the open fields, and as in the open fields themselves I sow not only spelt or wheat but barley, beans, and the other legumes, so in a performance I scatter many seeds, as it were, broadly, that I may gather what comes up.

20.17. For the dispositions of judges are no less obscure, uncertain, and deceptive than those of storms and lands. Nor do I forget that the supreme orator Pericles is thus praised by the comic poet Eupolis: 'and besides his swiftness, a kind of persuasion sat upon his lips. So he charmed, and alone of the orators left his sting in those who heard him.'

20.18. But to this very Pericles neither that persuasion nor that charm would have come, through brevity or speed or both — for these differ — without supreme ability. For to delight and to persuade demands abundance and scope of speech; but to leave a sting in the hearers' minds is given only to one who does not prick but drives it home.

20.19. Add what another comic poet says of the same Pericles: 'He lightened, he thundered, he confounded Greece.' For not a speech lopped and cut short, but one broad, magnificent, and lofty, thunders and flashes, in short throws all into confusion and mingles all together.

20.20. "Yet there is a best measure": who denies it? But he no less fails to keep the measure who speaks below his subject than he who speaks above it, who speaks too sparingly than he who speaks too profusely.

20.21. And so you hear frequently, just as the one, "immoderately and redundantly," so the other, "meagrely and feebly." One man is said to have exceeded his subject, another not to have filled it. Both equally, but the one errs by weakness, the other by strength — which is certainly, if not the fault of a more polished, yet of a greater talent.

20.22. Nor, when I say this, do I approve that Homeric babbler, but this one: 'and words like winter snowflakes'; not that the other does not also greatly please me: 'few, but very clear'; yet, if a choice be given, I want that speech like the winter snows, that is, frequent and continuous but also abundant, in short divine and heavenly.

20.23. "But to many a brief performance is more pleasing." It is, but to the idle, whose dainty sloth it would be ridiculous to regard as if it were judgment. For if you had these on your council, it would be not only better to speak briefly, but not to speak at all.

20.24. This is my opinion so far, which I will change if you disagree; but please explain why you disagree. For although I ought to yield to your authority, yet I think it more right, in so great a matter, to be overcome by reason rather than by authority.

20.25. So, if I seem not to err, write me that very thing in as brief a letter as you will, but still write — for you will confirm my judgment; if I have erred, prepare a very long one. Have I not bribed you, who have laid upon you the necessity of a brief letter if you agree with me, of a very long one if you disagree? Farewell.

21.1. As to your mind's judgment, so to your eyes' I attribute very much, not because you have much discernment — lest you grow conceited — but because you have as much as I; though this too is much.

21.2. Joking aside, I believe the slaves are presentable that have been bought for me on your advice. It remains that they should be honest, which in the case of slaves for sale is better judged by the ears than by the eyes. Farewell.

22.1. I have now lingered long in the city, and indeed in dismay. I am troubled by the long and obstinate illness of Titus Aristo, whom I both admire and love beyond measure. For there is nothing more weighty, more upright, more learned than he, so that to me it seems that not one man, but learning itself and all the noble arts, are in this one man brought into the gravest danger.

22.2. How skilled he is, both in private law and in public! How much knowledge, how many precedents, how much antiquity he holds in his memory! There is nothing you may wish to learn that he cannot teach; to me at least, whenever I seek out something obscure, he is a treasury.

22.3. And then what trustworthiness in his discourse, what authority, what restrained and becoming deliberation! What is there that he does not know at once? And yet for the most part he hesitates and doubts, because of the variety of the reasons which, with keen and great judgment, he traces back to their origin and first causes, distinguishes, and weighs.

22.4. Besides, how frugal he is in his diet, how modest in his dress! I am wont to look upon his very bedchamber and bed as a kind of image of old-time frugality.

22.5. These things are adorned by his greatness of soul, which refers nothing to display, everything to conscience, and seeks the reward of a deed rightly done not in the talk of the people but in the deed itself.

22.6. In short, you will not easily compare with this man any of those who advertise their pursuit of wisdom by the appearance of their bodies. He does not, indeed, frequent the gymnasia or the colonnades, nor delight his own leisure and others' with long disputations, but lives among the toga and public affairs, helping many by his advocacy, more by his counsel.

22.7. Yet to none of those men would he yield in chastity, piety, justice, or even courage, in this last above all. You would marvel, if you were present, with what patience he endures this very illness, how he resists pain, puts off thirst, and, unmoved and covered up, passes through the incredible heat of his fevers.

22.8. Lately he summoned me and a few others whom he loves best, and asked us to consult the physicians about the issue of his illness, so that, if it were insuperable, he might leave life of his own accord; but if only difficult and long, he might resist and endure:

22.9. for he must yield to his wife's prayers, yield to his daughter's tears, yield even to us his friends, and not by a voluntary death desert our hopes, if only they were not vain.

22.10. This I think a thing arduous above all and worthy of especial praise. For to rush upon death by a kind of impulse and instinct is common to many, but to deliberate and to weigh the reasons for it, and, as reason has counselled, to take up or lay down the resolve of life or death, is the mark of a great soul.

22.11. The physicians, indeed, promise us a favourable issue: it remains that God should assent to their promise and at last release me from this anxiety; freed from which, I shall return to my Laurentine villa — that is, to my books and tablets — and to studious leisure. For now I have no leisure to read or write while sitting by him, nor any inclination while anxious.

22.12. You have what I fear, what I hope, and even what I purpose for the future: do you in turn write me what you have done, what you are doing, what you wish to do — but with happier letters. It will be no slight comfort to my distress, if you have no complaints. Farewell.

23.1. You consult me whether I think you ought to plead causes while you are tribune. It matters very much what you suppose the tribunate to be — an empty shadow and a name without honour, or an inviolable power which it befits no one, not even its holder himself, to force into line.

23.2. When I myself was tribune, I may perhaps have erred in thinking I was something; but, as though I were, I abstained from pleading causes: first because I thought it unseemly that one before whom all ought to rise and yield place should stand while all sat, and that one who could bid anyone be silent should have silence imposed upon him by the water clock, and that one whom it was a sacrilege to interrupt should even hear abuse, and, if he let it go unpunished, seem spiritless, if he avenged it, seem insolent.

23.3. There was this anxiety too before my eyes: if by chance either the man for whom I was acting, or the one against whom, appealed to me, whether I should intervene and bring aid, or keep quiet and silent, and, as it were, by abjuring my office make myself a private man.

23.4. Moved by these reasons, I preferred to show myself a tribune to all rather than an advocate to a few.

23.5. But you — I will say it again — it matters very much what you suppose the tribunate to be, what character you assume; which by a wise man must be so fitted that it may be carried through. Farewell.

24.1. My companion Tranquillus wishes to buy a little farm which your friend is said to be putting up for sale.

24.2. I ask you to see that he buys it at a fair price; for so he will be glad to have bought it. For a bad purchase is always unwelcome, chiefly because it seems to reproach the master with folly.

24.3. Now in this little farm, if only the price be agreeable, many things tempt my friend Tranquillus's fancy: the nearness of the city, the convenience of the road, the moderate size of the house, the modest extent of land, which may divert him rather than distract.

24.4. And for owners who are scholars, as this one is, there is amply enough soil if it suffices to refresh the head, restore the eyes, stroll along the boundary, wear one single path, know all their own vines, and count their few little trees. I have set this out to you, so that you may know the better how much he will owe me and I you, if he buys that little property — recommended as it is by these endowments — on such favourable terms as to leave no room for regret. Farewell.