Book 2

1.1. After some years, the public funeral of Verginius Rufus presented to the eyes of the Roman people a notable and even memorable spectacle: he was a citizen most great and famous, and equally fortunate.

1.2. He outlived his own glory by thirty years; he read the poems written about him, read the histories, and was present at his own posterity. He completed a third consulship, so as to attain the highest summit a private man can reach, since he had refused that of a prince.

1.3. The Caesars to whom he had been suspect, and even hateful, for his virtues, he survived; and he left behind unharmed the best of emperors, and most friendly to him — as though he had been reserved for this very honour of a public funeral.

1.4. He passed his eighty-third year in the deepest tranquillity and in equal veneration. He enjoyed firm health, except that his hands used to tremble, though without pain. Only his approach to death was harder and longer; but even this was praiseworthy.

1.5. For while he was preparing his voice to deliver, as consul, his thanks to the prince, a book which he happened to have taken up, being rather large, slipped from his hands by its own weight, since he was old and standing; and as he followed and gathered it, his foot slipped on the smooth and slippery floor, and he fell and broke his hip, which, being ill set and resisting his age, knitted badly.

1.6. The funeral of this man brought great honour to the prince, great honour to the age, and great honour too to the Forum and the rostra. He was eulogized by the consul Cornelius Tacitus; for this crowning touch was added to his good fortune — a most eloquent eulogist.

1.7. And he indeed departs full of years, full of honours, even of those he refused; yet by us he must be sought and missed as a model of an earlier age, and by me above all, who not only admired him publicly as much as I loved him;

1.8. first, because the same region was native to us both, our towns were neighbouring, our fields and estates even adjoining; and besides, because, being left as my guardian, he showed me the affection of a parent. Thus he graced my candidacy with his vote; thus at all my elections to office he hurried from his retreats, though he had long since renounced such services; thus on that day when the priests are wont to name those whom they judge most worthy of the priesthood, he always named me.

1.9. Indeed, in this his last illness, fearing that he might by chance be appointed among the Board of Five, established by decree of the Senate to reduce public expenses, although he had so many old friends and men of consular rank surviving, he chose me, a man of these years, to plead his excuse, in these very words: "Even if I had a son, I would entrust it to you."

1.10. For these reasons I am bound to mourn his death, as though untimely, in your bosom — if indeed it is right either to weep, or to call it death at all, by which the mortality rather than the life of so great a man was ended.

1.11. For he lives, and will live forever, and will dwell even more widely in the memory and speech of men, now that he has passed from our sight.

1.12. I wish to write you many other things, but my whole mind is fixed on this one contemplation. I think of Verginius, I see Verginius, I now hear, address, and embrace Verginius in images that, though empty, are still fresh. Citizens his equal in virtue we perhaps have and shall have; but in glory, none. Farewell.

2.1. I am angry, and I am not sure whether I ought to be; but I am angry. You know how unjust love sometimes is, how ungoverned often, how quick to take offence always. This cause, however, is great — whether just I do not know; but I, as though it were no less just than great, am gravely angry, that for so long no letters have come from you.

2.2. You can win me over in one way only, if you now at last send the most and the longest. This alone will be a true excuse to me; all others will seem false. I will not hear "I was not at Rome" or "I was too busy"; and that other — may the gods forbid it — "I was unwell." I myself enjoy at my villa partly study, partly idleness, both of which are born of leisure. Farewell.

3.1. A great reputation had preceded Isaeus; he was found to be greater still. He has the highest fluency, abundance, richness; he always speaks extempore, yet as though he had long written it out beforehand. His speech is Greek — indeed, Attic; his prefaces are polished, slender, sweet, sometimes weighty and lofty.

3.2. He asks for several themes; he leaves the choice to his hearers, often even which side to take; he rises, draws his cloak about him, begins; at once everything, and almost all at the same moment, is at his command: recondite thoughts present themselves, and words — but what words! — sought out and refined. Much reading shows itself in his improvisations, much writing too.

3.3. He opens fittingly, narrates clearly, fights keenly, sums up forcibly, adorns loftily. In short, he teaches, delights, and moves; which most, you would be at a loss to say. His enthymemes are frequent, his syllogisms frequent, well rounded and finished — which it is a great thing to achieve even with the pen. His memory is incredible: he repeats from the beginning what he has said extempore, without stumbling even on a word.

3.4. To such mastery he has come by study and practice; for by day and night he does nothing else, hears nothing else, speaks of nothing else.

3.5. He has passed his sixtieth year and is still only a scholar of the schools; than which kind of men there is nothing more sincere, more simple, or better. For we who are worn down in the Forum and in real lawsuits learn much malice, however unwilling;

3.6. but the school, the lecture room, and the fictitious case are a thing unarmed and harmless, and no less happy, especially for the old. For what is happier in old age than that which is sweetest in youth?

3.7. Therefore I judge Isaeus not only the most eloquent but the most fortunate of men. And unless you long to know him, you are made of stone and iron.

3.8. So, if not for other reasons and for our own sakes, then at least to hear this man, come. Have you never read that a certain man of Gades, stirred by the name and glory of Titus Livius, came from the very ends of the earth to see him, and, as soon as he had seen him, departed? It is a mark of one without taste, illiterate, idle, and almost shameful too, not to count of such worth a knowledge than which there is none more delightful, none fairer, none in short more befitting a human being.

3.9. You will say: "I have here men I may read no less eloquent." Granted; but there is always an opportunity for reading, not always for hearing. Besides, the living voice, as the saying goes, moves us far more. For though what you read may be sharper, yet those things sit deeper in the mind which the delivery, the face, the bearing, and even the gesture of the speaker drive home;

3.10. unless indeed we think false that saying of Aeschines, who, when he had read to the Rhodians a speech of Demosthenes, and all were marvelling, is said to have added: "But what, if you had heard the beast himself?" And Aeschines, if we believe Demosthenes, had a most brilliant voice. Yet he confessed that the very man who had brought forth those words had delivered them far better.

3.11. All of which tends to this: that you should hear Isaeus, if only for the sake of having heard him. Farewell.

4.1. If your father had owed money to several persons, or to any one man rather than to me, there might perhaps have been room for doubt whether you should enter upon an inheritance burdensome even to a man.

4.2. But since I, led by the duty of kinship, when all the others who were — I will not say more troublesome but more pressing — had been dismissed, stood forth as the sole creditor; and since, while he yet lived, I contributed a hundred thousand sesterces to your dowry on your marriage, besides that sum which your father, as it were, charged to himself — for it was to be paid out of my own purse — you have a great pledge of my indulgence, and trusting in it you ought to take up the good name and honour of the deceased. And that I may urge you to this not by words rather than by deeds, I will order that whatever your father owed me be entered as received from you.

4.3. Nor have you any reason to fear that this gift may be burdensome to me. My means are indeed altogether modest, my rank is costly, my income, owing to the nature of my small estates, I know not whether smaller or more uncertain; but what is lacking from income is made up by frugality, from which, as from a spring, my liberality flows.

4.4. Yet this must be so tempered that it does not dry up by too lavish an outpouring; tempered in other cases, but in yours the reckoning will easily hold good, even if it should exceed the measure. Farewell.

5.1. I have shown you the speech you have so often demanded and I have so often promised — not yet the whole of it, however, for part of it is still being polished.

5.2. Meanwhile it was not amiss to hand over to your judgment those parts that seemed to me more finished. To these I ask you to give the attention of one who is himself a writer. For I have never yet had anything in hand to which I ought to give greater care.

5.3. For in my other speeches only my diligence and good faith were submitted to men's judgment, but in this my devotion to my country as well. Hence too the book has grown, while I take delight in adorning and magnifying my native town, and at once serve both its defence and its glory.

5.4. Yet do you cut even this back, so far as reason demands. For whenever I consider the fastidiousness and the delicate tastes of readers, I understand that I must seek a recommendation even from the very modesty of the book.

5.5. Yet the same man who demands this austerity of you am I am forced to ask for the opposite — that in many places you relax your brow. For some things must be granted to the ears of the young, especially if the subject does not refuse them; for descriptions of places, which will be rather frequent in this book, it is right to pursue not only in the manner of history but almost of poetry.

5.6. Yet if anyone should arise who thinks I have done this more luxuriantly than the severity of an oration demands, the rest of the speech ought, so to speak, to soften his sourness.

5.7. I have at least striven to hold readers of however different kinds by several styles of speaking; and just as I fear that some part may not be approved by certain readers according to each one's nature, so I think I may be confident that the very variety will recommend the whole to all.

5.8. For even in the arrangement of banquets, although individually we abstain from many dishes, we all are wont to praise the whole dinner, and the things our stomach refuses do not take away the pleasure of those by which it is delighted.

5.9. And these things I wish to be taken thus: not as though I believed I had achieved my aim, but as though I had laboured to achieve it — perhaps not in vain, if only you will apply your care meanwhile to these parts, and soon to those that follow.

5.10. You will say you cannot do this carefully enough unless you first know the whole speech: I admit it. Yet for the present these parts too will become more familiar to you, and some of them will be such that they can be corrected piece by piece.

5.11. For if you were to inspect the head or some limb torn from a statue, you could not indeed from it perceive the harmony and proportion of the whole, yet you could judge whether that part itself was elegant enough;

5.12. and for no other reason are the opening passages of books circulated than because it is thought that some part may be perfect even without the rest.

5.13. A certain sweetness in talking with you has carried me on too far; but I will now make an end, lest I exceed in a letter the measure which I think should be observed even in a speech. Farewell.

6.1. It is a long story to trace from far back, nor does it matter, how it came about that I, who am by no means an intimate, was dining with a man who seemed to himself elegant and careful, but to me at once sordid and lavish.

6.2. For he set before himself and a few choice dishes, before the rest cheap and scanty ones. He had even apportioned the wine, in little flasks, into three sorts — not that there might be a choice, but that there might be no right of refusal: one for himself and us, another for his lesser friends — for he ranks his friends by degrees — another for his freedmen and ours.

6.3. The man who reclined next to me noticed this and asked whether I approved. I said no. "Then what custom do you follow?" he asked. "I set the same before all; for I invite people to dinner, not to a censure, and I make equal in all things those whom I have made equal at table and on the couch."

6.4. "Even the freedmen?" "Even them; for then I think of them as table companions, not freedmen." And he: "It must cost you much." "By no means." "How can that be?" "Because, of course, my freedmen do not drink the same as I, but I the same as my freedmen."

6.5. And, by Hercules, if you restrain your appetite, it is no burden to share with many what you use yourself. That appetite, then, must be checked, that, as it were, brought into line, if you would spare expense — which you consult somewhat more rightly by your own self-restraint than by insult to others.

6.6. To what end all this? Lest the luxury of certain men, under the appearance of frugality, impose upon you, a young man of the best disposition. It befits my love for you, whenever anything of this kind occurs, to forewarn you by example of what you ought to avoid.

6.7. Remember, therefore, that nothing is more to be shunned than that new alliance of luxury and meanness; which, though most base when separate and apart, are joined together more basely still. Farewell.

7.1. Yesterday, on the proposal of the prince, a triumphal statue was decreed by the Senate to Vestricius Spurinna — not as to many who never stood in the line of battle, never saw a camp, never in short heard the sound of the trumpets except at the shows, but as to those who won that distinction by sweat and blood and deeds.

7.2. For Spurinna by force of arms brought the king of the Bructeri back into his kingdom, and, by the mere show of war, subdued by terror that most ferocious people — which is the fairest kind of victory.

7.3. And this indeed he received as the reward of his valour; but as a solace for his grief he received this, that to his son Cottius, whom he lost while absent, the honour of a statue was granted. This is rare in a young man; but the father deserved this too, whose most grievous wound had to be healed with some great consolation.

7.4. Besides, Cottius himself had given so clear a token of his disposition that his short and narrow life deserved to be prolonged by this kind of immortality. For so great was his purity, gravity, and even authority, that he could challenge in virtue those old men to whom he is now made equal in honour.

7.5. By which honour, so far as I interpret it, provision has been made not only for the memory of the dead and the grief of the father, but for example. It will spur the young to noble arts that to the young too, if only they be worthy, such great rewards are appointed; it will spur leading men to rear children, both by the joys they have from the surviving and by such glorious consolations from those they lose.

7.6. For these reasons I rejoice publicly at the statue of Cottius, and no less privately. I loved that most accomplished young man as ardently as I now impatiently miss him. It will therefore be most pleasing to me from time to time to gaze upon and look back at this likeness of him, to stand beneath it, to pass by it.

7.7. For if the images of the dead set up in our houses lighten our grief, how much more these, by which in a most frequented place not only their form and face but their honour and glory too are recalled! Farewell.

8.1. Are you studying, or fishing, or hunting, or all at once? For all can be done at once by our Larian lake. The lake yields fish, the woods that surround it game, and that deep retreat supplies study in abundance.

8.2. But whether you do all at once, or one of them, I cannot say "I envy you"; yet I am tormented that I too am not permitted these things, which I crave as the sick crave wine, baths, springs. Shall I never break these tightest snares, if I am not allowed to loose them? Never, I think.

8.3. For to old business new accrues, and yet the former is not finished: by so many knots, by so many chains, as it were, the ever-growing train of occupations is stretched out day by day. Farewell.

9.1. The candidacy of my friend Sextus Erucius keeps me anxious and uneasy. I am afflicted with care, and an anxiety that I did not feel on my own behalf I suffer, as it were, on behalf of a second self; and besides, my own honour, my reputation, my dignity are brought into peril.

9.2. It was I who obtained for Sextus the broad stripe from our Caesar, I who obtained the quaestorship; by my vote he reached the right of seeking the tribunate, which, if he does not obtain it in the Senate, I am afraid I may seem to have deceived Caesar.

9.3. So I must strive that all may judge him to be such as the prince, on my word, believed him to be. And though this cause did not spur my zeal, I should still wish to help a young man most upright, most serious, most learned — in short, most worthy of all praise — and that with his whole house.

9.4. For his father is Erucius Clarus, a man holy, old-fashioned, eloquent, and practised in pleading causes, which he defends with the highest good faith, equal steadfastness, and no less modesty. He has an uncle, Gaius Septicius, than whom I have known no one more truthful, more simple, more candid, more faithful.

9.5. They all love me, vying with one another and yet equally; to all of them I can now repay the debt of gratitude in this one man. And so I take my friends by the hand, I entreat, I canvass, I go round their houses and their gathering places, and I try by my prayers how much I am worth in authority or favour, and I beseech you to think it worth your while to take up some part of my burden.

9.6. I will return the favour if you demand it, and even if you do not. You are loved, courted, sought after: only show that you are willing, and there will be no lack of those who will desire what you desire. Farewell.

10.1. What a patient man you are — or rather a hard one, and almost cruel — to keep back so long such remarkable books!

10.2. How long will you grudge both yourself and us — yourself the greatest praise, us a pleasure? Let them be carried about on men's lips and range over all the regions where the Roman tongue is spoken. The expectation is great and by now long; you ought not to disappoint and put it off any longer.

10.3. Some of your verses have become known, and against your will have broken out of their confinement. Unless you draw these back into the body of the work, some day, like runaway slaves, they will find someone to whom they may be ascribed.

10.4. Keep before your eyes mortality, from which you can claim yourself by this one monument; for all else is fragile and perishable, and dies and ceases no less than men themselves.

10.5. You will say, as you are wont: "Let my friends see to it." I wish you indeed friends so faithful, so learned, so industrious that they can and will take up so much care and effort; but consider whether it is not too improvident to hope from others what you do not provide for yourself.

10.6. And as for publication, for the time being do as you will: at least recite, that you may be the more inclined to send the work forth, and may at last feel that joy which I have long, and not rashly, anticipated on your behalf.

10.7. For I imagine what a throng, what admiration, what applause, even what silence awaits you; by which, when I speak or recite, I am no less delighted than by applause, provided only the silence be keen and intent, and eager to hear what comes next.

10.8. With so great and so ready a reward, cease to cheat your studies by that endless delay; which, when it exceeds the measure, must be feared lest it earn the name of inertia and sloth, or even of timidity. Farewell.

11.1. It is wont to be a joy to you if anything has been done in the Senate worthy of that order. For although you have withdrawn for love of quiet, yet a care for the public majesty still dwells in your mind. Hear, then, what has been done in these days — famous for the eminence of the persons concerned, salutary for the severity of the example, eternal for the magnitude of the matter.

11.2. Marius Priscus, accused by the Africans over whom he had been proconsul, abandoned his defence and asked for jurors. I and Cornelius Tacitus, having been ordered to act for the provincials, thought it consistent with our good faith to make known to the Senate that Priscus had by his monstrousness and cruelty exceeded the crimes for which jurors might be granted, since he had taken money to condemn the innocent and even to put them to death.

11.3. Fronto Catius replied and pleaded that no inquiry be made beyond the law of extortion, and, being most skilled at moving tears, he filled all the sails of his speech with a kind of wind of pity.

11.4. There was great contention, great shouting on both sides, some saying the Senate's inquiry was bounded by the law, others that it was free and unbound, and that whatever the accused had committed, so much should be punished.

11.5. At last the consul-elect Iulius Ferox, an upright and holy man, gave it as his opinion that jurors should indeed be granted to Marius for the time being, but that those should be summoned to whom he was said to have sold the punishment of the innocent.

11.6. This opinion not only prevailed, but, after such great disagreements, was the only one to gain support; and it was noted, as a thing proved by experience, that favour and pity have keen and violent first impulses, but little by little, as it were quenched by deliberation and reason, they subside.

11.7. Hence it comes about that what many maintain amid confused shouting, no one is willing to say when the rest are silent; for when you are separated from the crowd, the true view of things that are veiled by the crowd lies open.

11.8. Those came who had been ordered to attend, Vitellius Honoratus and Flavius Marcianus; of whom Honoratus was charged with having bought, for three hundred thousand sesterces, the exile of a Roman knight and the capital punishment of seven of his friends; Marcianus, with having bought, for seven hundred thousand sesterces, several punishments of a single Roman knight: for he had been beaten with rods, condemned to the mines, and strangled in prison.

11.9. But Honoratus a timely death withdrew from the Senate's inquiry; Marcianus was brought in, in the absence of Priscus. And so Tuccius Cerialis, a man of consular rank, demanded, by senatorial right, that Priscus be notified, whether because he thought he would be more pitiable, or more odious, if present, or — which I most believe — because it was most just that a common crime should be defended by both, and, if it could not be cleared away, be punished in both.

11.10. The matter was deferred to the next session of the Senate, whose very appearance was most august. The prince presided — for he was consul — and besides, the month of January is most crowded, both for other reasons and especially for the great attendance of senators; furthermore, the magnitude of the case, and the expectation and rumour increased by the delay, and that desire, implanted in mortals, of learning of great and unusual things, had stirred everyone from every quarter.

11.11. Imagine what anxiety was ours, what fear, who had to speak on so great a matter, in that assembly, in the presence of Caesar. I had indeed pleaded in the Senate more than once — nay, nowhere am I wont to be heard more kindly: yet then everything, being new, moved me with a new fear.

11.12. Besides the things I have mentioned above, there hung before me the difficulty of the case: he who stood there had been now a consular, now a member of the Seven who administer the sacred banquets, and now neither.

11.13. It was therefore exceedingly burdensome to accuse a condemned man, whom, while the atrocity of his crime weighed him down, so the pity of a condemnation already, as it were, carried out protected.

11.14. Yet, however I might, I gathered my mind and my thoughts, and began to speak with no less assent from my hearers than anxiety on my own part. I spoke for almost five hours; for to the twelve water clocks, of the most generous size, which I had been allotted, four were added. So those very things which seemed hard and adverse to one about to speak proved favourable to one speaking.

11.15. Caesar indeed showed me such zeal, such care too — for it is too much to call it anxiety — that he more than once admonished my freedman, who stood behind me, to take care for my voice and my lungs, since he thought I was straining myself more vehemently than my slender frame could endure. Claudius Marcellinus replied to me on behalf of Marcianus.

11.16. Then the Senate was dismissed and recalled for the next day; for the case could no longer be begun, but only so as to be cut short by the interruption of night.

11.17. On the following day Salvius Liberalis spoke for Marius — a man subtle, orderly, keen, eloquent; and in that case indeed he brought forth all his arts. Cornelius Tacitus replied most eloquently and, with that which is the special quality of his speech, with dignity.

11.18. Fronto Catius spoke again for Marius, notably, and, as the occasion now demanded, spent more time in entreaties than in defence. His speech the evening enclosed, yet not so as to break it off. And so the proofs ran over into the third day. This very thing was now fine and old-fashioned: that the Senate should be broken off by night, summoned for three days, held for three days.

11.19. Cornutus Tertullus, consul-elect, an excellent man and most firm for the truth, moved that the seven hundred thousand sesterces which Marius had received be paid into the treasury, that Marius be forbidden Rome and Italy, and Marcianus this further, Africa as well. At the end of his motion he added that, since I and Tacitus had diligently and bravely performed the advocacy enjoined upon us, the Senate judged that we had acted in a manner worthy of the parts entrusted to us.

11.20. The consuls-elect assented, and all the consulars too, down to Pompeius Collega: he moved that the seven hundred thousand be paid into the treasury, that Marcianus be banished for five years, but that Marius be left to the penalty for extortion which he had already suffered.

11.21. There were many on each side, perhaps even more on this, the looser and milder, opinion. For some even of those who seemed to have assented to Cornutus were following the one who had moved after them.

11.22. But when the division came, those who had stood by the consuls' chairs began to go over to Cornutus's opinion. Then those who had let themselves be counted with Collega crossed to the other side; Collega was left with a few. He afterwards complained much of those who had urged him on, especially of Regulus, who had deserted him in the opinion he had himself dictated. And Regulus has, moreover, so unstable a temper that he dares the most and fears the most.

11.23. This was the end of a most weighty inquiry. Yet there remains a little business, by no means slight: Hostilius Firminus, legate of Marius Priscus, who, being mixed up in the case, was gravely and vehemently harassed. For it was proved, both by Marcianus's accounts and by a speech which he himself had made before the council of the people of Lepcis, that he had lent his aid to Priscus for a most disgraceful service, and had stipulated for fifty thousand denarii from Marcianus; and that he had besides received ten thousand sesterces under a most foul heading, namely that of perfume — a heading not out of keeping with the life of a man always trim and pumiced.

11.24. It was resolved, on Cornutus's motion, that he be dealt with at the next session of the Senate; for then, whether by chance or by guilt, he had been absent.

11.25. You have the affairs of the city; in turn write me those of the country. How fare your little trees, your vines, your crops, your most delicate sheep? In short, unless you send back an equally long letter, you have no reason to expect henceforth anything but the very shortest. Farewell.

12.1. That little business, which I lately wrote remained over from the case of Marius Priscus, has been, I know not whether sufficiently, yet pared down and shaved away.

12.2. Firminus, brought into the Senate, answered to a known charge. There followed divergent opinions from the consuls-elect. Cornutus Tertullus moved that he be expelled from the order; Acutius Nerva, that in the allotment of a province his name be left out of account. This latter opinion, as the milder, prevailed, though it is in fact harsher and more grievous.

12.3. For what is more wretched than to be cut off and removed from senatorial honours, yet not from their toil and trouble? What is heavier than, branded with such great ignominy, not to lie hidden in solitude, but to be set on this loftiest watchtower to be looked at and pointed out?

12.4. Besides, what is publicly less either fitting or seemly? to sit, censured by the Senate, in the Senate, and to be made equal to those very men by whom one has been censured; to have been removed from a proconsulship because he had behaved disgracefully on a legateship, and yet to judge concerning proconsuls; and, condemned of corruption, either to condemn or to acquit others!

12.5. But this seemed best to the majority. For opinions are counted, not weighed; nor can anything else be done in a public council, in which nothing is so unequal as equality itself. For though wisdom is unequal, the right of all is equal.

12.6. I have fulfilled my promise and discharged the pledge of my earlier letter, which from the lapse of time I conclude you have by now received; for I gave it to a hasty and careful courier, unless he met with some hindrance on the road.

12.7. It is now your part to requite, first that letter, then this one, with letters as rich as can come back from where you are. Farewell.

13.1. Both you most eagerly embrace occasions of obliging me, and I owe a debt to no one more gladly.

13.2. For two reasons, therefore, I have resolved to ask of you in particular what I most desire to obtain. You command a very large army: hence you have abundant material for benefits, and besides a long time in which you have been able to grace your friends. Turn now to ours — and these not many.

13.3. You indeed would prefer many; but my modesty is content with one or two, and rather with one.

13.4. He will be Voconius Romanus. His father was famous in the equestrian rank, more famous his stepfather — or rather his other father, for to this name too he succeeded by his devotion — his mother of the first families. He himself was lately the priest of Nearer Spain — you know what the judgment of that province is, how great its gravity.

13.5. Him I loved closely and intimately when we studied together; he was my companion in the city, my companion in retreat; with him I mingled serious matters, with him jests.

13.6. For what is more faithful than such a friend, more pleasant than such a comrade? There is a wonderful sweetness in his speech, wonderful too in his very face and look.

13.7. To this is added a lofty, subtle, sweet, ready, and learned talent in pleading causes; his letters, indeed, he writes so that you would believe the Muses themselves were speaking Latin. He is loved by me exceedingly, and yet is not outdone in love.

13.8. Indeed, when we were young, I conferred upon him, young as he was, as eagerly as my age allowed, whatever I could; and lately I obtained for him from the best of princes the privilege of one who has three children — which, although he grants it sparingly and with discrimination, he yet bestowed on me as though he were making the choice himself.

13.9. These benefits of mine I can in no way better protect than by increasing them, especially since he himself interprets them so gratefully that, while receiving the former, he earns the latter.

13.10. You have what manner of man, how approved and dear to me, is he whom I ask you to grace according to your character and your fortune. Above all, love the man; for though you bestow on him the most that you can, you can yet bestow nothing greater than your friendship; that he is capable of this even to the most intimate familiarity — that you might know it the better — I have briefly set out for you his pursuits, his character, in short his whole life.

13.11. I would prolong my entreaties, but that you do not wish to be asked at length, and that I have done this through the whole letter; for he asks, and most effectively, who gives the reasons for asking. Farewell.

14.1. You opine truly: I am distracted by cases in the Court of the Hundred, which exercise me more than they delight me. For most of them are small and trifling; rarely does one occur distinguished either by the eminence of the persons or the magnitude of the matter.

14.2. To this is added that there are few with whom it is a pleasure to speak; the rest are bold and, for the most part, obscure youths who have come over here to declaim, so irreverently and rashly that our friend Atilius seems to me to have put it pointedly when he said that boys begin in the Forum with cases in the Court of the Hundred as they begin with Homer in the schools. For here too, as there, what is greatest is the first thing they take up.

14.3. But, by Hercules, before my time — so their elders are wont to say — not even the noblest youths had a place there unless brought forward by some consular: with such great reverence was that fairest of pursuits cultivated.

14.4. Now, the barriers of modesty and reverence broken down, all things lie open to all, and men are not led in but burst in. There follow hearers like the speakers, hired and bought. The dealer is approached; in the middle of the basilica the doles are given as openly as in a dining room; from court to court men pass at the same wage.

14.5. Hence they are now called, not without wit, "Sophocleses," from "wise" and "being called"; and on these same men a Latin name has been imposed, "Laudiceni" — the diners-out for applause;

14.6. and yet day by day the foulness grows, branded in both tongues. Yesterday two of my nomenclators — they are of the age of those who have lately assumed the toga — were being drawn off to applaud at three denarii apiece. So much it costs to be reckoned most eloquent. At this price the benches, however numerous, are filled; at this a huge ring of listeners is gathered; at this endless shouts are raised, when the leader of the chorus has given the signal.

14.7. For a signal is needed among men who do not understand, who do not even listen;

14.8. for most do not listen, and none applaud more. If ever you pass through the basilica and wish to know how each man speaks, there is no reason for you to mount the tribunal, none to lend your ear; the divination is easy: know that he speaks worst who is most applauded.

14.9. Larcius Licinus first introduced this fashion of listening, but only so far as to invite hearers. So at least I remember to have heard from Quintilian, my teacher.

14.10. He used to tell this story: "I attended Domitius Afer. When he was speaking before the Court of the Hundred, gravely and slowly — for that was his manner of pleading — he hears from nearby an immoderate and unusual shout. Astonished, he fell silent; when silence was made, he resumed what he had broken off.

14.11. Again the shout, again he was silent, and after the silence began again. The same a third time. At last he asked who was speaking. The answer was: 'Licinus.' Then, breaking off his case, 'Gentlemen of the Hundred,' he said, 'this art is dead.'"

14.12. Which was even then beginning to die when it seemed to Afer to have died, but now is well-nigh utterly extinguished and overthrown. I am ashamed to report with what broken delivery things are spoken, and with what soft shouts they are received.

14.13. Only the clapping is lacking — or rather only the cymbals and drums are lacking to those chantings; for howls — for by no other word can a praise unseemly even for the theatres be expressed — there are abundantly to spare.

14.14. Yet so far both the interest of my friends and the consideration of my age delays and detains me; for I am afraid that I may seem not to have left these indignities behind, but to have fled from labour. Still, I am rarer there than usual, which is the beginning of a gradual leaving off. Farewell.

15.1. How do your old Marsian estates treat you? how the new purchase? Do the lands please now that they have become yours? That is rare indeed; for nothing is so welcome to us when we have gained it as when we were coveting it.

15.2. My mother's estates treat me too little kindly, yet they delight me as my mother's, and besides I have grown callous with long endurance. Constant complaints have this end, that one is ashamed to complain. Farewell.

16.1. You indeed, with your usual diligence, advise me that the codicils of Acilianus, who made me heir to part of his estate, should be held as unwritten, because they are not confirmed by the will;

16.2. which point of law is not unknown even to me, since it is known even to those who know nothing else. But I have laid down a certain law of my own, to maintain the wishes of the dead, even if they fail in point of law, as though they were perfected. Now it is established that these codicils were written in Acilianus's own hand.

16.3. Therefore, although they are not confirmed by the will, by me they shall be observed as if confirmed, especially since there is no room for an informer.

16.4. For if it were to be feared that what I gave the State might snatch away, I ought perhaps to be more hesitant and cautious; but since an heir is permitted to give away what has come to him by inheritance, there is nothing to stand in the way of that law of mine, with which the public laws do not conflict. Farewell.

17.1. You wonder why my Laurentine villa — or, if you prefer, my Laurens — delights me so much; you will cease to wonder when you learn the charm of the villa, the convenience of the place, the extent of the shore.

17.2. It is seventeen miles distant from the city, so that, when the business that had to be done is finished, you can stay there with the day still safe and ordered. It is reached by more than one road; for both the Laurentine and the Ostian lead to the same place, but the Laurentine must be left at the fourteenth milestone, the Ostian at the eleventh. From both directions a road partly sandy receives you, somewhat heavier and longer for carriages, but short and soft for a horse.

17.3. The scene is varied on this side and that; for now the road is narrowed by woods that meet it, now it spreads out and opens across very wide meadows; there are many flocks of sheep, many herds of horses and cattle, which, driven down from the mountains in winter, grow sleek in the grass and the warmth of spring. The villa is roomy for its uses, yet not costly to keep up.

17.4. In its front part is a frugal but not mean atrium; then a colonnade curved into the likeness of the letter D, by which a small but cheerful court is enclosed. This is an excellent refuge against storms; for it is protected by glazed windows and, still more, by the overhanging eaves.

17.5. Opposite its middle is a cheerful inner hall, then a fairly handsome dining room, which runs out toward the shore and, when the sea is driven by the southwest wind, is lightly washed by the now broken and last of the waves. On every side it has folding doors or windows no smaller than the doors, and so from the sides and the front it looks out, as it were, on three seas; at the back it looks back upon the inner hall, the colonnade, the court, the colonnade again, then the atrium, the woods, and the distant mountains.

17.6. To the left of this, set a little back, is a large bedroom, then another smaller one which admits the rising sun by one window and keeps the setting sun by another; by this latter it also looks down upon the sea below, more distant indeed but safer.

17.7. By the projection of this bedroom and that dining room a corner is enclosed which holds and kindles the purest sunshine. This is the winter retreat, this also the exercise ground of my household; here all the winds are silent, except those which bring clouds, and take away the clear weather before they take away the use of the place.

17.8. To this corner is joined a bedroom curved into an apse, which by all its windows follows the course of the sun. Into its wall is set a cabinet, in the likeness of a library, which holds books not to be read once but read again and again.

17.9. Adjoining is a sleeping chamber, with a passage between, which, raised on a floor with hot-air pipes, distributes and dispenses the gathered heat hither and thither at a healthful temperature. The remaining part of this wing is given over to the use of slaves and freedmen, most of it so neat that it could receive guests.

17.10. On the other side is a most elegant bedroom; then either a large bedroom or a moderate dining hall, which shines with abundant sun and abundant sea; after this a bedroom with an antechamber, by its height summery, by its defences wintry; for it is sheltered from all the winds. To this bedroom another, with an antechamber, is joined by a common wall.

17.11. Next is the cold room of the bath, spacious and ample, in whose opposite walls two basins curve out, as it were, projecting — abundantly capacious if you consider that the sea is close by. Adjoining is the anointing room, the furnace room, adjoining the bath's stoke-hole, then two chambers more elegant than costly; close to these is joined a marvellous hot pool, from which the swimmers look upon the sea,

17.12. and not far off a ball court which catches the hottest sun when the day is now declining. Here a tower rises, beneath which are two suites of rooms, as many in the tower itself, and besides a dining room which commands the widest sea, the longest shore, and the most charming villas.

17.13. There is another tower too; in this is a bedroom in which the sun rises and sets; behind it a broad storeroom and granary, beneath this a dining room, which feels nothing of a troubled sea but its crash and sound, and that now languid and dying away; it looks upon the garden and the riding ground by which the garden is enclosed.

17.14. The riding ground is bordered with box, or with rosemary where the box fails; for the box, in the part where it is sheltered by buildings, is abundantly green, but under the open sky and the open wind, and though the sea's spray reach it only from afar, it withers.

17.15. Adjoining the riding ground, on its inner circuit, is a vine, tender and shady, soft and yielding even to bare feet. The garden the mulberry and the fig, which are frequent there, clothe; of these trees that soil is most fruitful, though more grudging to the rest. With this view, no worse than the sea's, the dining room remote from the sea enjoys itself; it is girdled at the back by two suites, from whose windows lie below the vestibule of the villa and another garden, rich and rustic.

17.16. From here a covered colonnade, almost of public dimensions, stretches out. On either side are windows, more toward the sea, single ones toward the garden, but on alternate sides fewer. These, when the day is clear and still, all lie open; when it is troubled by winds on this side or that, they lie open without harm on the side where the winds are quiet.

17.17. Before the covered colonnade is a terrace fragrant with violets. The warmth of the sun poured upon it the colonnade increases by reflection; and as it holds the sun, so it checks and keeps off the north wind, and there is as much cold behind as warmth in front; in like manner it stays the southwest wind, and so breaks and ends the most opposite winds, the one on this side, the other on that. This is its pleasantness in winter, greater in summer.

17.18. For before noon it tempers with its shade the terrace, after noon the nearest part of the riding ground and garden; which shade, as the day grows or wanes, falls now shorter, now longer, on this side or that.

17.19. The covered colonnade itself is most free from sun just when it stands hottest upon its roof. Besides, with its windows open it receives and lets through the west winds, and is never oppressive with a sluggish and stagnant air.

17.20. At the head of the terrace, then of the covered colonnade and the garden, is a suite, my darling — truly my darling: I built it myself. In it is a sun parlour, which faces by one side the terrace, by another the sea, by both the sun; while the bedroom looks by its folding doors upon the colonnade, by its window upon the sea.

17.21. Opposite the middle wall a most elegant alcove recedes, which, by drawing forward or back its glazed panels and curtains, is now added to the bedroom, now taken away. It holds a couch and two chairs; at the feet is the sea, at the back the villas, at the head the woods: so many views of places it both distinguishes and mingles by as many windows.

17.22. Joined to this is a bedroom for night and sleep. Neither the voices of the young slaves, nor the murmur of the sea, nor the motions of storms, nor the flash of lightnings, nor even the day does it feel, unless the windows are open. The reason for this deep and hidden seclusion is that an intervening corridor separates the wall of the bedroom from the garden, and so consumes all sound in the empty space between.

17.23. Attached to the bedroom is a very small heated room, which by a narrow window either pours out or holds in the heat beneath it, as reason requires. From here an antechamber and bedroom stretch out toward the sun, which, caught at its rising, it keeps even past noon, slanting indeed, but still.

17.24. When I have withdrawn into this suite, I seem to be away even from my own villa, and I take great pleasure in it, especially at the Saturnalia, when the rest of the house rings with the license of the days and the festive shouts; for neither do I disturb my household's games, nor they my studies.

17.25. This usefulness, this charm, lacks only running water; but it has wells, or rather springs; for they are right at the surface. And altogether the nature of that shore is wonderful: in whatever spot you dig the ground, water meets you, ready and waiting, and that pure and not in the least spoiled, despite so great a nearness of the sea.

17.26. The neighbouring woods supply wood in abundance; the rest of the supplies the colony of Ostia provides. For a frugal man, indeed, even the village suffices, which a single villa separates from us. In it are three hired baths, a great convenience, if by chance a sudden arrival or too short a stay makes it inadvisable to heat the bath at home.

17.27. The shore is adorned, with a most pleasing variety, now by continuous, now by scattered roofs of villas, which present the appearance of many cities, whether you use the sea or the very shore; the shore which sometimes a long calm softens, more often the frequent and contrary surge hardens.

17.28. The sea does not, indeed, abound in costly fish, yet it casts up excellent soles and prawns. Our villa, moreover, provides even inland supplies, milk above all; for thither the herds gather from the pastures, whenever they seek water or shade.

17.29. Do I not seem to you, with just cause, now to dwell, to inhabit, to love this retreat? You are too much a townsman if you do not covet it. And would that you might covet it! so that to the many and great endowments of our little villa the greatest recommendation might be added from your company. Farewell.

18.1. What more pleasant charge could you have laid upon me than to seek out a teacher for your brother's children? For by your kindness I go back to school, and, as it were, take up again that sweetest age: I sit among the young as I used to, and I even find how much authority I have with them from my studies.

18.2. For lately, in a crowded lecture room, they were joking aloud among themselves before many of our order; I came in, they fell silent; which I should not mention, except that it pertains more to their praise than to mine, and unless I wished you to hope that your brother's sons can learn well.

18.3. For the rest, when I have heard all who teach, I will write what I think of each, and will bring it about, so far as a letter can accomplish it, that you may seem yourself to have heard them all.

18.4. For I owe you, I owe to the memory of your brother, this fidelity, this zeal, especially in so great a matter. For what is of more concern to you than that the children — I would say yours, did you not now love them the more — should be found worthy of that father, and of you their uncle? a care which, even had you not enjoined it, I should have claimed for myself.

18.5. Nor am I unaware that offences must be incurred in choosing a teacher; but it behoves me to undergo not only offences but even enmities, on behalf of your brother's sons, with as even a mind as parents do on behalf of their own. Farewell.

19.1. You urge me to recite a speech to a larger circle of friends. I will do it because you urge it, although I have grave doubts.

19.2. For it does not escape me that speeches which are recited lose all their force and heat, and almost their very name, since they are wont to be commended and at the same time kindled by the gathering of the jurors, the throng of advocates, the expectation of the outcome, the reputation of more than one speaker, and the divided zeal of the hearers; and to this, the speaker's gesture, his pacing, even his moving about, and a vigour of body in keeping with all the motions of the mind.

19.3. Hence it happens that those who plead seated, although for the most part the same advantages remain to them as to those standing, are yet, by the mere fact that they sit, as it were weakened and depressed.

19.4. But for those who recite, the chief aids of delivery, the eyes and hands, are hindered. So it is the less to be wondered at if the attention of the hearers grows languid, captivated by no blandishments from without, nor roused by any goads.

19.5. To these is added that the speech of which I speak is combative and, as it were, contentious. Moreover, it is so ordained by nature that we think what we have written with labour is also heard with labour.

19.6. And indeed how few hearers are so upright that these sweet and sonorous things do not please them more than the austere and compressed? There is, to be sure, an altogether base discord here; yet it exists, because it commonly happens that the hearers demand one thing and the jurors another, although otherwise the hearer ought especially to be affected by those things by which, were he the juror, he would be most moved.

19.7. Yet it may happen that, despite these difficulties, novelty lends a charm to this book — novelty among our own people; for among the Greeks there is something which, though from the opposite side, is yet not altogether unlike.

19.8. For as it was their custom to refute the laws which they alleged to be contrary to earlier laws by comparison with others, so it was for us to gather, both from this very law and from others, that what we demanded was contained in the law of extortion; which, by no means pleasing to the ears of the ignorant, ought to find so much greater favour with the learned, as it finds less with the unlearned.

19.9. But if we decide to recite, we shall call in all the most learned. Still, weigh with yourself whether it should be recited at all, set down all the considerations I have moved on both sides, and choose that in which reason prevails. For of you reason will be demanded; me my compliance will excuse. Farewell.

20.1. Get ready a penny and receive a golden tale — tales, rather; for the new one has reminded me of the old, and it does not matter with which I begin.

20.2. Verania, wife of Piso — I mean that Piso whom Galba adopted — was lying gravely ill. To her came Regulus. First, the impudence of the man, to come to a sick woman, to whose husband he had been a bitter enemy, and to herself most hateful!

20.3. Be it so, if he had only come; but he even sat down close by the couch, and asked on what day and at what hour she had been born. When he heard, he composes his face, fixes his eyes, moves his lips, works his fingers, reckons. Nothing. When he had long held the poor woman in suspense, "You have," he said, "a critical time, but you will come through it.

20.4. And that this may be clearer to you, I will consult a soothsayer, whom I have often tested."

20.5. No delay: he makes a sacrifice, affirms that the entrails agree with the indication of the stars. She, credulous as one in peril, asks for the codicils and writes a legacy to Regulus. Soon she grows worse, and dying cries out that the man is wicked, perfidious, and even worse than perjured, who had sworn falsely to her by the life of his son.

20.6. This Regulus does no less wickedly than frequently, that he calls down the wrath of the gods, whom he himself daily deceives, upon the head of his unhappy boy.

20.7. Velleius Blaesus, that rich man of consular rank, was struggling in his last illness: he wished to change his will. Regulus, who hoped for something from the new tablets, because he had lately begun to angle for him, kept exhorting and begging the physicians to prolong the man's breath by any means whatever.

20.8. After the will was sealed, he changes his part, turns his address, and to the same physicians: "How long will you torture the poor man? Why grudge a good death to one to whom you cannot give life?" Blaesus dies and, as though he had heard all, left Regulus not even the least thing.

20.9. Do two tales suffice, or, by the rule of the schools, do you demand a third? There is matter for it.

20.10. Aurelia, a woman of distinction, about to seal her will, had put on her most beautiful tunics. When Regulus had come to the sealing, "I beg you," he said, "leave these to me."

20.11. Aurelia thought the man was joking; he insisted in earnest. To be brief, he compelled the woman to open the tablets and bequeath to him the tunics she had on; he watched her writing, looked to see whether she had written it. And Aurelia, indeed, is alive; yet he forced that upon her as though she were about to die. And this man accepts inheritances, accepts legacies, as though he deserved them.

20.12. But why do I exert myself in a state in which for a long time now baseness and wickedness have won no smaller rewards — nay, greater — than modesty and virtue?

20.13. Look at Regulus, who from a poor and slender beginning has advanced, through crimes, to such great wealth that he himself told me, when he was consulting how soon he would complete sixty million sesterces, that he had found double entrails, by which it was portended that he would have a hundred and twenty million.

20.14. And he will have it, if only, as he has begun, he dictates other men's wills — which is the most wicked kind of forgery — to the very persons whose wills they are. Farewell.