Book 3

1.1. I do not know whether I have ever spent any time more agreeably than recently with Spurinna — so much so that there is no one I would more gladly imitate in old age, if indeed it be granted me to grow old; for nothing is more orderly than that manner of life.

1.2. To me, indeed, as the fixed course of the stars, so a well-arranged human life is a delight; and of old men especially. For while in the young a certain confusion and, as it were, disorder is not unbecoming, to old men all that is calm and ordered is fitting, in whom late activity and untimely ambition are unseemly.

1.3. This rule Spurinna keeps most steadfastly; indeed, even these small matters — small only if they are not done daily — he carries through in a certain order and as in a cycle.

1.4. In the morning he keeps to his couch; at the second hour he calls for his shoes, walks three miles, and exercises his mind no less than his body. If friends are present, the most honourable conversation is carried on; if not, a book is read, and sometimes too while friends are present, if only they do not find it tiresome.

1.5. Then he sits down, and again a book, or conversation better than a book; soon he mounts his carriage, taking with him his wife, a woman of singular excellence, or some one of his friends, as lately myself.

1.6. How fine, how sweet is that privacy! What antiquity is there! What deeds, what men you hear of! With what precepts you are imbued! — though he has imposed this temperate restraint on his own modesty, that he may not seem to lecture.

1.7. When seven miles have been completed, he walks again a mile, again sits down, or betakes himself to his bedchamber and his pen. For he writes, and in both tongues, lyric poems most learned; in them is a wonderful sweetness, wonderful charm, wonderful gaiety, whose grace is heightened by the purity of the writer.

1.8. When the hour of the bath is announced — it is in winter the ninth, in summer the eighth — he walks in the sun, if there is no wind, with nothing on. Then he plays ball vigorously and long; for by this kind of exercise too he fights against old age. When he has bathed, he lies down and puts off his meal a little while; meanwhile he listens to something read more lightly and sweetly. Through all this time it is free to his friends either to do the same or, if they prefer, something else.

1.9. A dinner is set on, no less elegant than frugal, on silver pure and antique; he has also Corinthian ware in use, in which he takes pleasure but is not enslaved to it. Frequently the dinner is varied by comedians, that even his pleasures may be seasoned with study. He takes something of the night, even in summer; to no one is this long, with such graciousness is the banquet prolonged.

1.10. Hence to him, after his seventy-seventh year, the vigour of ears and eyes is unimpaired; hence his body is agile and lively, and of old age he has only the wisdom.

1.11. This life I anticipate in wish and thought, ready to enter upon it most eagerly as soon as the consideration of my years shall permit me to sound the retreat. Meanwhile I am worn out by a thousand labours, of which this same Spurinna is to me both the solace and the example;

1.12. for he too, as long as it was honourable, discharged his duties, held magistracies, governed provinces, and by much labour earned this leisure. Therefore I set myself the same course, the same goal, and even now I subscribe it before you, so that, if you see me carried further, you may summon me to court by this very letter of mine, and bid me rest, when I shall have escaped the charge of sloth. Farewell.

2.1. What I myself would have offered to your friends, had the same opportunity been mine, I now seem to have a right to ask of you for mine.

2.2. Arrianus Maturus is the foremost man of Altinum; when I say foremost, I do not speak of his means, which he has amply to spare, but of his purity, his justice, his gravity, his prudence.

2.3. His counsel I use in business, his judgment in my studies; for he excels above all in faithfulness, in truthfulness, in understanding.

2.4. He loves me — I can say nothing more ardent — as you do. He is without ambition; therefore he has kept himself in the equestrian rank, though he might easily rise to the highest. Yet by me he must be honoured and advanced.

2.5. And so I count it a great thing to add something to his standing, when he does not expect it, does not know of it — nay, perhaps even does not wish it; but to add something that is splendid and not troublesome.

2.6. Of which kind, the first opportunity that offers, I beg you to bestow upon him; you will have me, you will have himself, a most grateful debtor. For although he does not seek such things, yet he receives them as gratefully as if he coveted them. Farewell.

3.1. Since I doubt whether I looked up to your father, a most grave and holy man, more than I loved him, and since I love you uniquely, both in memory of him and for your own honour, I must needs desire, and even strive so far as in me lies, that your son should turn out like his grandfather — his maternal grandfather, I mean, although a paternal one too, famous and esteemed, fell to his lot, and his father and uncle also conspicuous in illustrious praise.

3.2. To all of whom he will grow up like only on this condition, that he be imbued with honourable arts; and it matters very much from whom above all he receives them.

3.3. Hitherto the reckoning of childhood has kept him within your household; he has had teachers at home, where there is little or even no material for error. Now his studies must be carried beyond the threshold, now a Latin rhetorician must be looked for, in whose school severity, modesty, and above all chastity are assured.

3.4. For there is present in our young man, with the other gifts of nature and fortune, an exceptional beauty of body, for which, in this slippery time of life, not only a teacher but a guardian and director too must be sought.

3.5. I think, then, that I can point out to you Iulius Genitor. He is loved by me; yet my affection for the man, which was born of judgment, does not stand in the way of my judgment. He is a man of correct and grave character, even a little rough and hard, as goes with this license of the times.

3.6. How much he is worth in eloquence you can take on the word of many, for the faculty of speaking, being open and exposed, is seen at once; but men's lives have deep recesses and great hiding places, for which, on behalf of Genitor, take me as surety. Nothing will your son hear from this man but what will profit him, nothing will he learn which it would have been better not to have known; and no less often than by you and me will he be reminded by him with what images he is laden, what names and how great he bears upon him.

3.7. So, with the gods favouring, hand him over to a teacher from whom he may learn first character, then eloquence, which is ill learned without character. Farewell.

4.1. Although both the friends I had present, and the talk of men, seem to have approved my deed, yet I count it a great thing to know what you think.

4.2. For of one whose counsel I should have wished to seek out while the matter was untouched, I now wondrously long to know the judgment even when it is done. When I had hurried off into Tuscany, intending to begin a public work at my own expense, having obtained leave of absence as prefect of the treasury, the deputies of the province of Baetica, about to complain of the proconsulship of Caecilius Classicus, asked the Senate for me as their advocate.

4.3. My colleagues, men most excellent and most loving to me, having first spoken of the demands of our common duty, tried to excuse and exempt me. A decree of the Senate was passed, most honourable to me, that I should be given to the provincials as their patron if I obtained it from myself.

4.4. The deputies, brought in again, a second time demanded me, now present, as their advocate, imploring my good faith, of which they had had experience against Massa Baebius, and alleging the bond of patronage. There followed a most glorious assent of the Senate, such as is wont to forerun its decrees. Then I said: "I cease, conscript fathers, to think that I have brought forward just causes for excuse." Both the modesty of my speech and its reasoning were approved.

4.5. What drove me to this resolve was not only the consensus of the Senate, although this above all, but certain other and lesser considerations, yet still of some account. It came to mind that our forefathers had pursued, by voluntary accusations, even the wrongs done to single guest-friends; whence I thought it the more disgraceful to neglect the rights of a public guest-friendship.

4.6. Besides, when I recalled how many perils I had undergone, on a former advocacy, on behalf of these same people of Baetica, it seemed that the merit of an old service must be preserved by a new one. For it is so ordered that you overturn earlier benefits unless you heap them up with later ones. For however often men have been obliged, if you refuse one single thing, this alone they remember, that it was refused.

4.7. I was led also by the fact that Classicus had died, and that which in cases of this kind is wont to be most painful, the peril of a senator, was removed. I saw, then, that my advocacy had before it no less gratitude than if he were living, and no odium.

4.8. In short, I reckoned that if I discharged this office now for a third time, my excuse would be the easier, should someone come along whom I ought not to accuse. For since there is some limit to all duties, so indulgence is best prepared for one's freedom by past compliance.

4.9. You have heard the motions of my resolve: it remains for your judgment, on the one side or the other, in which the frankness of one who dissents will be as pleasant to me as the authority of one who approves. Farewell.

5.1. It is most gratifying to me that you read so diligently the books of my uncle, that you wish to have them all, and ask what they all are.

5.2. I will play the part of an index, and even make known to you in what order they were written; for this too is a knowledge not unpleasing to the studious.

5.3. "On Throwing the Javelin from Horseback, one book"; this he composed with equal talent and care while serving as prefect of a cavalry wing. "On the Life of Pomponius Secundus, two books"; by whom he was singularly loved, he discharged this gift, as it were a debt, to the memory of his friend.

5.4. "The Wars of Germany, twenty books"; in which he gathered together all the wars we waged with the Germans. He began it while serving in Germany, warned by a dream: the likeness of Drusus Nero stood by him as he slept — Drusus, who, after conquering the widest tracts of Germany, perished there — and commended his memory to him, begging that he might be rescued from the wrong of oblivion.

5.5. "The Student, three books," divided, because of their length, into six volumes, in which he forms and perfects the orator from the cradle. "On Doubtful Diction, eight books": he wrote it under Nero in his last years, when servitude had made every kind of study, a little freer and bolder, dangerous.

5.6. "A Continuation of Aufidius Bassus, thirty-one books." "The Natural Histories, thirty-seven books," a diffuse and learned work, no less various than Nature herself.

5.7. You wonder that a busy man finished so many volumes, and many of them so minute in their detail? You will wonder the more if you learn that for some time he pleaded causes, that he died in his fifty-sixth year, and that the intervening time he passed taken up and hindered both by the greatest offices and by the friendship of princes.

5.8. But he had a keen mind, an incredible application, the utmost wakefulness. He used to begin to work by lamplight at the Vulcanalia, not for the sake of any omen but for study, straight from the dead of night; in winter from the seventh hour, or at latest the eighth, often the sixth. He was indeed of a most ready sleep, which sometimes even amid his very studies came upon him and then left him.

5.9. Before daylight he went to the emperor Vespasian — for he too made use of the nights — and thence to the duty assigned him. Returning home, he gave what time was left to his studies.

5.10. After his meal — which by day, in the manner of the ancients, he took light and easy — in summer, if there was any leisure, he would lie in the sun, a book would be read, he made notes and extracts. For he read nothing without making extracts; he used even to say that there was no book so bad that it was not useful in some part.

5.11. After the sun he generally bathed in cold water, then took a snack and slept a very little; soon, as though it were another day, he studied until dinnertime. Over this a book was read and noted, and indeed rapidly.

5.12. I remember that one of his friends, when the reader had pronounced certain words wrongly, called him back and made him repeat them; and my uncle said to him: "You understood, did you not?" When the man nodded, "Why then did you call him back? By this interruption of yours we have lost more than ten lines."

5.13. So great was his thrift of time. He rose in summer from dinner by daylight, in winter within the first hour of night, as though compelled by some law.

5.14. This in the midst of his labours and the din of the city. In his retreat only the time of the bath was taken from his studies — when I say the bath, I speak of the inner part; for while he was being scraped and dried, he would listen to something or dictate.

5.15. On a journey, as though freed from other cares, he had leisure for this one thing: at his side a shorthand writer with a book and tablets, whose hands in winter were protected with mittens, that not even the harshness of the weather should snatch any time from study; for which reason at Rome too he was carried in a chair.

5.16. I recall that I was reproved by him for walking: "You could," he said, "not have lost these hours"; for he thought all time lost that was not spent on study.

5.17. By this application he completed all those volumes, and left me a hundred and sixty notebooks of extracts, written on both sides and in the smallest hand; by which means the number is multiplied. He used to relate that, when he was procurator in Spain, he could have sold these notebooks to Larcius Licinus for four hundred thousand sesterces; and then they were somewhat fewer.

5.18. Does it not seem to you, when you reflect how much he read, how much he wrote, that he was neither in any offices nor in the friendship of a prince? And again, when you hear how much labour he spent on study, that he neither wrote nor read enough? For what is there that either those occupations could not hinder, or this application not accomplish?

5.19. And so I am wont to laugh when certain men call me studious, who, compared with him, am the idlest of men. But I — whom partly public, partly my friends' affairs distract? Which of those who sit at their books all their life, set beside him, would not blush as one given over to sleep and inactivity?

5.20. I have prolonged this letter, though I had intended to write only what you asked, namely what books he had left behind; yet I am confident that these things too will be no less welcome to you than the books themselves, which may rouse you, by the goads of emulation, not only to read them but to work out something of the like. Farewell.

6.1. Out of an inheritance that came to me I lately bought a Corinthian statue, small indeed, but pleasing and lifelike, so far as I understand such things — I who in everything, perhaps, and in this certainly, understand very little: yet this statue even I can appreciate.

6.2. For it is naked, and neither hides any faults, if there are any, nor displays the merits too little. It represents an old man standing; the bones, muscles, sinews, veins, even the wrinkles appear as of a living man; the hair is thin and receding, the brow broad, the face shrunken, the neck lean; the arms hang, the breast is fallen, the belly drawn in;

6.3. from behind, too, the same age, as from behind. The bronze itself, so far as the true colour shows, is old and ancient; in short, everything is such as might hold the eyes of artists and delight the ignorant.

6.4. Which, novice though I am, prompted me to buy it. I bought it, however, not to keep at home — for I have as yet no Corinthian piece at home — but to set up in our native town, in a frequented place, and most of all in the temple of Jupiter;

6.5. for it seems a gift worthy of the temple, worthy of the god. Do you therefore, as you are wont to do with everything I lay upon you, take up this charge, and order even now a base to be made, of whatever marble you will, to receive my name and offices, if you shall think these too should be added.

6.6. The statue itself, as soon as I find someone who will not find it a burden, I will send you, or — which you prefer — bring myself along with me. For I intend, if only the reckoning of my duties permits, to make an excursion thither.

6.7. You rejoice that I promise to come, but you will knit your brow when I add "for a few days": for the same matters that do not yet let me come out do not let me be away longer. Farewell.

7.1. Just now it has been announced that Silius Italicus has ended his life by starvation in his Neapolitan villa.

7.2. The cause of his death was his health. There had grown upon him an incurable tumour, in weariness of which he ran down to death with irrevocable constancy, blessed and fortunate to his last day, except that he lost the younger of his two children, but left the elder and better one flourishing and even of consular rank.

7.3. He had harmed his reputation under Nero — he was believed to have brought accusations of his own accord — but in the friendship of Vitellius he had borne himself wisely and courteously, had won glory from his proconsulship of Asia, and had washed away the stain of his old activity by a praiseworthy leisure.

7.4. He was among the leading men of the state without power, without odium: he was greeted and courted, and, lying much upon his couch, always in a bedchamber thronged not by his fortune's sake, he passed his days in most learned conversation, when he was at leisure from writing.

7.5. He wrote poems with more care than talent, and sometimes tested men's judgments by recitations.

7.6. Latest of all, his years so counselling, he withdrew from the city, kept himself in Campania, and was not stirred from there even by the arrival of a new prince:

7.7. great praise to the Caesar under whom this was free, great to the man who dared to use this freedom.

7.8. He was a lover of beauty, even to the reproach of overbuying. He owned several villas in the same places, and, falling in love with new ones, neglected the earlier. Everywhere were many books, many statues, many portraits, which he not only possessed but even venerated — of Virgil before all, whose birthday he celebrated more religiously than his own, especially at Naples, where he was wont to visit his monument as a temple.

7.9. In this tranquillity he passed his seventy-fifth year, with a body delicate rather than infirm; and as he was the last consul made by Nero, so he was the last to die of all whom Nero had made consuls.

7.10. This too is notable: he was the last of Nero's consulars to die, and it was in his consulship that Nero perished. Which, when I recall it, a pity for human frailty comes over me.

7.11. For what is so cut short, so brief, as the longest human life? Does not Nero seem to you to have been but yesterday? And yet, meanwhile, of those who held the consulship under him, no one now survives.

7.12. Yet why do I wonder at this? Lately Lucius Piso — the father of that Piso who was killed in Africa by Valerius Festus through the foulest of crimes — used to say that he saw no one in the Senate whom he himself, as consul, had asked his opinion.

7.13. Within such narrow bounds is the very long life of so great a multitude shut up, that those royal tears seem to me worthy not only of pardon but even of praise; for they say that Xerxes, when he had run his eyes over his immense army, wept, because so short a doom hung over so many thousands.

7.14. But all the more, this fleeting and perishable span, whatever it is, if it is not given to deeds — for the material of these lies in another's hand — at least let us prolong by our studies, and, since it is denied us to live long, let us leave behind something by which to bear witness that we have lived.

7.15. I know you have no need of spurs: yet my affection for you summons me to urge you on even while you run, as you are wont to do with me. "Strife is good" when friends, by mutual exhortations, sharpen one another to a love of immortality. Farewell.

8.1. You act in keeping with the rest of the regard you show me, in that you ask so anxiously that I transfer the tribunate, which I obtained for you from Neratius Marcellus, a most distinguished man, to your kinsman Caesennius Silvanus.

8.2. But to me, just as it was most pleasing to see you yourself a tribune, so it is no less welcome to see another through you. For I do not think it consistent that, of one whom you wish to advance with honours, you should grudge him the titles of family affection, which are fairer than all honours.

8.3. I see too that, since it is excellent both to earn benefits and to bestow them, you will gain both praises at once, if you bestow on another what you yourself have earned. Besides, I understand that it will be a glory to me also, if from this deed of yours it be not unknown that my friends can not only hold tribunates but even give them.

8.4. Wherefore I indeed yield to your most honourable wish. For the name has not yet been entered on the rolls, and therefore it is free to us to substitute Silvanus in your place; to whom I hope your gift may be as welcome as mine is to you. Farewell.

9.1. I can now describe to you in full how much labour I expended in the public cause of the province of Baetica.

9.2. For it was manifold, and was pleaded several times with great variety. Whence the variety, whence the several pleadings? Caecilius Classicus — a foul man and openly bad — had conducted his proconsulship there no less violently than basely, in the same year in which Marius Priscus held his in Africa.

9.3. Now Priscus was from Baetica, Classicus from Africa. Hence a saying of the people of Baetica was going about, not without wit — for grief often makes men witty too — "I gave an evil and I got one."

9.4. But Marius one city publicly and many private persons brought to trial; upon Classicus the whole province bore down. He forestalled the accusation by a death whether accidental or voluntary. For his death was infamous, yet ambiguous: for as it seemed credible that he had wished to depart from life when he could not be defended, so it seemed strange that he had fled by death the shame of a condemnation which he had not been ashamed to deserve by his conduct.

9.6. Nonetheless Baetica persisted in the accusation even of the dead man. This is provided for by the laws, but had fallen into disuse, and after a long interval was then revived. The men of Baetica added that they accused at the same time the associates and ministers of Classicus, and demanded an inquiry into them by name.

9.7. I was acting for the Baetici, and with me Lucceius Albinus, a man fluent and ornate in speaking; whom, though I had long loved with a mutual affection, from this partnership of duty I began to love more ardently.

9.8. Glory, indeed, especially in studies, has a certain quality that brooks no partner; yet between us there was no rivalry, no contention, since each strove under an equal yoke not for himself but for the cause, whose greatness and usefulness seemed to demand that we should not take upon ourselves so great a burden in single pleadings.

9.9. We feared that the day, the voice, the lungs might fail us, if we embraced so many charges and so many defendants in one bundle, as it were; then, that the attention of the judges, with so many names and so many cases, would not only be wearied but even confounded; next, that the influence of individuals, collected and combined, might gain for each one the strength of all; and finally, that the most powerful might, by the surrender of some most worthless man as a scapegoat, slip away through the punishment of others.

9.10. For it is then most of all that favour and intrigue prevail, when they can lurk under some appearance of severity.

9.11. We had before us in council that example of Sertorius, who ordered the strongest and the weakest soldier to pluck out a horse's tail — the rest you know. For we too saw that so numerous a column of defendants could be overcome only if it were torn apart man by man.

9.12. It was resolved first of all to show Classicus himself guilty: this was the most fitting transition to his associates and ministers, since the associates and ministers could not be proved guilty unless he were guilty. Of these we at once joined two to Classicus, Baebius Probus and Fabius Hispanus, both strong in influence, Hispanus also in eloquence. And concerning Classicus the labour was short and easy.

9.13. He had left written in his own hand what he had received from each transaction, from each case; he had even sent letters to Rome, to a certain mistress, boastful and vainglorious, in these very words: "Hurrah, hurrah, I come to you free; I have already realized four million sesterces by selling part of the Baetici."

9.14. About Hispanus and Probus there was much sweat. Before I entered upon their charges, I thought it necessary to labour to establish that the ministering itself was a crime: for unless I had done this, I should have proved them ministers in vain.

9.15. For they were not so defended as to deny it, but to pray pardon for their necessity; for they were provincials, and were driven by fear to every command of the proconsuls.

9.16. Claudius Restitutus, who replied to me — a man practised and vigilant and ready for whatever might suddenly arise — is wont to say that never was so much darkness, so much confusion poured upon him as when he saw snatched and wrested away from his defence those very things in which he had placed all his confidence.

9.17. The outcome of our counsel was this: the goods of Classicus, which he had had before his province, it pleased the Senate to separate from the rest, and to leave the former to his daughter, the latter to those he had despoiled. It was added that the moneys which he had paid to creditors should be recalled. Hispanus and Probus were banished for five years; so grave did that seem which at first was doubted to be a crime at all.

9.18. A few days later we accused Claudius Fuscus, the son-in-law of Classicus, and Stilonius Priscus, who had been tribune of a cohort under Classicus, with unequal outcome: Priscus was interdicted from Italy for two years; Fuscus was acquitted.

9.19. In the third pleading we thought it most convenient to gather several together, lest, if the inquiry were drawn out too long, by a kind of satiety and weariness the justice and severity of the judges should grow languid; and besides, there remained the lesser defendants, deliberately reserved for this place, with the exception, however, of the wife of Classicus, who, though entangled in suspicions, seemed not sufficiently convicted by proofs;

9.20. for the daughter of Classicus, who was herself among the defendants, was not held fast even by suspicions. And so, when I had come to her name in the last pleading — for there was no need to fear, as at the beginning, so also at the end, that by this the authority of the whole accusation might be diminished — I thought it most honourable not to press the undeserving, and I said this very thing, both freely and in various ways.

9.21. For now I asked the deputies whether they had taught me anything which they were confident could be proved by fact; now I sought counsel of the Senate whether it thought I ought, if I had any faculty in speaking, to aim it like some weapon at the throat of an innocent woman; finally I closed the whole passage with this conclusion: "Someone will say: Do you then pass judgment? I indeed do not judge; yet I remember that I was given as an advocate from among the judges."

9.22. This was the end of a most crowded case, some being acquitted, more condemned and even banished, some for a time, others for life.

9.23. By the same decree of the Senate our industry, fidelity, and constancy were attested in the fullest testimony — the only fit and equal reward for so great a labour.

9.24. You can conceive in your mind how wearied we were, who had so often to plead, so often to dispute, so many witnesses to question, to support, to refute.

9.25. And how arduous, how troublesome it was, to refuse the friends of so many defendants who asked in secret, to withstand openly those who opposed us! I will report one thing among those I said. When certain of the very judges cried out against me on behalf of a most favoured defendant, "He will be," I said, "no less innocent, if I shall have said all."

9.26. From this you will guess what contentions, even what offences, we underwent, but only for a short time; for good faith, for the present, offends those whom it resists, but afterwards is admired and praised by those very men. I could not bring you more fully into the matter as it was.

9.27. You will say: "It was not worth so much; for what have I to do with so long a letter?" Then do not keep asking what is being done at Rome. And yet remember that it is not a long letter which has embraced so many days, so many inquiries, in short so many defendants and cases.

9.28. All which I seem to myself to have pursued no less briefly than diligently. I said "diligently" rashly: there comes to mind what I had passed over, and indeed late, but, though out of order, it shall be rendered. Homer does this, and many on his example; it is, moreover, very becoming, yet not on that account will it be done by me.

9.29. One of the witnesses, whether angry that he had been summoned against his will, or suborned by one of the defendants to disarm the accusation, charged Norbanus Licinianus, a deputy and investigator, as a defendant, on the ground that in the case of Casta — this is the wife of Classicus — he was acting in collusion.

9.30. It is provided by law that the defendant be tried first, and then inquiry be made about the collusive prosecutor — clearly because the good faith of an accuser is best estimated from the accusation itself.

9.31. Yet to Norbanus neither the order of the law, nor the name of deputy, nor the office of investigator was a protection; so great was the odium with which he blazed, a man otherwise disgraceful, and one who had made use of Domitian's times as many had, and who had been chosen then by the province to investigate not as a good and faithful man, but as an enemy of Classicus — for he had been banished by him.

9.32. He demanded that a day be granted him, that the charges be set out; he obtained neither, and was compelled to reply at once. He replied — the man's evil and crooked nature makes me doubt whether confidently or constantly, but certainly most readily.

9.33. Many things were thrown against him, which harmed him more than the collusion; indeed two consulars, Pomponius Rufus and Libo Frugi, wounded him by their testimony, that he had appeared, before a judge under Domitian, on the side of the accusers of Salvius Liberalis.

9.34. He was condemned and banished to an island. And so, when I accused Casta, I pressed nothing more than that her accuser had fallen under the charge of collusion; yet I pressed it in vain, for a thing contrary and new came to pass, that, the accuser of collusion being condemned, the defendant was acquitted.

9.35. You ask, what were we doing while these things went on? We informed the Senate that we had learned the public cause from Norbanus, and that we must learn it anew from the beginning if he were proved a collusive prosecutor; and so, while he was being tried as a defendant, we sat by. Afterwards Norbanus was present on all the days of the inquiry, and bore the same — whether constancy or audacity — to the very end.

9.36. I ask myself whether I have again omitted anything, and again I had almost omitted something. On the last day Salvius Liberalis gravely rebuked the remaining deputies, on the ground that they had not brought to trial all whom the province had charged them with; and, being vehement and eloquent, he brought them into peril. I protected men most excellent and most grateful: to me at least they declare that they owe it that they escaped that whirlwind.

9.37. Here will be the end of the letter — really the end; I will not add a letter, even if I shall perceive that I have still passed something over. Farewell.

10.1. That I had composed something about your son I did not tell you, when I was lately with you, first because I had not written it in order to tell you, but to satisfy my own love, my own grief; then because I believed that you, Spurinna, having heard that I had recited, as you yourself told me, had heard at the same time what I had recited.

10.2. Besides, I was afraid of confounding you on your festal days, if I should bring back the memory of so grievous a sorrow. Now too I hesitated a little, whether to send only what I recited, as you require, or to add what I think of reserving for another volume.

10.3. For it is not enough for my affection to honour with one little book a memory most dear and most holy to me, whose fame will be more widely served if it be apportioned and arranged.

10.4. But as I hesitated whether to show you all that I have already composed, or still to put off some part, it seemed simpler and more friendly to show all, especially since you assure me that it will remain among yourselves until I am pleased to publish it.

10.5. For the rest, I ask that with equal frankness you point out to me whatever you shall think should be added, changed, or omitted.

10.6. It is difficult to bend the mind thus far amid grief; difficult, but yet, as you would admonish a sculptor or a painter who was making your son's likeness what he ought to express, what to correct, so do you too form and direct me, who am trying to make not a fragile and perishable, but, as you think, an immortal image: which will be the more lasting, the truer, the better, the more perfect it shall be. Farewell.

11.1. The nature of our friend Artemidorus is altogether so kindly that he exalts the services of friends beyond their worth. Hence even my merit, true though it is, he carries about with a praise beyond its merit.

11.2. Indeed, when the philosophers had been banished from the city, I was with him in his suburban villa, and — what made it the more notable, that is, the more dangerous — I was with him as praetor. Money too, of which he then had need in a larger amount, to pay off a debt contracted from the most honourable causes, while certain great and wealthy friends muttered, I myself borrowed and gave him free of interest.

11.3. And these things I did when seven of my friends had been either killed or banished — killed, Senecio, Rusticus, Helvidius; banished, Mauricus, Gratilla, Arria, Fannia — so many thunderbolts hurled around me that, as though scorched, I augured from certain sure signs that the same ruin hung over me too.

11.4. Yet I do not on that account believe that I deserved the exceptional glory which he proclaims, but only that I escaped disgrace.

11.5. For I both loved with admiration Gaius Musonius, his father-in-law, as far as my age allowed, and embraced Artemidorus himself, even then, when I was serving as military tribune in Syria, in close familiarity; and this I gave as the first token of no slight disposition, that I seemed to discern a man either wise or nearest and most like to wise.

11.6. For of all who now call themselves philosophers, you will scarcely find one or two of such sincerity, such truthfulness. I pass over with what patience of body he endures winters and summers alike, how he yields to no labours, how he allows nothing to pleasures in food or drink, how he keeps his eyes and his mind under control.

11.7. These are great things, but in another; in him indeed the least, if they be compared with his other virtues, by which he deserved to be taken as son-in-law by Gaius Musonius out of all the followers of all ranks.

11.8. Which things, when I recall them, it is indeed pleasant that he heaps me with such great praises both before others and before you; yet I am afraid he may exceed the measure, which his kindness — for I return to where I began — is wont not to keep.

11.9. For in this one thing a man otherwise most prudent sometimes errs, by an honourable error indeed, in that he thinks his friends better than they are. Farewell.

12.1. I will come to dinner, but I bargain now, let it be light, let it be frugal, let it abound only in Socratic conversation, and in this too keep a measure.

12.2. There will be morning duties before daybreak, which not even Cato could fall in with unscathed — Cato, whom yet Gaius Caesar so blames as to praise.

12.3. For he describes those whom Cato met, when they had uncovered the head of the drunken man, as having blushed; then he adds: "You would think that not they had been caught by Cato, but Cato by them." Could more authority be given to Cato than that he was so venerable even when drunk?

12.4. Yet let our dinner keep a measure, of time as well as of preparation and expense. For we are not such men as even our enemies could blame, except so as at the same time to praise. Farewell.

13.1. The book in which I lately, as consul, gave thanks to the best of princes, I have sent at your demand, and would have sent even had you not demanded it.

13.2. In it I should like you to consider, as the beauty of the subject, so its difficulty. For in other works novelty itself holds the reader intent; in this all things are known, common, already said; whence it comes that the reader, as it were at leisure and free of care, has time only for the diction, in which it is harder to satisfy when it is estimated alone.

13.3. And would that at least the order and the transitions and the figures were considered along with it! For to invent splendidly, to express magnificently, even barbarians sometimes do; but to arrange aptly, to figure variously, is denied to all but the learned.

13.4. Nor indeed should lofty and elevated things always be affected. For as in a painting nothing commends the light more than shadow, so it becomes a speech to lower itself as well as to raise itself.

13.5. But why do I say these things to a most learned man? Rather this: note what you shall think should be corrected. For so I shall the more believe that the rest pleases you, if I learn that some things have displeased you. Farewell.

14.1. An atrocious thing, and worthy of more than a letter, Larcius Macedo, a man of praetorian rank, has suffered at the hands of his slaves — a proud master, moreover, and cruel, and one who remembered too little — nay, too much — that his own father had been a slave.

14.2. He was bathing in his villa at Formiae. Suddenly his slaves surround him. One seizes his throat, another strikes his face, another his chest and belly, and even — foul to tell — his private parts; and when they thought him lifeless, they fling him onto the burning pavement, to test whether he was alive. He, whether because he did not feel it, or because he feigned not to feel it, motionless and outstretched, made good the belief that death had been accomplished.

14.3. Then at last, as though overcome by the heat, he is carried out; the more faithful slaves take him up, his concubines run together with howling and outcry. So, both roused by their voices and revived by the coolness of the place, he raised his eyes and moved his body, and confessed — for now it was safe — that he was alive.

14.4. The slaves scatter; a great part of them have been seized, the rest are being sought. He himself, with difficulty kept alive for a few days, died not without the consolation of vengeance, avenged while living as men commonly are when slain.

14.5. You see to how many perils, to how many affronts, to how many mockeries we are exposed; nor has anyone reason to feel safe because he is easygoing and mild; for it is not by the judgment of masters but by crime that they are destroyed.

14.6. But enough of this. What else is new? What? Nothing — otherwise I would add it; for both paper still remains, and the holiday allows more to be woven in. I will add what fittingly comes to mind about this same Macedo. When he was bathing in a public bath at Rome, a notable thing happened, and even, as the outcome showed, an ominous one.

14.7. A Roman knight, lightly admonished by his hand by one of Macedo's slaves to give passage, turned round and struck, not the slave by whom he had been touched, but Macedo himself, so heavily with his palm that he almost fell.

14.8. So the bath, by certain steps as it were, was to him first a place of affront, then of destruction. Farewell.

15.1. You ask that in my retreat I read and examine your little books, whether they are worthy of publication; you add entreaties, you allege a precedent: for you ask that I steal some spare time from my own studies and bestow it on yours, adding that Marcus Tullius fostered the talents of poets with wonderful kindness.

15.2. But I am neither to be asked nor exhorted; for I both venerate poetry itself most religiously and love you most exceedingly. I will do, then, what you desire, as diligently as gladly.

15.3. Yet I think I can write back even now that it is a fine work and not to be suppressed, so far as I could estimate from what you recited in my presence — if only your recitation did not impose upon me; for you read most sweetly and most skilfully.

15.4. Still, I am confident that I am not so led by the ears that all the stings of my judgment are broken by those charms: they are perhaps blunted and a little dulled, but they cannot be torn out and wrested away.

15.5. Therefore I do not rashly pronounce even now upon the whole; of the parts I will make trial by reading. Farewell.

16.1. I seem to have observed that some deeds and sayings of men and women are more famous, others greater. My opinion was confirmed by yesterday's conversation with Fannia. She is the granddaughter of that Arria who was to her husband both a solace in death and an example. She used to relate many things of her grandmother, no less great than this one but more obscure; which I think will be as wonderful to you in the reading as they were to me in the hearing.

16.3. Her husband Caecina Paetus was ill, ill too was her son, both mortally, as it seemed. The son died, of exceptional beauty and equal modesty, dear to his parents no less for other reasons than because he was their son. For him she so prepared the funeral, so conducted the obsequies, that her husband knew nothing of it; nay more, whenever she entered his chamber, she pretended that the son lived and was even better, and very often, when he asked how the boy did, she answered: "He has rested well, he has taken his food gladly." Then, when the tears she had long held back overcame her and burst forth, she went out; then she gave herself to grief; satisfied, with dry eyes and composed face she returned, as though she had left her bereavement outside. That deed of hers is famous indeed — to draw the sword, pierce her breast, draw out the dagger, hold it out to her husband, and add the immortal and almost divine words: "Paetus, it does not hurt." But yet, as she did this, as she said this, glory and eternity were before her eyes; how much greater it is, without the reward of eternity, without the reward of glory, to hide her tears, to cover her grief, and, with her son lost, still to play the mother.

16.7. Scribonianus had taken up arms in Illyricum against Claudius; Paetus had been on his side, and, Scribonianus being killed, was being dragged to Rome. He was about to go aboard ship; Arria begged the soldiers that she might be put aboard with him. "Surely," she said, "you will give to a man of consular rank some few slaves, from whose hand he may take his food, by whom he may be clothed, by whom he may be shod; all this I alone will provide." She did not obtain it: she hired a little fishing boat, and in that tiny vessel followed the huge ship. The same woman, before Claudius, when the wife of Scribonianus was offering to give evidence, said: "Shall I listen to you, in whose lap Scribonianus was slain, and you live?" From which it is manifest that her resolve of a most noble death was not sudden. Nay more, when Thrasea her son-in-law was begging her not to persist in dying, and among other things had said, "Do you then wish your daughter, if I must perish, to die with me?", she answered: "If she shall have lived with you as long and in as great concord as I with Paetus, I do." By this answer she increased the anxiety of her family; she was watched more attentively; she perceived it, and said: "You do nothing; for you can bring it about that I die ill, that I die not, you cannot." As she said this, she sprang up from her chair and dashed her head against the opposite wall with great force, and fell. Brought round, she said: "I had told you that I would find some way, however hard, to death, if you refused me an easy one." Do not these things seem to you greater than that "Paetus, it does not hurt," to which she came through these? while meanwhile that saying great fame carries about, but these none. Whence it is gathered, as I said at the beginning, that some things are more famous, others greater. Farewell.

17.1. Is all well, since for a long time now your letters have ceased? Or is all well, but you are busy? Or are you not busy, but the occasion of writing is either rare or none?

17.2. Take away this scruple from me, which I cannot bear, take it away even by sending a courier on purpose. I will give the travelling money, I will give even a reward, only let him bring word of what I wish.

17.3. I myself am well, if it is being well to live in suspense and anxiety, expecting from hour to hour and fearing for a most dear friend's life whatever can befall a man. Farewell.

18.1. The duty of the consulship enjoined upon me that, in the name of the state, I should give thanks to the prince. When I had done this in the Senate, having regard, according to custom, to place and time, I thought it most befitting a good citizen to embrace those same things more amply and richly in a volume,

18.2. first that our emperor's virtues might be commended to him by true praises, then that future princes might be forewarned — not as by a teacher, yet by example — by what way above all they might strive to the same glory.

18.3. For to prescribe what a prince ought to be is a fine thing indeed, but burdensome and almost arrogant; but to praise the best of princes, and thereby to show to posterity, as from a watchtower, a light which they may follow, has the same usefulness without any arrogance.

18.4. I took no small pleasure in this, that, when I had wished to recite this book to my friends, they came together, invited not by notes, not by little books, but by "if convenient" and "if very much at leisure" — and at Rome it is never very much at leisure, nor convenient, to hear a reciter — and that too in the foulest weather, for two days; and when my modesty would have made an end of the recitation, they demanded that I add a third day.

18.5. Shall I think this honour paid to me, or to letters? To letters, I prefer; for they, almost extinguished, are being revived.

18.6. But to what subject did they show this assiduity? Surely to one which even in the Senate, where it was necessary to endure it, we were wont to find tiresome even for a moment of time; the same now, men are found who wish both to recite and to hear it for three days — not because it is written more eloquently than before, but because it is written more freely, and therefore also more gladly.

18.7. This too, then, shall be added to the praises of our prince, that a thing before as hateful as it was false has now, being true, become also lovable.

18.8. But I marvellously approved both the zeal of the hearers and their judgment: for I noticed that the severest passages most of all gave satisfaction.

18.9. I remember indeed that I recited to few what I wrote for all; nonetheless, as though the opinion of all would be the same, I rejoice in this severity of ears, and, as once the theatres taught bad musicians to sing ill, so now I am led to hope that it may come about that the same theatres teach musicians to sing well.

18.10. For all who write for the sake of pleasing will write such things as they see please. And for my part I am confident that in this kind of subject the reckoning of a more cheerful style holds good, since those things rather which I wrote more compressedly and tautly, than those which I wrote more gaily and, as it were, more exultantly, may seem far-fetched and forced. Yet not on that account do I pray the less earnestly that some day a day may come — and would it had already come! — when these sweet and winning things may, even by just possession, give place to those austere and severe ones.

18.11. You have my acts of three days; on learning which I wished that you, though absent, should take as much pleasure, both for the sake of letters and for mine, as you might have felt if present. Farewell.

19.1. I take you into my counsel about a household matter, as I am wont. Estates neighbouring my own lands, and even interspersed among them, are for sale. In these many things attract me, some, and not lesser, deter me.

19.2. There attracts me first the very beauty of joining them together; then, what is no less useful than pleasant, to be able to visit both with the same effort and the same journey-expense, to keep them under the same steward and almost the same agents, to cultivate and adorn one villa, and only to maintain the other.

19.3. There enters into this reckoning the cost of furniture, the cost of butlers, gardeners, smiths, and even of hunting equipment; in which it matters very much whether you gather it into one place or scatter it among several.

19.4. On the other hand, I fear it may be imprudent to subject so great a property to the same weather, the same hazards; it seems safer to make trial of the uncertainties of fortune by a variety of possessions. There is also much pleasantness in a change of soil and climate, and in that very travel among one's own.

19.5. Now — and this is the head of our deliberation — the lands are fertile, rich, well-watered; they consist of fields, vineyards, woods, which yield material and from it an income, modest indeed but steady.

19.6. But this fruitfulness of the soil is exhausted by feeble cultivators. For the former owner more than once sold up the pledges, and, while he reduced the tenants' arrears for the time, he drained their resources for the future, by the failure of which the arrears again grew.

19.7. They must therefore be equipped — the more costly because they are honest — with slaves; for I myself nowhere keep men in chains, nor does anyone there. It remains for you to know at how much they seem able to be bought. At three million sesterces, not because they have not at some time been worth five, but, both from this scarcity of tenants and from the common injustice of the time, as the income of lands, so also their price has gone back.

19.8. You ask whether we can easily gather this very three million. I am indeed almost wholly in estates, yet I have something out at interest, and it will be no trouble to borrow; I shall receive from my mother-in-law, whose chest I use no otherwise than my own.

19.9. So let this not move you, if the other points do not stand in the way, which I should like you to examine most carefully. For in all things, but most in the disposing of resources, you have an abundance both of experience and of foresight. Farewell.

20.1. Do you remember having often read what great contentions the ballot law stirred up, and how much either glory or blame it brought to its very proposer?

20.2. Yet now in the Senate, without any dissent, this same thing has been approved as best: all on the day of the elections demanded ballots.

20.3. We had indeed, with those open and manifest votes, exceeded the license of public assemblies. There was no respect for the time of speaking, no modesty in keeping silence, in short no dignity in sitting.

20.4. Great and discordant shouts on every side; all ran forward with their candidates, many bands in the middle, many circles, and an unseemly confusion; so far had we departed from the custom of our fathers, among whom all things, ordered, moderate, tranquil, preserved the majesty and the modesty of the place.

20.5. There survive old men from whom I am wont to hear this order of the elections: when the candidate's name was called, the deepest silence; he spoke himself on his own behalf; he set out his life, gave witnesses and praisers — either the man under whom he had served, or the one to whom he had been quaestor, or both, if he could; he added some of his supporters; they spoke gravely and in few words. This availed more than entreaties.

20.6. Sometimes a candidate would object to a competitor's birth, or age, or even character. The Senate listened with censorial gravity. So the worthy more often prevailed over the well-liked.

20.7. Which things, now corrupted by immoderate favour, have run down to silent votes, as to a remedy; which for the time was plainly a remedy — for it was new and sudden —

20.8. but I am afraid that, as time goes on, from the very remedy faults may be born. For there is danger that, by silent votes, shamelessness may creep in. For in how few is there the same care for honour in secret as openly?

20.9. Many fear their reputation, few their conscience. But I speak too soon of the future: meanwhile, by the benefit of the ballots, we shall have the magistrates who most ought to have been made. For as in trials before recoverers, so we in these elections, being as it were suddenly taken unawares, were sincere judges.

20.10. This I have written to you, first that I might write something new, then that I might sometimes speak of public affairs, whose material, the rarer the occasion is for us than for the ancients, so much the less should be omitted.

20.11. And, by Hercules, how long those commonplaces? "How do you do? Are you quite well?" Let our letters too have something not humble nor sordid, nor shut up within private matters.

20.12. All things, indeed, are under the arbitration of one man, who, for the common good, alone has taken upon himself the cares and labours of all; yet, by a salutary moderation, to us too there flow down, as it were rivulets from that most kindly spring, which we can both draw ourselves and, by letters, as it were minister to absent friends. Farewell.

21.1. I hear that Valerius Martialis has died, and I take it ill. He was a man of talent, sharp, keen, and one who had in his writing very much of both salt and gall, and no less of candour.

21.2. I had seen him off with travelling money when he retired; I had given this to friendship, I had given it also to the little verses which he composed about me.

21.3. It was the custom of the ancients to honour, either with offices or with money, those who had written the praises of individuals or of cities; but in our times, as other splendid and excellent things, so this above all has fallen into disuse. For after we ceased to do things worthy of praise, we think it foolish to be praised as well.

21.4. You ask what the little verses are, for which I returned the favour? I would refer you to the volume itself, but that I remember some of them; you, if these please you, will look up the rest in the book.

21.5. He addresses the Muse, bids her seek out my house on the Esquiline, and approach reverently: But see that you do not, drunken, at an untimely hour knock at her eloquent door; he gives whole days to austere Minerva, while he labours for the ears of the Hundred Men at that which the ages and posterity might compare even with the pages of Arpinum. Safer you will go in the late lamplight; this is your hour, when Lyaeus rages, when the rose reigns, when the locks are dripping. Then let even rigid Catos read me.

21.6. Did I not deservedly, then, both dismiss with all affection the man who wrote these things about me, and now grieve at his death as that of a most dear friend? For he gave me the greatest he could, and would have given more, had he been able. And yet, what greater thing can be given to a man than glory and praise and eternity? But the things he wrote will not be eternal; perhaps they will not, yet he wrote them as though they would be. Farewell.