Book 5

1.1. A legacy has come to me, a modest one, but more welcome than the largest. Why more welcome than the largest? Pomponia Galla, having disinherited her son Asudius Curianus, had left me her heir, and had given me as co-heirs Sertorius Severus, a man of praetorian rank, and other distinguished Roman knights.

1.2. Curianus begged me to make over my share to him, and to assist him by a preliminary verdict; the same share he promised, by a secret understanding, to keep safe for me.

1.3. I replied that it was not in keeping with my character to act one way openly and another in secret; that, besides, it was not quite honourable to make a gift to a man both rich and childless; and, in short, that it would not help him if I made the gift, but would help him if I withdrew my claim, and that I was ready to withdraw it, if it became clear to me that he had been unjustly disinherited.

1.4. To this he said, "I ask you to inquire into it." After hesitating a little, I said, "I will; for I see no reason to think myself less than you take me to be. But remember even now that I shall not lack the firmness to pronounce in your mother's favour, if good faith so requires."

1.5. "As you please," he said; "for you will please what is most fair." I called in as my council two men whom our state then held in highest esteem, Corellius and Frontinus.

1.6. Surrounded by these, I sat in my own chamber. Curianus said what he thought was in his own favour. I replied in few words — for there was no one else present to guard the honour of the dead woman — then I withdrew, and, according to the verdict of my council, I said, "It appears, Curianus, that your mother had just cause to be angry with you." After this, he, with the rest, signed for a trial before the Court of the Hundred, but did not sign against me.

1.7. The day of the trial drew near; my co-heirs wished to come to terms and settle, not from any distrust of the case, but from fear of the times. They were afraid lest, as they saw had happened to many, they might come out of a trial before the Court of the Hundred as men on a capital charge.

1.8. And there were some among them against whom both friendship with Gratilla and with Rusticus might be brought up.

1.9. They asked me to speak with Curianus. We met in the temple of Concord. There I said, "If your mother had made you her heir to a quarter share, could you complain? And what if she had indeed made you heir to the whole, but had so exhausted it with legacies that no more than a quarter remained with you? It ought, then, to suffice you that, disinherited by your mother, you receive a quarter share from her heirs — which, however, I will increase.

1.10. You know that you did not sign against me, and that two years have now passed, and that I have acquired everything by usucaption. But that my co-heirs may find you more tractable, and that respect for me may have taken nothing from you, I offer you, for my share, an equal amount." I reaped the fruit not only of a good conscience but also of a good name.

1.11. So that same Curianus left me a legacy, and marked my conduct — unless perhaps I flatter myself that it was old-fashioned — with a notable mark of honour.

1.12. I have written this to you because I am accustomed to speak with you, about everything that either delights or troubles me, no otherwise than with myself; and then because I thought it harsh to defraud you, who love me so dearly, of the pleasure that I myself took.

1.13. For I am not so wise as to be wholly indifferent whether to the things I believe I have done honourably there is added a certain attestation and, as it were, a reward. Farewell.

2.1. I have received some most beautiful thrushes, with which I can match an equal counter neither from the abundance of the city nor from the sea, in such stormy weather, from my Laurentine place.

2.2. So you will receive a barren letter, plainly ungrateful, and one that does not even imitate that cleverness of Diomedes in the exchange of a gift. But, such is your good nature, you will the more readily pardon it, in that it confesses it does not deserve to be pardoned. Farewell.

3.1. While many kind offices of yours are pleasing and welcome to me, this above all, that you did not think you should hide from me that there had been at your house a long and copious conversation about my little verses, and that, through the diversity of judgements, it had gone on rather far; that there had even arisen some who, while not disapproving of the writings themselves, yet reproved me, in a friendly and frank way, for writing and reciting such things.

3.2. To these, that I may increase my fault, I make this answer: I sometimes make verses that are too little severe — I do; for I both hear comedies and watch mimes and read lyric poets and understand Sotadic verse; and besides I sometimes laugh, jest, and play, and — to embrace briefly all the kinds of harmless relaxation — I am a man.

3.3. Nor indeed do I take it amiss that such is the estimate of my character, that those who do not know that the most learned, most grave, most upright of men have written such things, should wonder that I write them.

3.4. But from those to whom it is known what and how great are the authors I follow, I am confident I can easily obtain leave to err, but to err with those whose not only serious works but even their sports it is praiseworthy to reproduce.

3.5. Or should I fear — I will name no one living, lest I fall into any appearance of flattery — but should I fear that it ill becomes me, what became Marcus Tullius, Gaius Calvus, Asinius Pollio, Marcus Messala, Quintus Hortensius, Marcus Brutus, Lucius Sulla, Quintus Catulus, Quintus Scaevola, Servius Sulpicius, Varro, Torquatus — nay, the Torquati — Gaius Memmius, Lentulus Gaetulicus, Annaeus Seneca, and most recently Verginius Rufus; and, if private examples are not enough, the deified Julius, the deified Augustus, the deified Nerva, Tiberius Caesar?

3.6. For Nero I pass over, although I know that things are not corrupted into something worse because they are sometimes done even by bad men, but remain honourable that are more often done by good men. Among whom is especially to be numbered Publius Vergilius, Cornelius Nepos, and earlier Accius and Ennius. These indeed were not senators, but holiness of character knows no distinction of rank.

3.7. Yet I recite — which whether they did, I do not know. Granted; but they could be content with their own judgement, while my firmness is too modest to think a thing fully finished merely because it is approved by me.

3.8. And so I follow these reasons for reciting: first, that the very man who recites applies himself somewhat more keenly to his own writings out of respect for his hearers; and next, that as to the things of which he is in doubt, he decides as if by the verdict of a council.

3.9. He is also advised on many points by many people; and even if he is not advised, he perceives what each one feels from the face, the eyes, a nod, the hand, a murmur, a silence — signs clear enough to distinguish a true judgement from mere courtesy.

3.10. And so, if any of those who were present should chance to take the trouble to read those same pieces, he will perceive that I have either changed or omitted certain things, perhaps even according to his own judgement, although he himself said nothing to me.

3.11. And I argue all this as though I had summoned the public to a lecture-hall, and not my friends to my chamber — to have many of whom has been a glory to many and a reproach to none. Farewell.

4.1. A small matter, but the beginning of one not small. Sollers, a man of praetorian rank, requested of the Senate that he be permitted to establish a market on his own lands. The deputies of the people of Vicetia spoke against it; Tuscilius Nominatus appeared for them.

4.2. The case was adjourned. At another session of the Senate the people of Vicetia came in without an advocate, and said they had been deceived — whether by a slip of the tongue, or because they really felt so. Asked by the praetor Nepos whom they had instructed, they answered, the same as before. Asked whether he had then appeared for nothing, they answered, for six thousand sesterces; and whether they had given him anything again, they said, a thousand denarii. Nepos demanded that Nominatus be summoned.

4.3. So far on that day. But, as far as I can foresee, the matter will go further. For most things, merely touched and at all stirred up, spread very widely. I have made you prick up your ears.

4.4. How long now you must, how coaxingly you must ask, to learn the rest! — unless, indeed, you come to Rome before, on this very account, and choose to be a spectator rather than a reader. Farewell.

5.1. It has been reported to me that Gaius Fannius has died; and this news has overwhelmed me with deep grief, first because I loved the man, refined and eloquent as he was, and next because I used to make use of his judgement. For he was acute by nature, practised by experience, and most ready in telling the truth.

5.2. Beyond this, his very fate distresses me: he died under an old will, passing over those he most loved, and naming those with whom he was more offended. But this, however, is bearable; the more grievous thing is that he left a most beautiful work unfinished.

5.3. For although he was distracted by pleading causes, he was yet writing the ends of those put to death or banished by Nero, and had already completed three books, careful and exact and pure Latin, midway between conversation and history; and he the more desired to finish the rest, the more frequently these were read.

5.4. To me, indeed, the death always seems bitter and untimely of those who are preparing something immortal. For those who, given over to pleasures, live as if from day to day, daily finish their reasons for living; but those who think of posterity, and extend their own memory by their works — to these no death is not sudden, since it always breaks off something begun.

5.5. Gaius Fannius, indeed, had a long foreboding of what befell him. He seemed to himself, in his nightly rest, to be lying on his couch, composed in the posture of a student, with his bookcase before him, as was his custom; then he imagined that Nero had come, had sat down on the couch, had taken out the first book that he had published on his crimes, and had read it through to the end; that he had done the same with the second and the third, and had then departed.

5.6. He was terrified, and so interpreted it, as though the same end of his writing would be his that had been of Nero's reading: and it was the same.

5.7. When I recall this, pity comes over me for how much watching, how much labour, he has spent in vain. There rise before my mind my own mortality, my own writings. Nor do I doubt that you too are alarmed by the same thought, on account of those works you have in hand.

5.8. Therefore, while life holds out, let us strive that death may find as little as possible for it to blot out. Farewell.

6.1. I have valued your care and concern, in that, when you had heard that I was going to my Tuscan estate in the summer, you advised me not to do so, thinking it unhealthy.

6.2. There is indeed a heavy and pestilent stretch of the Tuscan coast, which extends along the shore; but my estates have withdrawn far from the sea, and even lie beneath the Apennines, the healthiest of mountains.

6.3. And so, that you may lay aside all fear on my account, receive an account of the mildness of the climate, the lie of the land, and the charm of the villa, which will be pleasant for you to hear and for me to relate.

6.4. The climate is cold and frosty in winter; myrtles, olives, and whatever else delights in constant warmth, it rejects and spurns; the laurel, however, it tolerates, and even brings forth most glossy — though sometimes, but not more often than near our city, it kills it.

6.5. The mildness of the summer is wonderful: the air is always stirred by some breath, but more often it has breezes than winds.

6.6. Hence there are many old men: you may see the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of young men already grown, hear old tales and the talk of forefathers, and, when you come there, you would think yourself born in another age.

6.7. The shape of the region is most beautiful. Imagine some vast amphitheatre, such as only Nature herself could fashion. A wide and spreading plain is girdled by mountains, and the mountains have, on their highest parts, lofty and ancient groves.

6.8. There the hunting is plentiful and varied. Thence the coppice woods come down with the mountain itself. Between these are rich and earthy hills — for nowhere is rock easily met with, even if you look for it — which yield in fertility to none of the levellest plains, and ripen a rich harvest, only later, but no less fully.

6.9. Beneath these, along every slope, the vineyards stretch, and weave one face far and wide; and from their lowest edge, as from a border, the shrubs spring up.

6.10. Thence come meadows and fields — fields which none but huge oxen and the strongest ploughs can break: so tenacious is the soil that, when first cut, it rises in such great clods that it is only at the ninth furrow that it is finally subdued.

6.11. The flowering, jewelled meadows nourish trefoil and other herbs, always tender and soft and as it were new. For all things are fed by perennial streams; but where the water is most abundant, there is no marsh, because the sloping ground pours into the Tiber whatever moisture it has received and not absorbed.

6.12. The Tiber cuts through the midst of the fields, bears ships, and carries down all the crops to the city — in winter at least and in spring; for in summer it sinks, and leaves the name of a mighty river to a dry channel, only to resume it in autumn.

6.13. You will take great pleasure if you survey this lie of the land from the mountain. For you will seem to behold not lands but some shape painted to surpassing beauty: with such variety, such arrangement, wherever the eyes fall, they will be refreshed.

6.14. The villa, set at the foot of a hill, looks out as if from the summit: so gently and gradually does the deceiving slope rise, that, though you do not think you are climbing, you find that you have climbed. Behind it lies the Apennine, but at a distance; from it the villa receives breezes, on however serene and calm a day, yet not keen or excessive, but wearied and broken by the very distance.

6.15. For the most part it faces south, and from the sixth hour invites, as it were, the summer sun, and the winter sun somewhat earlier, into a portico broad and, in proportion, long. In this are many apartments, and an atrium too in the manner of the ancients.

6.16. Before the portico is a terrace marked off into many shapes and divided by box; from this descends a sloping bank, on which the box has traced the figures of beasts facing one another; on the level is acanthus, soft and, I might almost say, liquid.

6.17. Around this runs a walk enclosed by low evergreens variously clipped; from these a drive in the shape of a circus, which encircles box of many forms and small shrubs kept low by the hand. All is fenced with a wall, which a graded hedge of box covers and hides.

6.18. Then a meadow, no less worth seeing for its nature than those things for their art; then fields beyond, and many other meadows and shrubberies.

6.19. From the head of the portico a dining-room runs out; through its folding doors it sees the end of the terrace and, beyond, the meadow and much country; through its windows on this side it looks upon the flank of the terrace and the projecting part of the villa, on that, the grove and tree-tops of the neighbouring riding-ground.

6.20. Opposite, about the middle of the portico, an apartment is set a little back, enclosing a small court which is shaded by four plane-trees. Among these, from a marble basin, water overflows, and refreshes the surrounding planes and the ground beneath them with a gentle sprinkling.

6.21. In this apartment is a bedchamber that shuts out daylight, shouting, and noise; and joined to it is the everyday dining-room for friends: it looks upon that little court, the wing of the portico, and the same things the portico looks upon.

6.22. There is also another chamber, green and shady from the nearest plane-tree, adorned with marble up to the dado; and a painting, imitating boughs and birds perched on the boughs, yields nothing to the grace of the marble.

6.23. In this is a little fountain, and in the fountain a basin; round about, several small pipes mingle a most pleasant murmur. In the corner of the portico a very large chamber faces the dining-room; through some windows it looks upon the terrace, through others down upon the meadow, but before it, beneath, lies a fishpond which serves its windows, pleasant both to hear and to see;

6.24. for the water, leaping down from a height, grows white where the marble receives it. This same chamber is very warm in winter, because it is bathed in abundant sun.

6.25. A hot-air chamber adjoins it, and, if the day is cloudy, by admitted heat supplies the place of the sun. Next, the undressing-room of the bath, roomy and cheerful, receives one; then a cold room, in which is a swimming-bath, ample and shaded. If you wish to swim more freely or in warmer water, there is a pool in the court, and near at hand a well, from which you may again brace yourself, if you should weary of the warmth.

6.26. To the cold room is joined a middle one, on which the sun most kindly attends; on the hot room more so, for it juts out. In this are three descents into the bath, two in the sun, the third farther from the sun, but not farther from the light.

6.27. Over the undressing-room is set a ball-court, which holds several kinds of exercise and several rings. Not far from the bath are stairs, which lead to a covered gallery, and first to three apartments. Of these, one overlooks that little court in which are the four planes, another the meadow, another the vineyards, and each has, for its view, a different quarter of the sky.

6.28. At the end of the covered gallery is a chamber cut out of the gallery itself, which looks upon the riding-ground, the vineyards, and the mountains. To it is joined a chamber that meets the sun, especially the winter sun. From here rises an apartment which connects the riding-ground to the villa. Such is the look and the use of the front part.

6.29. On the side is a summer gallery, set on high, which seems not to look upon the vineyards but to touch them. In the middle of it a dining-room receives a most healthful breath from the Apennine valleys; behind, through very broad windows, it admits the vineyards, and through folding doors the vineyards likewise, but as it were through the gallery.

6.30. On the side of the dining-room that has no windows, stairs supply, by a more private way, what is convenient for the banquet. At the end is a chamber, to which the gallery itself affords no less pleasant a view than the vineyards. Beneath runs a gallery like an underground one; in summer, with the cold shut in, it is chill, and, content with its own air, neither desires breezes nor admits them.

6.31. Behind both galleries, where the dining-room ends, begins a portico, in winter, before midday; in summer, when the day declines. By this are approached two apartments, in one of which are four chambers, in the other three, which, as the sun goes round, enjoy either the sun or the shade.

6.32. This arrangement and charm of the buildings the riding-ground far, far surpasses. Open in the middle, it offers itself whole to the eyes of those entering at once, and is encircled with planes; these are clothed with ivy, and, as their tops grow green with their own foliage, so their lower parts with another's. The ivy wanders over the trunk and branches, and by its passage links the neighbouring planes. Box lies between these; about the outermost box runs a circuit of laurel, which adds its shade to that of the planes.

6.33. The straight edge of the riding-ground, at its farthest part, is broken into a semicircle and changes its appearance: it is surrounded and covered with cypresses, darker and blacker for their denser shade; while the inner circles — for there are several — receive the purest daylight.

6.34. There it even brings forth roses, and tempers the cold of the shades with a not unwelcome sun. When that varied and manifold winding ends, one returns to the straight edge — and not to one only, for several paths are divided by intervening box.

6.35. Here a little lawn, there the box itself comes between, laid out in a thousand shapes, sometimes letters, which now spell the name of the master, now that of the gardener: in alternation little pyramids rise, in alternation fruit-trees are set, and amid a work most refined there is a sudden imitation, as it were, of rustic country brought in. The middle space is adorned on either side with shorter planes.

6.36. Behind these is acanthus, here and there smooth and winding, then more figures and more names. At the head is a couch of white marble sheltered by a vine; the vine four little columns of Carystian marble support. From the couch water, as if pressed out by the weight of those reclining, flows through little pipes, is received in a hollowed stone, held in a slender marble basin, and so secretly regulated that it fills but does not overflow.

6.37. The first course and the heavier dishes are set on the margin; the lighter ones float around in the figures of little boats and birds. Opposite, a fountain throws up water and takes it back; for, driven on high, it falls back into itself, and through connected openings is both swallowed up and raised again. Facing the couch, the chamber across from it gives back to the couch as much adornment as it receives from it.

6.38. It gleams with marble; through its folding doors it juts and goes out into greenery, and through windows above and below it looks up and down upon other greenery. Then a little alcove retreats, as it were into the same chamber and yet another. Here is a couch, and on every side windows, and yet the light is dim, since the shade keeps it down.

6.39. For a most luxuriant vine climbs and rises along the whole roof up to the ridge. There you might lie no otherwise than in a grove, except that you would not feel the rain, as in a grove.

6.40. Here too a fountain rises and is at once drawn off. There are placed in several spots seats of marble, which relieve those wearied with walking, as the chamber itself does. By the seats lie little fountains; throughout the whole riding-ground murmuring streams, conducted in, follow wherever the hand has led them: by these now these greens, now those, sometimes all together, are washed.

6.41. I would long since have refrained, lest I should seem too prolix, had I not set out to go round all the nooks with you in my letter. For I was not afraid that it would be wearisome for you to read what it would not have been to look upon — especially since you could pause, if you wished, and, laying the letter aside, as it were sit down again and again. Besides, I have indulged my affection; for I love what I have for the most part begun myself, or, when begun by others, brought to perfection.

6.42. In short — for why should I not open to you either my judgement or my error? — I hold it the first duty of a writer to read his own title, and ever and again to ask himself what he set out to write, and to know that, if he dwells upon his subject, he is not long, but most long if he fetches and drags in something from elsewhere.

6.43. You see in how many lines Homer, in how many Vergil, describes — the one the arms of Achilles, the other those of Aeneas; yet each is brief, because he does what he set out to do. You see how Aratus tracks down and gathers up even the smallest stars; yet he keeps measure. For this is not his digression, but the work itself.

6.44. Similarly we, to compare "small things with great," when we try to set the whole villa before your eyes, if we say nothing brought in and, as it were, out of the way, it is not the letter that describes that is great, but the villa that is described. But to return to where I began, lest I be justly reproved according to my own law, if I should be longer in this matter into which I have digressed.

6.45. You have the reasons why I set my Tuscan estate before my places at Tusculum, Tibur, and Praeneste. For, besides those things I have related, the leisure there is deeper and richer and therefore more carefree: no necessity of the toga, no one to summon you from nearby, all things calm and at rest; which itself is added to the healthfulness of the region, as a purer sky and a clearer air.

6.46. There I am most vigorous in mind and in body. For I exercise the mind with studies, the body with hunting. My household too nowhere lives more healthfully; at least, up to now, of those I had brought with me — may the word be free of ill omen — I have lost no one there. May the gods only preserve for me, in time to come, this joy, this glory of the place! Farewell.

7.1. It is established that a community can neither be made an heir nor receive a legacy by way of preferential bequest; yet Saturninus, who left us his heirs, gave a quarter share to our community, and then, in place of the quarter, a preferential legacy of four hundred thousand sesterces. If you regard the law, this is void; if the will of the deceased, it is valid and firm.

7.2. To me, however, the will of the deceased — I fear in what sense the jurists may take what I am about to say — is older than the law, at least in that which he wished to come to our common homeland.

7.3. Shall I, who out of my own means gave a million and six hundred thousand sesterces, deny to that same homeland a little more than a third part of four hundred thousand from a windfall? I know that you too will not shrink from my judgement, since you love that same community as a most excellent citizen.

7.4. I should like you, then, when the decurions next assemble, to point out what the law is — but sparingly and modestly; then to add that we offer the four hundred thousand, as Saturninus directed. Let it be called his gift, his generosity; ours only the compliance.

7.5. I have refrained from writing this officially, first because I remembered that, by reason of our close friendship, by reason of your wisdom, you both ought and were able to discharge my part as well as your own; and next because I feared that I might not seem to have kept, in a letter, the moderation which it is easy for you to keep in speech.

7.6. For speech is moderated by the face, the gesture, the voice itself; a letter, destitute of all such recommendations, is exposed to the malice of those who interpret it. Farewell.

8.1. You urge me to write history, and you are not alone in urging it: many have often advised me of this, and I myself am willing — not because I am confident I shall do it well (for that you would believe rashly, unless you had tried), but because it seems to me a fine thing above all not to let those perish to whom eternity is owed, and to extend the fame of others along with one's own.

8.2. Nothing, moreover, so stirs me as the love and longing for permanence — a thing most worthy of a man, especially of one who, conscious of no fault, does not dread the memory of posterity.

8.3. And so by day and by night I ponder whether "I too may somehow raise myself from the ground"; for that suffices my prayer; that other thing is above my prayer: "and, victorious, fly through the mouths of men"; "yet, oh —"; but this is enough, which history almost alone seems to promise.

8.4. For oratory and poetry have little charm unless the eloquence is consummate; history, written in whatever way, gives delight. For men are by nature curious, and are captivated by however bare a knowledge of facts, being such as are drawn even by little stories and fables. Indeed, a domestic example too impels me to this pursuit.

8.5. My uncle, who was also by adoption my father, wrote histories, and that most scrupulously. And I find among the wise that it is most honourable to follow in the footsteps of one's forebears, provided they have gone before by the right road. Why, then, do I hesitate?

8.6. I have pleaded great and weighty causes. These, even if my hope from them is slight, I intend to revise, lest all that great labour of mine, unless I add this study that remains, perish along with me.

8.7. For if you have regard for posterity, whatever is not finished counts as not begun. You will say, "You can both rewrite your pleadings and compose a history at the same time." Would that I could! But each is so great a thing that it is abundantly enough to accomplish one.

8.8. In my nineteenth year I began to plead in the forum, and only now do I see — and still through a mist — what an orator ought to achieve.

8.9. What if to this burden a new one were added? Oratory and history have indeed much in common, but more that differs even in those very things that seem common. The one narrates, the other narrates, but in a different way: to the one many things, lowly and mean and drawn from the midst of life, belong; to the other all things recondite, splendid, exalted are fitting;

8.10. the one is more often suited by bones, muscles, sinews, the other by, as it were, brawn and a kind of mane; the one pleases above all by force, bitterness, urgency, the other by flow and smoothness and even sweetness; in short, the words are different, the sound different, the structure different.

8.11. For it makes the greatest difference, as Thucydides says, whether it is "a possession" or "a thing for the contest"; of which the one is oratory, the other history. For these reasons I am not moved to confound and mingle two dissimilar things, and diverse in this very thing in which they are greatest, lest, troubled as by so great a confusion, I should do there what I owe here; and so for the present I ask leave, that I may not depart from my own words, to plead.

8.12. Do you, however, even now consider what periods I should best approach. Old ones, written by others? The inquiry is ready, but the comparison burdensome. Untouched and new ones? Grave the offences, slight the gratitude.

8.13. For, besides that, amid such great vices of men, more is to be blamed than praised; then, if you have praised, you will be said to have been sparing, if you have blamed, excessive, although you have done the one most fully, the other most restrainedly.

8.14. But these things do not deter me; for I have spirit enough for good faith. This I ask, that you prepare the way for that to which you urge me, and choose the subject, lest, when I am already prepared to write, another just reason for delay and hesitation again arise for me. Farewell.

9.1. I had gone down into the Basilica Julia, to hear those whom, at the next adjournment, I was bound to answer.

9.2. The judges were seated, the decemvirs had come, the advocates were in attendance, a long silence; at last a message from the praetor. The members of the Court are dismissed, the day is postponed, to my joy — I who am never so prepared that I do not rejoice at a delay.

9.3. The cause of the postponement was the praetor Nepos, who tries cases under the laws. He had issued a short edict, warning the accusers, warning the accused, that he would carry out what was contained in a decree of the Senate.

9.4. Beneath the edict lay a decree of the Senate: by this, all who had any business were bidden to swear, before they pleaded, that they had given, promised, or guaranteed nothing to anyone for advocacy. For by these words, and a thousand besides, the selling and buying of advocacy were forbidden; yet, the business being concluded, it was permitted to give money, but only up to ten thousand sesterces.

9.5. Moved by this act of Nepos, the praetor who presides over the Court of the Hundred, intending to deliberate whether he should follow the example, gave us unexpected leisure.

9.6. Meanwhile, throughout the whole state, Nepos's edict is censured and praised. Many say: "We have found one to set crooked things straight! What? Were there no praetors before him? And who is this, to mend public morals?" Others, on the contrary: "He has acted most rightly; about to enter on his office, he learned the laws, read the decrees of the Senate, restrains most shameful bargains, will not suffer a most beautiful thing to be sold most shamefully."

9.7. Such talk is everywhere, which, however, will prevail on the one side or the other according to the outcome. It is altogether unjust, but established by custom, that honourable counsels or base, according as they turn out ill or well, are accordingly either approved or blamed. Hence for the most part the same deeds receive now the name of diligence, now of vanity, now of freedom, now of madness. Farewell.

10.1. Redeem at last the pledge of my hendecasyllables, which promised your writings to our common friends. They are called for daily, demanded, and now there is danger lest they be compelled to accept a summons to produce them.

10.2. I too am a hesitater in publishing, yet you have outdone even my own delay and slowness. So either break off your delays now, or beware lest those same little books, which my hendecasyllables cannot draw from you by coaxing, my scazons should wrest from you by abuse.

10.3. The work is perfect and finished; the file no longer brightens it but wears it away. Allow me to see your title, allow me to hear that the volumes of my Tranquillus are being copied, read, sold. It is fair, in love so mutual, that we should receive from you the same pleasure that you enjoy from us. Farewell.

11.1. I have received your letter, from which I learned that you have dedicated a most splendid portico under your own name and your son's, and that on the following day you promised money for the adornment of the gates, so that the completion of the former gift might be the beginning of a new generosity.

11.2. I rejoice, first at your glory, some part of which, by reason of our kinship, overflows to me; then because I see the memory of my father-in-law extended by most beautiful works; and last because our homeland flourishes, which it is pleasant to me to have adorned by anyone, but most joyful by you.

11.3. For the rest, I pray the gods that they grant you this spirit, and to this spirit as long a time as possible. For it is clear to me that, when you have completed what you lately promised, you will begin another thing. For generosity, once roused, knows not how to stand still, the beauty of which use itself commends. Farewell.

12.1. About to recite a little speech which I am thinking of publishing, I called in some persons, that I might feel anxiety, but few, that I might hear the truth. For I have a twofold reason for reciting: one, that I may be made attentive by anxiety; the other, that I may be warned, if anything by chance escapes me as my own.

12.2. I obtained what I sought: I found those who gave me the benefit of their counsel, and I myself besides noted certain things to be corrected. I corrected the book, which I have sent you.

12.3. The subject you will learn from the title; the rest the book will unfold, which now ought so to accustom itself that it may be understood without a preface.

12.4. I should like you to write me what you think of the whole, what of the parts. For I shall be either more cautious in withholding it or more resolved in publishing it, if your authority is added to this side or to that. Farewell.

13.1. You ask, and I promised, if you asked, that I would write to you what outcome the prosecution by Nepos against Tuscilius Nominatus had. Nominatus was brought in; he pleaded his own cause, with no one accusing him. For the deputies of the people of Vicetia not only did not press him, but even supported him.

13.2. The sum of his defence was, that not good faith but firmness had failed him in his advocacy; that he had come down to plead, and was even seen in the Senate-house, but then, terrified by the talk of friends, had withdrawn; for he had been warned not to oppose so obstinately, especially in the Senate, the desire of a senator who was now contending no longer, as it were, about a market, but about his favour, reputation, and dignity — otherwise he would suffer greater odium than he had lately.

13.3. There had indeed been, beforehand, applause as he went out, but from a few only. He added entreaties and many tears; nay more, throughout the whole pleading the man, practised in speaking, took pains to seem rather to be begging off — for that was both more popular and safer — than to be defending himself.

13.4. He was acquitted on the motion of the consul designate Afranius Dexter, the sum of which was this: that Nominatus would indeed have done better, if he had carried through the cause of the people of Vicetia with the same spirit with which he had taken it up; but since he had fallen into this kind of fault not through fraud, and was convicted of having committed nothing worthy of punishment, he should be acquitted, on condition that he restore to the people of Vicetia what he had received.

13.5. All agreed except Fabius Aper. He moved that Nominatus be forbidden to plead for five years; and, although he had drawn no one to him by his authority, he firmly remained in his opinion; nay more, he compelled Dexter, who had first moved a different view, by producing the law on holding the Senate, to swear that what he had moved was for the public good.

13.6. To this demand of his, though it was lawful, some cried out; for it seemed to reproach the mover with ambition. But before the opinions were given, Nigrinus, tribune of the plebs, read out an eloquent and weighty memorial, in which he complained that advocacies were being sold, that even collusions were being sold, that men combined in lawsuits, and that great and regular incomes were set up, by way of glory, from the spoils of fellow citizens.

13.7. He read out the heads of the laws, called to mind the decrees of the Senate, and at the end said that it should be requested of the excellent prince that, since the laws, since the decrees of the Senate were despised, he himself should remedy such great vices.

13.8. A few days, and the prince's order came, severe and yet moderate: read it yourself; it is in the public records. How it delights me that, in pleading causes, I have always abstained not only from bargain, gift, and reward, but even from gifts of hospitality!

13.9. One ought indeed to avoid the things that are dishonourable, not as if unlawful, but as if shameful; yet it is pleasant, if you see publicly forbidden what you would never have permitted yourself.

13.10. Perhaps — nay, doubtless — both the praise of this resolve of mine will be less and its fame more obscure, when all will do from necessity what I did of my own accord. Meanwhile I enjoy the pleasure, when some, in sport and jest, keep calling me divine, others say that I have met my rapine and my greed face to face. Farewell.

14.1. I had withdrawn to my town, when it was reported to me that Cornutus Tertullus had received the charge of the Aemilian Way.

14.2. I cannot express with what joy I was affected, both on his account and my own: on his, because, however far removed he is — as indeed he is — from all ambition, yet an honour given unsought ought to be pleasant to him; on my own, because the office entrusted to me delights me somewhat more, now that I see an equal one given to Cornutus.

14.3. For it is more gratifying to be made equal to good men than to be increased in dignity. And what is better than Cornutus, what more upright, what, in every kind of praise, more exactly modelled on antiquity? — which is known to me not by report, which otherwise he enjoys as best and most deserved, but by long and great experience.

14.4. Together we love, together we have loved, almost all whom our age, in either sex, has produced as worthy of emulation; and this fellowship of friendships has joined us in the closest familiarity.

14.5. There was added the bond of a public tie; for he was, as you know, my colleague — sought, as it were, by prayer — in the prefecture of the treasury, and was so too in the consulship. Then I looked most deeply into what a man, and how great, he was, when I followed him as a master and revered him as a parent, which he deserved not so much by maturity of age as by his manner of life.

14.6. For these reasons I congratulate myself as well as him, and no more privately than publicly, that at last men come, not as before to dangers, but to honours, by virtue.

14.7. I shall extend the letter without end, if I indulge my joy. I turn to those things in which this news caught me engaged.

14.8. I was with my wife's grandfather, I was with my wife's aunt, I was with friends long missed; I was going round my little fields, I was hearing many rustic complaints, I was reading accounts unwillingly and in haste — for I am initiated into other documents, into other letters — and I had even begun to prepare myself for the journey.

14.9. For I am confined by the narrow limits of my leave, and by that very thing — that I hear the office has been delegated to Cornutus — I am reminded of my own. I wish that your Campania may release you too about the same time, lest, when I have returned to the city, any day be lost to our companionship. Farewell.

15.1. When I rival your verses, then most of all do I learn how good they are. For as painters rarely fashion a beautiful and finished face except for the worse, so I labour from this original and fall short.

15.2. The more do I urge you to bring forth as many things as possible which all may long to imitate, but none, or very few, can. Farewell.

16.1. Most sorrowful, I write this to you: the younger daughter of our Fundanus is dead. Than which girl I have never seen anything more sprightly, more lovable, more worthy not only of a longer life but almost of immortality.

16.2. She had not yet completed her fourteenth year, and already she had the prudence of an old woman, the gravity of a matron, and yet a girl's sweetness with a maiden's modesty.

16.3. How she clung to her father's neck! How lovingly and modestly she embraced us, her father's friends! How she loved her nurses, her attendants, her teachers, each according to his office! How studiously, how intelligently she read! How sparingly and guardedly she played! With what self-control, with what patience, with what firmness too she bore her last illness!

16.4. She obeyed the physicians, she encouraged her sister and her father, and sustained herself, when forsaken by bodily strength, by the vigour of her mind.

16.5. This held out for her to the very end, and was broken neither by the length of the illness nor by the fear of death — wherefore she has left us more and weightier causes of longing and of grief.

16.6. O sad and bitter funeral indeed! O time of death more unworthy than death itself! She had already been betrothed to an excellent young man, the wedding day had already been chosen, we had already been invited. What joy, into what mourning has it been changed!

16.7. I cannot express in words what a wound I received in my mind when I heard Fundanus himself — for grief invents many a mournful thing — directing that what he was going to spend on clothes, pearls, and gems, should be laid out on incense and unguents and perfumes.

16.8. He is indeed learned and wise, as one who from his earliest age has given himself to deeper studies and arts; but now he spurns all that he has often heard and said, and, the other virtues being driven out, is wholly given to fatherly love.

16.9. You will pardon him, you will even praise him, if you consider what he has lost. For he has lost a daughter who reproduced his character no less than his face and looks, and had copied her whole father with wonderful likeness.

16.10. So if you send him any letter about so just a grief, remember to apply consolation not as if chiding and too forceful, but soft and human. And that he may the more easily admit it, much will be done by the lapse of intervening time.

16.11. For as a wound still raw shrinks from the hands of those who heal, then bears them and even of its own accord seeks them, so a recent grief of mind rejects and shuns consolations, but soon longs for them and rests in those gently applied. Farewell.

17.1. I know how greatly you favour the liberal arts, what joy you take if noble youths do something worthy of their ancestors. Hence the more eagerly I tell you that I was today in the lecture-room of Calpurnius Piso.

17.2. He was reciting a "Catasterisms" — a learned and brilliant subject indeed. It was written in elegiacs, flowing and tender and smooth, and lofty too, as the place demanded. For aptly and variously now it rose, now it sank; it changed the exalted for the lowly, the slender for the full, the grave for the pleasant, all with equal genius.

17.3. He commended these things by a most sweet voice, and the voice by his modesty: much colour, much anxiety in his face, great ornaments for a reciter. For somehow or other, in studies, fear becomes men more than confidence.

17.4. Not to say more — though I should like to say more, the finer these things are in a young man, the rarer in a noble — when the recitation was ended, having kissed the young man much and long, which is the keenest spur of admonition, I urged him on with praises to go on as he had begun, and himself to carry before posterity the light which his ancestors had carried before him.

17.5. I congratulated his excellent mother, I congratulated his brother too, who from that recitation carried off no less glory for his devotion than the other for his eloquence: so notably, while his brother recited, did first his fear, then his joy, stand out.

17.6. May the gods grant that I may often report such things to you! For I favour the age, that it may not be barren and worn out, and I wonderfully wish that our nobles should have in their houses nothing beautiful but their portraits; which now seem to me silently to praise and exhort these young men, and — what is great enough for the glory of both — to acknowledge them. Farewell.

18.1. It is well with me because it is well with you. You have your wife with you, you have your son; you enjoy the sea, the springs, the greenery, the field, a most delightful villa. For I do not doubt it is most delightful, in which a man who was happier had settled himself, before he became happiest.

18.2. I, in Tuscany, both hunt and study, which I sometimes do by turns, sometimes together; nor yet can I as yet pronounce whether it is harder to catch something or to write something. Farewell.

19.1. I see how gently you treat your servants; the more frankly will I confess to you with what indulgence I treat my own.

19.2. I have always in mind both that saying of Homer, "and he was gentle as a father," and this of ours, "father of the household." But even if I were by nature harsher and more severe, the weakness of my freedman Zosimus would yet break me; to whom so much the greater kindness must be shown, the more he now stands in need of it.

19.3. He is an honest man, dutiful, lettered; and his art, and as it were his label, is that of a comic actor, in which he excels greatly. For he delivers keenly, wisely, aptly, and even gracefully; he uses the lyre too skilfully, beyond what is needful for a comic actor. The same man reads speeches and histories and poems so well that he seems to have learned this alone.

19.4. I have set these things out to you carefully, that you might the better know how many and how pleasant services one man renders me. There is added now a long affection for the man, which the very dangers have increased.

19.5. For it is so ordered by nature that nothing so kindles and inflames love as the fear of losing; which I, for him, suffer more than once.

19.6. For some years ago, while he was reciting intently and earnestly, he brought up blood; and on this account, sent by me to Egypt, he returned lately, confirmed in health after a long journey abroad; then, while for several days together he overtaxed his voice, warned by a slight cough of his old infirmity, he again brought up blood.

19.7. For this reason I have resolved to send him to your estate which you possess at Forum Julii. For I have often heard you relate that the air there is healthful, and the milk most suited to cures of this kind.

19.8. I ask you, then, to write to your people that the villa, that the house, be open to him; that they offer too for his expenses, if anything be needed.

19.9. But there will be need of little; for he is so sparing and self-controlled that he restrains by his frugality not only luxuries but even the necessities of his health. I will give him on his departure only so much travelling-money as will suffice one going to your estate. Farewell.

20.1. Again the Bithynians: a short time after Julius Bassus, they have impeached the proconsul Rufus Varenus too — that Varenus whom lately, against Bassus, they had both demanded and received as their advocate. Brought into the Senate, they demanded an inquiry.

20.2. Varenus asked that he too, for the sake of his defence, might be allowed to summon witnesses; the Bithynians refusing, the case was taken up. I pleaded for Varenus, not without success; for whether well or ill, the book will show.

20.3. For in pleadings fortune rules on either side: memory, voice, gesture, the very occasion, and finally either love or hatred of the defendant, both take away much of the recommendation and add to it; a book is free from offences, free from favour, free from both prosperous chances and adverse.

20.4. Fonteius Magnus, one of the Bithynians, answered me with very many words but very few facts. Most of the Greeks have, like him, volubility in place of fullness: such long and such frigid periods do they hurl out, as it were a torrent, in one breath.

20.5. And so Julius Candidus is wont to say, not without wit, that eloquence is one thing, garrulity another. For eloquence has fallen to scarcely one or two — nay, if we believe Marcus Antonius, to none; but this, which Candidus calls garrulity, to many, and most of all to every most shameless man.

20.6. On the next day Homullus spoke for Varenus, cunningly, keenly, with polish; against him Nigrinus, concisely, weightily, with ornament. Acilius Rufus, consul designate, moved that the inquiry be granted to the Bithynians, and passed over Varenus's request in silence.

20.7. This was a form of refusal. Cornelius Priscus, of consular rank, granted both to the accusers what they sought and to the defendant, and prevailed in numbers. We obtained a thing neither comprehended in the law nor sufficiently usual, yet just.

20.8. Why just, I will not pursue in a letter, that you may long for the pleading. For if that saying of Homer is true: "for men praise more that song which comes newest to the hearers," I must take care not to pluck off beforehand, by the talkativeness of a letter, the grace and bloom of novelty, which commends that little speech above all. Farewell.

21.1. Your letter affected me variously; for it contained partly glad, partly sad things: glad, because it told me you were kept in the city — "I should not wish it," you say; but I do wish it — and besides, because it promised that you would recite as soon as I came; I thank you that I am awaited.

21.2. The sad thing was that Julius Valens lies gravely ill; though not even this is sad, if it be judged by his own interest, whose concern it is to be freed as soon as possible from a hopeless disease.

21.3. This indeed is not only sad but mournful, that Julius Avitus has died while returning from his quaestorship — died on shipboard, far from a most loving brother, far from his mother and his sisters

21.4. — these things are nothing to the dead, but they mattered when he was dying, and they matter to those who survive — and that, in his earliest flower, a young man of such great promise was extinguished, who would have attained the heights, had his virtues ripened.

21.5. With what love of studies he was on fire! how much he read, how much he even wrote! all of which have now passed away with him, without profit to posterity.

21.6. But why do I indulge my grief? To which, if you give the reins, no subject but is the greatest. I will make an end of my letter, that I may be able to make an end also of the tears which the letter has called forth. Farewell.