Book 9

1.1. I have often advised you to publish as soon as possible the books which you composed either for yourself or against Planta — or rather both for yourself and against him, for so the subject required; and now especially, having heard of his death, I both urge and advise it.

1.2. For although you have read them to many and given them to many to read, I would not have anyone suppose that they were only begun after his death, which you finished while he was still alive. Let your reputation for steadfastness be preserved. And it will be, if it is known both to the fair-minded and the unfair that the confidence to write was not born to you after your enemy's death, but that the edition, already prepared, was forestalled by his death.

1.3. At the same time you will avoid that saying, 'It is not holy to triumph over the slain.' For what is written of a living man, recited of a living man, is published against the dead too as if still living, if it is published at once. So, if you have anything else in hand, lay it aside for the moment; finish this, which to us who have read it seems long since complete. But let it now seem so to you too, whose delay neither the matter itself requires, and the reckoning of the time cuts short. Farewell.

2.1. You act agreeably in demanding from me not only very many letters but very long ones; in which I have been more sparing, partly because I feared your engagements, partly because I myself was much distracted, for the most part by trifling business, which both calls the mind away and breaks it up. Besides, no further material for writing was given.

2.2. For our condition is not the same as Marcus Tullius', to whose example you summon us. For he had both a most copious genius, and, to match his genius, a variety and a greatness of affairs supplied most abundantly;

2.3. but within what narrow bounds I am confined, even though I be silent you perceive — unless perhaps we wish to send you scholastic and, so to speak, shadowy letters.

2.4. But we think nothing less fitting, when we consider your arms, your camp, in short your bugles and trumpets, the sweat, the dust, the suns.

2.5. You have, I think, a fair excuse, which yet I doubt whether I wish to be accepted by you. For it is the mark of the highest love to deny pardon to friends' brief letters, even though you know that there is good reason for them. Farewell.

3.1. One man thinks one thing: I count him most blessed who enjoys the foretaste of a good and lasting reputation, and, sure of posterity, lives with future glory. And to me, had I not the prize of eternity before my eyes, that rich and deep repose would be pleasing.

3.2. For I think all men ought to consider either their immortality or their mortality, and that the former should strive and exert themselves, the latter rest and relax, nor weary their short life with perishable labours, as I see many do, who by a wretched and at the same time thankless show of industry come to despise themselves.

3.3. These things I say to you which I say daily to myself, that I may cease to say them to myself, if you dissent; though you will not dissent, you who always meditate something bright and immortal. Farewell.

4.1. I should fear you might think the speech which you will receive with this letter immoderately long, were it not of such a kind that it seems often to begin and often to end. For single charges are contained, as it were, in single cases.

4.2. So you will be able, wherever you begin and wherever you leave off, to read what follows next both as beginnings and as connected wholes, and to judge me longest in the whole, shortest in the parts. Farewell.

5.1. You do excellently — for I inquire — and persevere, in that you commend your justice to the provincials with much humanity; the chief part of which is to embrace each most honourable man, and so to be loved by the lesser as at the same time to be valued by the leading men.

5.2. But most men, while they fear lest they seem to grant too much to the favour of the powerful, win a reputation for awkwardness and even ill-will.

5.3. From which fault you have withdrawn far, I know; but I cannot restrain myself from praising, like one who admonishes, that you keep such measure as to preserve the distinctions of ranks and dignities; which, if they are confounded, disordered, mingled, nothing is more unequal than that very equality. Farewell.

6.1. All this time I have passed in most pleasant quiet among my tablets and little books. 'How,' you say, 'could you in the city?' There were the Circensian games, by which kind of spectacle I am not held in the least. There is nothing new, nothing varied, nothing that it does not suffice to have seen once.

6.2. So I wonder all the more that so many thousands of men should so childishly desire again and again to see horses running, men standing in chariots. If at least they were drawn by the speed of the horses or the skill of the men, there would be some reason; but as it is they favour a rag, they love a rag, and if in the very midst of the course and contest this colour were transferred there, that one here, the zeal and favour would pass with it, and on a sudden they would forsake those drivers, those horses which they recognize from afar, whose names they shout.

6.3. So great is the favour, so great the authority in one most worthless tunic — I say nothing of the common crowd, which is cheaper than a tunic, but with certain serious men too; whom, when I recall them sitting so insatiably over a thing empty, cold, and incessant, I take a certain pleasure that I am not taken by this pleasure.

6.4. And through these days I most gladly bestow my leisure on letters, which others waste in most idle occupations. Farewell.

7.1. You write that you are building. Good; I have found a defence, for now I build with reason, since it is with you. For this too is not unlike, that you build by the sea, I by Lake Como.

7.2. On its shore I have several villas, but two especially, which delight me as much as they busy me.

7.3. The one, set upon the rocks in the manner of Baiae, looks out over the lake; the other, equally in the manner of Baiae, touches the lake. So I am wont to call the former 'tragedy,' the latter 'comedy,' the one because it is raised as if on buskins, the other because it is borne as if on the low socks of comedy. Each has its own charm, and to its possessor is, by that very difference, the more pleasant.

7.4. The latter uses the lake more closely, the former more widely; the latter embraces one bay with a gentle curve, the former divides two from a most lofty ridge; there a straight drive extends along the shore in a long line, here it bends gently along a most spacious terrace; the latter does not feel the waves, the former breaks them; from the latter you can look down on those fishing, from the former you can fish yourself, and cast a hook from your bedroom and almost from your bed, as from a little boat. These are my reasons for adding to each what they lack, on account of what they have in plenty.

7.5. But why should I render you a reason? — with whom for reason it will be enough to do the same. Farewell.

8.1. If, praised by you, I should begin to praise you, I fear I may seem not so much to give my own judgement as to return a favour. But though I may seem so, I think all your writings most beautiful, but most of all those about us.

8.2. This happens for one and the same reason. For both you write best of friends, and I read as best the things written of me. Farewell.

9.1. I most particularly approve that you are so sorrowfully affected by the death of Pompeius Quintianus that you prolong love of the lost by longing — not like most, who love only the living, or rather pretend to love them, and do not pretend even that except towards those whom they see flourishing; for they forget the wretched no otherwise than the dead. But in you is perennial faith and such steadfastness in love that it cannot be ended save by your own death.

9.2. And indeed Quintianus was such a man as it becomes one to love by his own example. He loved the fortunate, protected the wretched, longed for the lost. How great, too, that honesty in his face, what hesitation in his speech, with what even balance gravity and courtesy! What devotion to letters, what judgement! With what piety he lived with a most unlike father! how it did not hinder him from seeming a most excellent man that he was a most excellent son!

9.3. But why do I exasperate your grief? Yet you so loved the young man that you would rather have this than silence about him, especially from me, by whose proclamation you think his life adorned, his memory prolonged, and even that very age in which he was snatched away can be restored. Farewell.

10.1. I desire to obey your precepts; but there is such a dearth of boars that Minerva and Diana, whom you say must be cultivated alike, cannot agree.

10.2. So Minerva only must be served, yet delicately, as befits retirement and summer. On the road, indeed, I extended some lighter pieces, to be deleted at once, with that garrulity by which conversations are strung together in a carriage. To these I added some at the villa, when nothing else was pleasing. So my poems rest, which you think are most conveniently finished among groves and woods.

10.3. I have revised one or two little speeches; though that kind of work is unlovable and unlovely, and more like the labours of the country than its pleasures. Farewell.

11.1. I received your most pleasant letter, especially because you wished that something should be written to you which could be inserted in my books. Material will turn up, either this very thing you point out or another better. For in this there are some stumbling-blocks: look around and they will meet you.

11.2. I did not think there were booksellers at Lugdunum, and so all the more gladly I learned from your letter that my little books are sold there; whose having kept abroad the favour they had won in the city delights me. For I begin to think a thing fairly finished about which, with so great a difference of regions, the judgements of men agree. Farewell.

12.1. A certain man was chastising his son because he bought horses and dogs a little too lavishly. To him, when the young man had withdrawn, I said: 'Look you, did you never do anything for which your father could rebuke you? "Did you," I say. Do you not sometimes do what your son, if he were suddenly the father and you the son, might reprove with equal gravity? Are not all men led by some error? Does not this man indulge himself in this, another in that?'

12.2. This I have written to you, warned by an example of excessive severity, out of our mutual love, lest you too should ever treat your son too harshly and hardly. Consider both that he is a boy and that you have been one, and so use this that you are a father as to remember both that you are a man and the father of a man. Farewell.

13.1. The more zealously and attentively you have read the books I composed on the vengeance of Helvidius, the more earnestly you demand that I write out for you whatever was outside the books and around the books — in short, the whole sequence of the affair, in which through your age you took no part.

13.2. When Domitian was slain, I considered and deliberated with myself that there was a great and beautiful subject for assailing the guilty, avenging the wretched, and putting myself forward. Now among the many crimes of many, none seemed more atrocious than that in the Senate a senator had laid hands on a senator, a man of praetorian rank on a man of consular rank, a judge on a defendant.

13.3. There had been, besides, between Helvidius and me a friendship as great as could be with one who, through fear of the times, hid his great name and equal virtues in retirement; there had been with Arria and Fannia, of whom the one was Helvidius' stepmother, the other the mother of his stepmother. But it was not so much private ties as public right, the indignity of the deed, and the consideration of the example that spurred me.

13.4. And in the first days of restored liberty each man for himself had demanded his enemies — at least the lesser ones — with an unformed and turbid clamour, and at the same time crushed them. I, thinking it both more modest and more steadfast to press a most monstrous defendant not by the common odium of the times but by his own crime, when now that first onset had spent its roar and anger, growing daily fainter, had returned to justice — although then most of all sad, having lately lost my wife — sent to Anteia (she had been married to Helvidius); I asked her to come, because my grief, still fresh, kept me within my threshold.

13.5. When she came, I said: 'It is determined by me not to leave your husband unavenged. Announce it to Arria and Fannia' — they had returned from exile — 'consult yourself, consult them, whether you wish to be enrolled in a deed in which I need no companion; but I would not so favour my own glory as to grudge you a share in it.' Anteia carried the message, nor did they delay.

13.6. Conveniently the Senate was to meet within three days. I always referred everything to Corellius, whom I had found the most provident and wisest of our age: in this, however, I was content with my own counsel, fearing lest he should forbid it; for he was rather hesitant and cautious. But I could not bring myself not to indicate to him on that same day that I would do what I was not deliberating whether to do, having learned by experience that about what you have determined those are not to be consulted whose counsel, once given, you must obey.

13.7. I come into the Senate, I ask leave to speak, I speak for a while with the greatest approval. When I began to touch the charge, to mark out the defendant, though still without a name, on all sides there was outcry against me. One said: 'Let us know who it is about whom you bring an extraordinary motion'; another: 'Who is a defendant before the motion?'; another: 'Let us be safe, we who survive.'

13.8. I listened unperturbed, undismayed: so much avails the honourableness of a thing undertaken, and so much, for confidence or fear, does it matter whether men are unwilling that you should do what you do, or do not approve of it. It would be long to recount all that was hurled from this side and that.

13.9. At last the consul: 'Secundus, you shall speak in your turn, if you wish anything.' 'You had granted,' I said, 'what hitherto you have granted to all.'

13.10. I sit down; other matters are dealt with. Meanwhile a certain one of my consular friends, in a secret and studied speech, takes me to task as having advanced too boldly and incautiously, calls me back, advises me to desist, adds even: 'You have made yourself a marked man to future princes.' 'Be it so,' I said, 'so long as to bad ones.'

13.11. Scarcely had he withdrawn when another: 'What do you dare? Whither do you rush? To what dangers do you expose yourself? Why do you trust in the present, uncertain of the future? You provoke a man already prefect of the treasury and soon to be consul, and besides upheld by what favour, what friendships!' He names a certain man who at that time held a most ample army in the East, not without great and doubtful rumours.

13.12. To this I: 'I have foreseen everything and gone over it before in my mind, nor do I refuse, if so chance should bring it, to pay the penalty for a most honourable deed, while I avenge a most disgraceful one.'

13.13. Now came the time of voting. Domitius Apollinaris, consul designate, speaks; Fabricius Veiento speaks, Fabius Postuminus, Bittius Proculus, colleague of Publicius Certus — about whom the matter was — and stepfather of my wife whom I had lost; after these Ammius Flaccus. All defend Certus, not yet named by me, as if named, and take up the charge as though left, as it were, in the middle, by their defence.

13.14. What else they said it is not necessary to relate: you have it in the books; for I have followed the whole in their own words.

13.15. Against them speak Avidius Quietus and Cornutus Tertullus: Quietus, that it is most unjust that the complaints of the grieving be shut out, and therefore the right of complaint not to be taken from Arria and Fannia, nor does it matter of what rank a man is, but what cause he has;

13.16. Cornutus, that he had been given by the consuls as guardian to Helvidius' daughter at the request of her mother and stepfather; that now too he could not endure to desert the parts of his office, in which, however, he both set a measure to his own grief and bore the most modest feeling of those excellent women; who were content to remind the Senate of Publicius Certus' bloody flattery, and to ask that, if the punishment of a most manifest outrage were remitted, at least a mark be branded on him as if of the censor.

13.17. Then Satrius Rufus, in a middle and ambiguous speech: 'I think,' he said, 'an injury is done to Publicius Certus, if he is not acquitted; he has been named by the friends of Arria and Fannia, named by his own friends. Nor ought we to be anxious; for the same men, we who think well of the man, are also to judge him. If he is innocent, as I both hope and prefer and, until something is proved, believe, you will be able to acquit him.'

13.18. These things they said in the order in which each was called. They come to me. I rise, use the beginning that is in the book, reply to each. It is wonderful with what attention, with what shouts they received everything, who a moment before were crying out against me: so great a change followed either the dignity of the business, or the success of the speech, or the steadfastness of the speaker.

13.19. I finish. Veiento begins to reply; no one allows it; he is shouted down, drowned out, so much so indeed that he said: 'I beg, conscript fathers, that you do not compel me to implore the aid of the tribunes.' And at once Murena the tribune: 'I permit you, most illustrious Veiento, to speak.' Then too there is outcry.

13.20. Amid the delays the consul, the names being called and the division held, dismisses the Senate, and left Veiento almost still standing and trying to speak. He complained much of this — so he called it — insult, in a Homeric verse: 'Old man, in truth the young warriors press you sore.'

13.21. There was hardly anyone in the Senate who did not embrace me, kiss me, and vie in heaping me with praise, because I had restored to public use a custom long since interrupted of taking counsel for the commonwealth by undertaking private enmities; because, in short, I had freed the Senate from the odium with which it was burning among the other orders, in that, severe against the rest, it spared senators alone by a kind of mutual connivance.

13.22. These things were done in the absence of Certus; for he was either, suspecting some such thing, or, as was alleged in excuse, ill. And the Emperor indeed did not refer the motion concerning him to the Senate; yet I obtained what I had aimed at:

13.23. for Certus' colleague received the consulship, Certus a successor, and it came plainly to pass which I had said at the end: 'Let him give back, under the best of princes, the reward which he received from the worst.' Afterwards I gathered together my speech as best I could, and added much.

13.24. It happened by chance — yet not as though by chance — that, the books being published, Certus within a very few days fell ill and died.

13.25. I heard from those who told it that this image flitted before his mind and eyes, as though he saw me threatening him with a sword. Whether this is true I dare not affirm; yet it concerns the example that it should seem true.

13.26. You have a letter which, if you consider the measure of a letter, is no smaller than the books you have read; but you will charge it to yourself, who were not content with the books. Farewell.

14.1. You neither applaud yourself, and I write nothing more in good faith than about you. Whether posterity will have any care for us, I do not know; we at least deserve that it should have some — I do not say by genius, for that is arrogant, but by zeal and labour and reverence for posterity. Let us only go on in the way begun, which, as it has brought few into the light and to fame, so it has brought many out of darkness and silence. Farewell.

15.1. I had fled to my Tuscan estate, that I might do everything at my own pleasure. But this not even in Tuscany: so much am I disquieted by the petitions of the country folk, so many on every side and so querulous, which I read somewhat more unwillingly than my own; for even my own I read unwillingly.

15.2. For I am revising certain little speeches, which after an interval of time is both cold and bitter. My accounts are neglected as though I were absent.

15.3. Sometimes, however, I mount a horse and play the head of the household so far as to ride through some part of my estates, but only by way of exercise. Do you keep up your custom, and to me, thus a countryman, write out the doings of the city. Farewell.

16.1. That you have taken the greatest pleasure from that most abundant kind of hunting I do not wonder, since you write, in the manner of historians, that the number could not be reckoned. For us there is neither leisure nor inclination to hunt: no leisure, because the vintage is in hand; no inclination, because it is scanty.

16.2. Yet we bring down, in place of new must, new little verses, and will send them to you, who most pleasantly demand them, as soon as they shall seem to have fermented. Farewell.

17.1. I have received your letter in which you complain that a most sumptuous dinner was a weariness to you, because buffoons, dancers, and fools wandered among the tables.

17.2. Will you relax something of your frowns? For my part I have nothing of the kind, yet I tolerate those who do. Why then do I not have them? Because nothing of that sort delights me as unexpected or droll, if anything wanton is brought forth by a dancer, anything saucy by a buffoon, anything foolish by a fool.

17.3. I tell you not my reason but my taste. And indeed how many do you suppose there are whom the things by which you and I are taken and led offend, some as silly, some as most tiresome! How many, when a reader or a lyre-player or a comic actor is brought in, call for their shoes, or recline with no less weariness than that with which you endured those — so you call them — monstrosities!

17.4. Let us therefore grant indulgence to others' amusements, that we may obtain it for our own. Farewell.

18.1. With what attention, what zeal, in short what memory you have read my little books, your letter shows. So you yourself make work for yourself, who draw out and invite me to wish to share as many things as possible with you.

18.2. I will do so, yet by parts and as it were in portions, lest I disturb that very memory, to which I give thanks, by continuity and abundance, and, burdened and as it were oppressed, force it to let go single things for many, earlier for later. Farewell.

19.1. You signify that you have read in a certain letter of mine that Verginius Rufus ordered to be inscribed on his tomb: 'Here lies Rufus, who once, Vindex driven back, asserted the empire not for himself but for his country.' You blame him for ordering it, and add too that Frontinus did better and more rightly, in that he forbade altogether that any monument be made for him; and at the end you ask me what I think of each.

19.2. Both I loved; I admired the more him whom you blame, and so admired him that I did not think he could ever be sufficiently praised — whose defence I must now undertake.

19.3. All those who have done some great and memorable thing I judge most worthy not only of pardon but of praise, if they pursue the immortality they have earned, and strive by even their last inscriptions to prolong the fame of a name destined to live.

19.4. Nor do I easily find anyone but Verginius, whose modesty in proclaiming was as great as his glory from the deed.

19.5. I myself am a witness, intimately loved and approved by him, that once only in my hearing he was led so far as to relate this one thing about his affairs: that Cluvius had once said to him thus: 'You know, Verginius, what faith is owed to history; so if you read anything in my histories otherwise than you would wish, I beg you to forgive it.' To which he: 'Do you not know, Cluvius, that I did what I did precisely that it might be free for you to write what you pleased?'

19.6. Come now, let us compare this very Frontinus, in that very point in which he seems to you more reserved and restrained. He forbade a monument to be built, but in what words? 'The expense of a monument is superfluous; the memory of us will endure, if we have deserved it by our life.' Do you think it more reserved to give one's enduring memory to be read throughout the whole world than to mark in one place, in two little verses, what you have done?

19.7. Yet I have no purpose of blaming him, but of defending the other; whose defence before you can be more just than from a comparison with him whom you preferred?

19.8. In my judgement at least neither is to be blamed, both of whom strove towards glory with equal desire by different roads — the one in seeking the titles due to him, the other in preferring to seem to have despised them. Farewell.

20.1. Your letter indeed was the more pleasant to me the longer it was, especially since it spoke throughout of my little books; which that they are a pleasure to you I do not wonder, since you love all that is ours just as you love us.

20.2. I myself am at this very time gathering in a vintage scanty indeed, yet richer than I had expected — if it be gathering in to pluck a grape now and then, to visit the press, to taste the must from the vat, to surprise the town servants, who now preside over the country folk and have left me to my secretaries and readers. Farewell.

21.1. Your freedman, with whom you said you were angry, came to me, and falling at my feet clung to them as if they were yours. He wept much, begged much, was even silent much; in short, he gave me proof of his true repentance. I believe him reformed because he feels he has done wrong.

21.2. You are angry, I know, and angry deservedly, that too I know; but then is the chief praise of mildness, when the cause of anger is most just.

21.3. You loved the man and, I hope, will love him: meanwhile it is enough that you suffer yourself to be entreated. You may be angry again, if he deserve it, and the more excusably, because you were entreated. Allow something to his youth, something to his tears, something to your own indulgence. Do not torment him, do not torment yourself too; for you are tormented when, so gentle, you are angry.

21.4. I fear lest I seem not to ask but to compel, if I join my prayers to his; yet I will join them the more fully and freely, the more sharply and severely I rebuked him, threatening sternly that I would never again ask on his behalf. This to him, whom it behoved to be frightened, not the same to you; for perhaps I shall ask again, and obtain again: only let it be such that it becomes me to ask, you to grant. Farewell.

22.1. The illness of Passennus Paulus has filled me with great anxiety, and that for many most just reasons. He is a most excellent, most honourable man, most devoted to us; besides, in literature he rivals, expresses, reproduces the ancients, Propertius above all, from whom he draws his descent, a true offshoot and so most like him in that wherein Propertius is supreme.

22.2. If you take his elegies in hand, you will read a work polished, soft, pleasant, and plainly written in the house of Propertius. Lately he has turned aside to lyric, in which he so fashions Horace as he does that other in elegy: you would think, if kinship has any force in studies, that he is his kinsman too. Great is his variety, great his versatility: he loves as one most truly, grieves as one most impatiently, praises as one most kindly, jests as one most wittily; in short, he perfects everything as though it were his only work.

22.3. For this friend, for this genius, no less sick in mind than he in body, I have at last recovered him, at last myself. Congratulate me, congratulate too literature itself, which from his danger came to as great a crisis as it will win of glory from his safety. Farewell.

23.1. When I plead, it often befalls me that the Centumviri, after they have long kept themselves within the authority and gravity of judges, suddenly all rise as if conquered and compelled, and praise me;

23.2. often I have brought back from the Senate such fame as I most desired: yet I never took greater pleasure than lately from the conversation of Cornelius Tacitus. He related that at the last Circensian games there had sat beside him a Roman knight. This man, after various learned conversations, had asked: 'Are you Italian or a provincial?' He had answered: 'You know me, and that from my studies.'

23.3. To this the other: 'Are you Tacitus or Pliny?' I cannot express how pleasant it is to me that our names are rendered to literature as belonging to it, not to men; that each of us is known even from his studies to those to whom he is otherwise unknown.

23.4. Something similar happened a very few days before. There was reclining beside me an excellent man, Fadius Rufinus, and above him a fellow-townsman of his own, who that day had come to the city for the first time; to whom Rufinus, pointing me out: 'Do you see this man?' Then much about our studies; and the other: 'It is Pliny,' he said.

23.5. I will confess the truth: I take great fruit of my labour. If Demosthenes was rightly glad that an old woman of Attica recognized him thus, 'This is . . . Demosthenes,' ought I not to rejoice in the celebrity of my name? Indeed I both rejoice and say that I rejoice.

23.6. For I do not fear lest I seem too boastful, when I bring forward about myself the judgement of others, not my own, especially before you, who neither envy anyone's praises and favour ours. Farewell.

24.1. You did well in receiving back into your house and into your heart, at the recall of my letters, a freedman once dear to you. This will gladden you; me at least it gladdens, first because I see you so manageable that in anger you can be governed, then because you attribute so much to me that you either obey my authority or indulge my prayers. So I both praise and give thanks; at the same time I admonish you for the future, that you show yourself placable to the errors of your people, even though there be no one to intercede. Farewell.

25.1. You complain of the throng of camp business, and, as if you enjoyed the deepest leisure, you read, love, and demand our jests and trifles, and not a little incite me to compose the like.

25.2. For I begin from this kind of studies to seek not only delight but glory, after your judgement — a man most learned, most weighty, and above all most truthful in such matters.

25.3. Now the press of affairs distracts me moderately, but still distracts me; when it is finished, I will send something of the same Muses into that most kindly bosom of yours. You will give wings to our little sparrows and doves among your eagles, if at least they please you too; if only themselves, you will see to keeping them shut in cage or nest. Farewell.

26.1. I said of a certain orator of our age, sound indeed and correct, but too little grand and ornate — aptly, as I think: 'He errs in nothing, except that he errs in nothing.'

26.2. For an orator ought to be raised and lifted up, sometimes even to boil over and be carried away, and often to draw near the brink; for usually steeps lie beside lofty and exalted places. The way over the plain is safer but humbler and lower; falls are more frequent for those who run than for those who creep, but for these, if they do not slip, there is no praise, for those, some praise even if they do slip.

26.3. For, as in certain arts, so in eloquence, nothing commends so much as risks. You see those who strive aloft along a rope, what shouts they are wont to raise, when they seem on the very point of falling.

26.4. For those things are most marvellous which are most unexpected, most perilous — and, as the Greeks express it better, hazardous. So the pilot's worth is by no means equal when he sails on a calm and on a troubled sea: then, with none admiring, unpraised, inglorious, he comes into port; but when the ropes whistle, the mast bends, the rudders groan, then is he famous and next to the sea-gods.

26.5. Why do I say this? Because you seemed to me to have noted in my writings certain things as inflated which I thought lofty, as presumptuous which I thought bold, as excessive which I thought full. But it matters very much whether you note things to be blamed or things that stand out.

26.6. For everyone notices what is eminent and prominent; but it must be discerned with keen attention whether it be immoderate or grand, lofty or monstrous. And, to touch Homer above all, what man on either side can fail to mark 'and around great heaven trumpeted' . . . 'and the spear leaned upon the air,' and all that 'nor does so great a wave of the sea roar'?

26.7. But there is need of weighing and balancing, whether these be incredible and empty or magnificent and heavenly. Nor do I now think that I have said, or could say, things like these — I am not so mad — but I wish this to be understood, that the reins of eloquence are to be loosened, and the impulses of genius are not to be checked within the narrowest ring.

26.8. 'But the condition of orators is one, of poets another.' As if indeed Marcus Tullius dared less! Though him I leave aside; for I think there is no doubt. But Demosthenes himself, that standard and rule of the orator, does he restrain and confine himself when he utters those most famous words: 'foul men and flatterers and fiends,' and again, 'I did not wall the city with stones nor with bricks,' and at once, '[did I not think it right] to throw Euboea forward in front of Attica from the sea,' and elsewhere: 'But I think, O men . . . of Athens, by the gods, that he is drunk with the greatness of his deeds'?

26.9. And what is bolder than that most beautiful and longest digression: 'For it is a disease'? What is shorter than these, but in boldness their equal: 'then I, against . . . Python, raging and pouring forth a flood against you'? Of the same stamp: 'but when through greed and wickedness someone, like this man, has grown strong, the first pretext and small stumble has overthrown and dissolved everything.' Like these: 'fenced off from all the rights in the city,' and in the same place: 'you have betrayed pity towards these things, Aristogeiton — nay, you have wholly destroyed it. Do not, then, anchor at the harbours which you yourself have choked and filled with barriers.' And he had said: 'For this man I see no place of these accessible, but all sheer — chasms, gulfs.' And further: 'I fear lest you seem to some to be training one who is forever minded to be wicked among the men of the city.' And not content: 'for I do not suppose that our ancestors built these courts for you, that you might rear up such men in them.' To this: 'but if he is a huckster and a re-huckster and a trafficker of wickedness' — and a thousand such things, to pass over those which Aeschines calls 'marvels,' not 'words.'

26.10. I have fallen into the contrary: you will say that he too is blamed for these things. But see how much greater is he who is reproved than the reprover himself, and the greater for these very things; for in others his force, in these his grandeur shines forth.

26.11. But did Aeschines himself abstain from those things which he carped at in Demosthenes? 'For the orator and the law ought to utter the same thing; but when the law sends forth one voice, the orator another.' In another place: 'then he appears throughout the whole decree.' Again in another: 'but lurking and lying in wait in the hearing, you drive him into illegal speeches.'

26.12. Which he so approved that he repeats it: 'but as in the horse-races, you drive him into the very course of the matter.' And those things more guardedly and compressedly: 'but you make the wound . . . or, seizing him as a pirate sailing through public affairs?'

26.13. I expect that you will stab certain things from this letter — as that 'the rudders groan' and 'next to the sea-gods' — with the same marks as those of which I write; for I understand that, while I sought pardon for the earlier things, I have fallen into those very things which you had noted. But you may stab them, provided only that you now appoint a day on which we may settle, face to face, both about those and about these. For either you will make me timid or I will make you rash. Farewell.

27.1. How great a power, how great a dignity, how great a majesty, in short how great a divinity belongs to history, I have often perceived elsewhere, and lately above all. A certain man had recited a most truthful book, and had reserved part of it for another day.

27.2. Lo, the friends of a certain person come begging and beseeching that he not recite the rest. So great is the shame of hearing what they had done, in those who had no shame of doing what they blush to hear. And he indeed granted what was asked — good faith allowed it; yet the book, like the deed itself, remains and will remain and will always be read, the more because not at once. For men are roused to know the things that are deferred. Farewell.

28.1. After a long time I have received your letters — but three together — all most elegant, most loving, and such as ought to come from you, especially when longed for. Of these, one lays upon me a most pleasant service, that your letter be carried to Plotina, that most holy woman: it shall be carried.

28.2. By the same you commend Popilius Artemisius: at once I performed what he asked. You indicate too that you have gathered a modest vintage: this complaint is common to me with you, though in the most opposite quarter of the world.

28.3. In your second letter you announce that you now dictate, now write, many things by which you make us present to you. I give thanks; I should give more, had you been willing that I read those very things which you write or dictate. And it were fair that, as you know my writings, so I should know yours, even if they pertained to another than me.

28.4. You promise at the end that, when you have heard something more certain about the ordering of our life, you will become a fugitive from your domestic affairs and fly straightway to us, who already are forging fetters for you which you can in no way break through.

28.5. The third letter contained that the speech for Clarius had been delivered to you, and seemed fuller than when I spoke it and you heard it. It is fuller; for I afterwards inserted much. You add that you sent other letters more carefully written, and ask whether I received them. I did not, and long to receive them. So at the first opportunity send them, with interest indeed added, which I — can I be more sparing? — shall compute at twelve per cent. Farewell.

29.1. As it is better to do some one thing eminently than several things moderately, so it is better to do several things moderately, if you cannot do some one thing eminently. With an eye to this, I try myself in various kinds of studies, trusting sufficiently in none.

29.2. So, when you read this or that, you will pardon single pieces inasmuch as they are not single. Or is there in other arts an excuse in number, but in letters a harder law, in which the achievement is more difficult? But why do I speak of pardon as though ungrateful? For if you receive my latest works with the same indulgence as the earlier, praise rather than pardon is to be hoped for. To me, however, pardon is enough. Farewell.

30.1. You praise to me, both often when present and now by letter, your friend Nonius, that he is generous towards certain persons: I too praise him, if at least not towards these alone. For I wish him who is truly generous to give to his country, to his kinsmen, his relations, his friends — but I mean poor friends, not, like those men, to give most of all to those who can give most.

30.2. These men, with their birdlimed and hooked gifts, I think not to bring out their own but to snatch others' property. They are of like character who take from one what they give to another, and seek a name for generosity by avarice.

30.3. The first thing is to be content with one's own; the next, to support and cherish those whom you specially know to be in need, going round, as it were, in a certain circle of fellowship. If your friend does all this, he is everywhere to be praised; if some one thing, less indeed, yet still to be praised:

30.4. so rare is even the example of imperfect generosity. Such a greed of getting has invaded men that they seem rather to be possessed than to possess. Farewell.

31.1. After I withdrew from you, I was no less with you than when I was with you. For I read your book, again and again repeating those parts especially — for I will not lie — which you wrote about me, in which indeed you were most copious. How many things, how various, how not the same about the same, yet not different, you said!

31.2. Shall I praise and give thanks alike? Neither can I do enough, and, if I could, I should fear it might be arrogant to praise for those very things for which I should give thanks. One thing only I will add: that everything seemed to me the more praiseworthy the more pleasant, the more pleasant the more praiseworthy it was. Farewell.

32.1. What are you doing, what will you do? I myself live a most pleasant — that is, a most leisured — life. Whence it comes that I am unwilling to write longer letters, but willing to read them, the one as a man of refined taste, the other as a man of leisure. For nothing is either more sluggish than the fastidious or more curious than the idle. Farewell.

33.1. I have fallen upon a matter true but most like a fiction, and worthy of that most cheerful, most lofty, and plainly poetic genius of yours; I fell upon it, moreover, while at dinner various marvels were being told on this side and that. Great is the credit of the author — though what has a poet to do with credit? Yet the author is one whom you would have trusted even if about to write history.

33.2. There is in Africa the colony of Hippo, close to the sea. Adjoining it is a navigable lagoon; from this a channel, in the manner of a river, goes out, which by alternate turns, according as the tide has checked or driven it, is now carried into the sea, now given back to the lagoon.

33.3. Here every age is held by zeal for fishing, sailing, and even swimming, especially the boys, whom leisure and play allure. To these glory and valour is to be carried out very far: he is victor who has left the shore, and likewise the swimmers, farthest behind.

33.4. In this contest a certain boy, bolder than the rest, was making for the parts beyond. A dolphin met him, and now went before the boy, now followed, now circled round, at last dived beneath him, set him down, dived again beneath him, and bore the trembling boy first into the deep, then turned to the shore and gave him back to the land and to his comrades.

33.5. Fame creeps through the colony; all run together, gaze upon the boy himself as on a marvel, ask, listen, tell. The next day they beset the shore, watch the sea and whatever is like the sea. The boys swim, among them that one, but more cautiously. The dolphin again at the appointed time, again to the boy. He flees with the rest. The dolphin, as if inviting and recalling him, leaps up, dives, and weaves and unweaves various circles.

33.6. This on the second day, this on the third, this on more, until shame of fearing came upon men nurtured by the sea. They draw near and play with him and call him, even touch and handle him as he offers himself. Boldness grows with trial. Most of all the boy who first made the trial swims up to him as he swims, leaps upon his back, is carried to and fro, thinks himself known and loved, loves in turn; neither fears, neither is feared; the confidence of the one, the tameness of the other increases.

33.7. Nor did other boys go with him on right and left, exhorting and warning. There went too — this also is wonderful — another dolphin, only as a spectator and companion. For it neither did nor suffered anything like, but led and led back the other, as the other boys did the boy.

33.8. Incredible, yet as true as the foregoing, that the dolphin which carried and played with the boys was wont to be drawn out onto the land too, and, dried on the sands, when it had grown warm, to roll back into the sea.

33.9. It is known that Octavius Avitus, legate of the proconsul, by a perverse scruple poured ointment over it as it was brought ashore, the novelty and smell of which made it flee into the deep, nor was it seen except after many days, languid and sad; then, its strength restored, it resumed its former playfulness and accustomed services.

33.10. All the magistrates flowed together to the spectacle, by whose coming and lingering the modest finances of the state were worn down by new expenses. At last the place itself lost its quiet and seclusion: it was resolved to put to death secretly that for which men gathered.

33.11. With what pity, with what copiousness will you bewail, adorn, exalt these things! Though there is no need that you add or build anything; it is enough that what is true be not diminished. Farewell.

34.1. Resolve my perplexity: I hear that I read badly — at least verses; prose indeed well enough, but verses so much the less. So, being about to recite to my intimate friends, I am thinking of trying my freedman. This too is friendly, that I have chosen one to read not well but better — I know — if only he be not disturbed.

34.2. For he is as new a reader as I am a poet. I myself do not know what to do while he reads — whether to sit fixed and mute and like an idler, or, as some do, to accompany what he utters with murmur, eyes, hand. But I think I dance no less badly than I read. Again I say, resolve my perplexity, and write back truly whether it be better to read most badly than either not to do those things or to do them. Farewell.

35.1. The book you sent I have received, and give thanks. Yet at this time I am most busy. Therefore I have not yet read it, though I greatly desire to. But I owe such reverence both to literature itself and to your writings that I think it irreverent to take them up except with a mind at leisure.

35.2. Your diligence in revising your works I greatly approve. Yet there is some measure, first because too much care wears away rather than corrects, then because it calls us back from later works and at once neither finishes the earlier nor suffers us to begin the later. Farewell.

36.1. You ask how I dispose my day in summer in Tuscany. I wake when I please, generally about the first hour, often before, more rarely later. The windows remain closed; for wonderfully, withdrawn by silence and darkness from the things that distract, free and left to myself, I follow not my eyes with my mind but my mind with my eyes, which see the same things the mind sees, whenever they do not see other things.

36.2. I think, if anything is in hand, I think, like one writing and correcting word for word, now fewer things, now more, according as they could be composed or held with difficulty or ease. I call my secretary, and, the daylight admitted, dictate what I had shaped; he goes, is called back again, and again dismissed.

36.3. When it is the fourth or fifth hour — for the time is not fixed and measured — as the day has prompted, I betake myself to the terrace or the covered colonnade, meditate the rest, and dictate. I mount my carriage. There too the same as walking or lying; my attention lasts, refreshed by the very change. I sleep a little, then walk, then read aloud, clearly and intently, a Greek or Latin speech, not so much for the voice's sake as for the stomach's; yet by this too the former is strengthened.

36.4. Again I walk, am anointed, take exercise, bathe. As I dine, if with my wife or a few, a book is read; after dinner a comedy or a lyre-player; then I walk with my people, among whom are learned men. So the evening is drawn out with various conversations, and, though the day be longest, it is well rounded off.

36.5. Sometimes some things in this order are changed; for if I have lain or walked long, after sleep at last and reading I am carried not by carriage but, because it is shorter as it is swifter, by horse. Friends come in from the neighbouring towns, and draw part of the day to themselves, and sometimes by an opportune interruption relieve me when weary.

36.6. I hunt sometimes, but not without my tablets, that, though I take nothing, I may bring back something. Time is given to the tenants too — as they themselves think, not enough — whose rustic complaints commend to me our letters and these urban pursuits. Farewell.

37.1. It is neither in your nature to exact these conventional and, as it were, public courtesies from your intimate friends against their own convenience, and I love you too steadfastly to fear that you will take it otherwise than I wish, if I do not see you consul on the very Kalends, especially since the necessity of letting out my farms, which is to order things for several years, detains me — in which I must take new counsel.

37.2. For in the past five years, although after great remissions, the arrears have grown: hence for most there is now no care of lessening their debt, which they despair of being able to pay; they even snatch and consume what is produced, as men who now think they are not sparing it for themselves.

37.3. We must therefore meet the growing evils and remedy them. The one method of remedy is, if I let not for money but for a share, and then set some of my own people as overseers of the work, guardians of the fruits. And besides, there is no juster kind of income than what the land, the sky, the year brings back.

37.4. But this demands great good faith, keen eyes, many hands. Yet it must be tried, and, as in an old disease, every aid of change must be attempted.

37.5. You see what no over-nice cause keeps me from attending the first day of your consulship; which yet here too, as though present, I shall celebrate with vows, joy, and congratulation. Farewell.

38.1. I indeed praise our friend Rufus, not because you asked me so to do, but because he is most worthy of it. For I have read a book finished in all its parts, to which his love itself added much grace in my eyes. Yet I judged; for not only those judge who read with ill will. Farewell.

39.1. At the warning of the soothsayers, I must rebuild, better and larger, the temple of Ceres on my estate — old indeed and cramped, while it is otherwise on the fixed day most thronged.

39.2. For on the Ides of September a great crowd gathers from the whole region; many matters are transacted, many vows undertaken, many discharged; but there is no shelter near against rain or sun.

39.3. So I think I shall act both munificently and religiously, if I build a temple as beautiful as possible, and add porticoes to the temple — the one for the use of the goddess, the others for that of men.

39.4. I would have you therefore buy four marble columns, of whatever kind shall seem good to you; buy marbles with which to adorn the floor and the walls. There will also have to be made an image of the goddess herself, because the old one of wood is broken in some of its parts by age.

39.5. As for the porticoes, nothing for the present occurs to me which seems to be fetched from there, unless that you write out a plan according to the nature of the place. For the temple cannot be encircled: the temple's ground is bounded on one side by the river and most precipitous banks, on the other by the road.

39.6. Beyond the road is a most spacious meadow, in which fairly suitably, over against the temple itself, the porticoes will be unfolded; unless you find something better, you who are wont by art to overcome the difficulties of places. Farewell.

40.1. You write that my letter was most welcome to you, by which you learned how I spend the leisure of summer in Tuscany; you ask what of this I change in winter at Laurentum.

40.2. Nothing, except that the midday sleep is taken away, and much of the night is taken either before or after the day; and, if the necessity of pleading presses, frequent in winter, there is no longer a place after dinner for the comic actor or the lyre-player, but those things which I have dictated are again and again revised, and at the same time, by frequent correction, the memory is helped.

40.3. You have my custom in summer and winter; you may add to this spring and autumn, which, midway between winter and summer, as they lose nothing of the day, gain a little of the night. Farewell.