she bears it cheerfully. You mention that idea of ours, in which I am as earnest as yourself. As far as my knowledge goes, I strongly approve of the man, the family, and the fortune. What is most important of all, though I don't know him personally, I hear nothing but good of him, among others recently from Scrofa. We may add, if that is of any consequence, that he is better born even than his father. Therefore when we meet I will talk about it, and with a predisposition in favour of him. I may add that I am—as I think you know—with good reason attached to his father, and have been so for a long time past, more even than not only you but even he himself is aware[1].
DCXXXI (F IX, 22)
TO L. PAPIRIUS PÆTUS (AT NAPLES)
(Rome, July?)
I like modesty in language: you prefer plain speaking[2].
The latter I know was the doctrine of Zeno, a man by
heaven! of keen insight, though our Academy had a serious
quarrel with him. However, as I say, the Stoic doctrine is
to call everything by its right name[3]. They argue as follows:
nothing is obscene, nothing unfit to be expressed: for if
there is anything disgraceful in obscenity, it consists either
in the thing meant or in the word: there is no third alternative.
Now it is not in the thing meant. Accordingly, in
tragedies as well as in comedies there is no concealment.
- ↑ What all this refers to we cannot be sure. Possibly it is to a proposed husband for Attica, who eventually married the great minister of Augustus—M. Vipsanius Agrippa. But she was only about ten years old.
- ↑ Reading Amo verecundiam, tu potius libertatem loquendi. The MS. reading vel potius, etc., might be explained if libertatem could mean "freedom from the constraint of double entendre" as if Cicero had meant "I like a modest and simple use of language without suggestiveness." But it is very difficult.
- ↑ In the de Off. i. § 127-128, Cicero attributes this to the Cynics or Stoics, who were almost Cynics, and expresses disapproval of it.
