B.C. 45, ÆT. 61 Whether it is well or ill to do so, that is my look-out: but whatever it is, it is our speciality. Work on then, and don't stir a nail's breadth, as they say, from the pen; for it is the creator of eloquence:[1] and for my part I now devote a considerable part of the night to it also.
DCLXVI (A XIII, 51)
TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)
Tusculum, 24 August
The reason of my not sending you at the time a copy of the
letter which I wrote to Cæsar was that I forgot. Neither
was the motive what you suspected it to have been—shame
of appearing in your eyes to be ridiculously time-serving;[2]
nor, by heaven, did I write otherwise than I should have
written to an equal and a man like myself. For I really do
think well of those books of his,[3] as I told you when we met.
Accordingly, I wrote without any flattery, and at the same
time in such a tone as I think will give him as much pleasure
to read it as possible.
At last I have certain news of Attica. So please congratulate her all over again. Tell me all about Tigellius, and that promptly; for I am feeling uneasy. Now listen to this: Quintus[4] arrives to-morrow, but whether at my house or yours I don't know. He wrote me word that he would be at Rome on the 25th. But I have sent a man to invite him here: though, by heaven, I must come to Rome, lest Cæsar should make a descent there before me.
- ↑ In the de Orat. § 33, he says, "the pen, the best producer and master of eloquence." See Quint. Inst. Orat. x. iii. §§ 1-4.
- ↑ The text is corrupt—ne ridicule micillus. What word or words are concealed under micillus has puzzled everyone, and many suggestions have been made. I have translated it as though it were nimis blandus; but I do not profess to think that solution more likely than many others, or even as much so. After blandus we must understand viderer by a fairly easy ellipse.
- ↑ Cæsar's Anti-Cato.
- ↑ The younger Quintus Cicero.
