Letters to Atticus/1.6
To Atticus at Athens edit
Rome, December 68 BC edit
I won¹t give you any excuse hereafter for accusing me of neglecting to write. It is you that must take care that with all your leisure you keep up with me.
Rabirius's house at Naples[1] for the improvement of which you have designs drawn out and completed in imagination, has been bought by M. Fonteius[2] for 130,000 sesterces. I wished you to know this in case you were still hankering after it.
We may be quite satisfied, I think, with my brother's feelings towards Pomponia. He is with her at present in his villa at Arpinum, and has Decimus Turanius with him, who is great in belles lettres.
The date of my father's death was the 28th of November.
That is about all my news. If you light on any articles of vertu suitable for a gymnasium, which would look well in the place you know of;[3] please don't let them slip. I am so delighted with my Tusculan villa that I never feel really happy till I get there. Let me know exactly what you are doing and intending to do about everything.
Footnotes edit
- ↑ C. Rabirius, whom Cicero defended in B.C. 63, when prosecuted by Caesar for his share in the murder of Saturninus (B.C. 100). He lived, we know, in Campania, for his neighbours came to give evidence in his favour at the trial.
- ↑ M. Fonteius made a fortune in the province of Gaul beyond the Alps, of which he was propraetor, B.C. 77-B.C. 74. In B.C. 69 he had been accused of malversation, and defended by Cicero. After his acquittal he seems to be buying a seaside residence in Campania, as so many of the men of fashion did.
- ↑ Cicero's "gymnasium" was some arrangement of buildings and plantations more or less on the model of the Greek gymnasia, at his Tusculan villa.