A ROMAN LETTER
M. Tranquillus to his Rufinus Greeting:
I despair, my Rufinus, of ever attaining that truly Ciceronian elegance and urbanity which distinguish your letters; I should recognize them as yours were they unsigned and deprived of all personal allusions. Nor can I hope to play even the inferior part of an Atticus to your Marcus Tullius; all my ambition is that contact with your virtues may insensibly incline me to follow the same path so far as my imperfections allow. You must therefore not pretermit, as you threaten, but rather increase, as I implore, your letters to me; believe me, they are essential to my happiness. That you are to be proconsul of Achaea must not be a reason for depriving your old friend of a necessary pleasure; unless indeed this dignity should lead you to despise so inglorious and so obscure a man. But even in jest such a thought wrongs us both. Shall I congratulate or condole with you on your heavy honour? You will have a year's residence in that Hellas whose culture you so greatly delight in and so perfectly understand. I shall imagine you at Corinth; either walking in silent meditation along the ilex walks of your villa, pausing before some marble, the tutelary deity of the place, leaning in thought above some wide fountain untroubled as that great stone pool in the gardens of Sallust; or speaking of wisdom and beauty with poets and learned men. For I cannot think that even the proconsulship will cause you to forget the greater good. What memories will greet you at Corinth! not only of that Hellenic perfection the world will never see again, but of our lamented countryman Gallio, whose urbanity and fastidious good taste astonished even the cultivated Hellenes. By one of those coincidences old superstition pretended significant, your letter reached me while I was reading the letter On Anger addressed to Gallio by his illustrious brother, Lucius Annaeus. May you share their virtues and fame, but not their fate!
You ask me again whether I am not weary of solitude and you bid me ask myself: Would it be well for the world if all men acted as I? And you add that this is a sovereign rule of conduct. Did I
