opinion pleases you the more, that of Chrysippus or the one which our teacher Diodotus could not stomach. But on these points also we will talk when we are at leisure: that too is "possible," according to Chrysippus.[1] I am much obliged to you about Coctius: for that is just what I had commissioned Atticus to do. Yes, if you don't come to me, I shall take a run to you. If you have a garden in your library,[2] everything will be complete.
CCCCLXV (A XII, 5, § 4)
TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)
Tusculum, 12 June
I have sent Tiro to meet Dolabella. He will be returning
to me on the 13th. I shall expect you the next day. I see
that you regard my dear Tullia's interests as of the first
importance. I beg you earnestly to let it be so. So then
she is still completely uncommitted; for so you say in your
letter. Though I had to avoid the Kalends,[3] and shun the
"originals"[4] of the Nicasiones, and had to balance my
accounts, yet there was nothing to make up for my absence
from you. When I was at Rome and thought every moment
that I was going to catch a sight of you, even so every dayused playfully for ledgers. The Nicasiones are money-lenders.]
- ↑ Cicero playfully alludes to the necessitudinarian doctrines of Diodorus of Caria (the Megaric philosopher, ob. B.C. 307) and Chrysippus of Soli, the Stoic (born B.C. 280). Diodorus maintained that "only what is or what will be is possible." Chrysippus, on the other hand, defined "the possible" as what is "capable of being true if circumstances do not prevent." Diodotus was a Stoic who lived many years in Cicero's house, and died there B.C. 59. See vol. i., p. 115.
- ↑ Probably means (though it is a strange way of expressing it) a garden to sit and converse in, like philosophers in the Academy: the library being like Cicero's Tusculan gymnasium, round a court containing shrubs, etc. There is a similar reference to Cicero's villa at Cumæ, vol. i., p. 253 (Q. Fr. ii. 8).
- ↑ The first day of the month on which interest was due.
- ↑ [Greek: archetypa
