depends on another man's will, not to say caprice. Be that as it may, personally his feelings have in no respect been wounded by me. For in that particular point I have exhibited the greatest self-control. For, as in old times I used to reckon that to speak without reserve was a privilege of mine, since to my exertions the existence of liberty in the state was owing, so, now that that is lost, I think it is my duty to say nothing calculated to offend either his wishes or those of his favourites. But if I want to avoid the credit of certain keen or witty epigrams, I must entirely abjure a reputation for genius, which I would not refuse to do, if I could. But after all Cæsar himself has a very keen critical faculty, and, just as your cousin Servius[1]—whom I consider to have been a most accomplished man of letters—had no difficulty in saying: "This verse is not Plautus's, this is—" because he had acquired a sensitive ear by dint of classifying the various styles of poets and habitual reading, so I am told that Cæsar, having now completed his volumes of bons mots,[2] if anything is brought to him as mine, which is not so, habitually rejects it. This he now does all the more, because his intimates are in my company almost every day. Now in the course of our discursive talk many remarks are let fall, which perhaps at the time of my making them seem to them wanting neither in literary flavour nor in piquancy. These are conveyed to him along with the other news of the day:[3] for so he himself directed. Thus it comes about that if he is told of anything besides[4] about me, he considers that he ought not to listen to it. Wherefore I have no need of your Œnomaus[5] though your quotation of
- ↑ Servius Claudius, whose books Pætus had given to Cicero. He was probably cousin, not brother, of Pætus.
- ↑ His Dicta Collectanea, which Augustus would not allow to be published (Suet. Iul. 56).
- ↑ For the acta diurna, see vol. i., p. 146; vol. ii., pp. 187, 404. But besides this Cæsar seems to have had a private report made to him each day of what was happening, just as Augustus did, whether of public or domestic occurrences (Suet. Aug. 32 and 78). It was Cæsar who first ordered the acta of the senate to be published (Suet. Iul. 20).
- ↑ That is anything unfavourable. "Cæsar considers that he knows the worst that I say from his own reporters, and will listen to nothing more."
- ↑ A play of Accius, from which Pætus had, it seems, quoted some lines recommending him to avoid exciting envy.
