B.C. 46, ÆT. 60 dare. Before I arrive the fame of my new magnificence will reach you: and you will be awestruck at it. Yet it is no use building any hope on your hors d'œuvre. I have quite abolished that: for in old times I found my appetite spoilt by your olives and Lucanian sausages. But why all this talk? Let me only get to you. By all means—for I wish to wipe away all fear from your heart—go back to your old cheese-and-sardine dish. The only expense I shall cause you will be that you will have to have the bath heated. All the rest according to my regular habits. What I have just been saying was all a joke.
As to Selicius's villa,[1] you have managed the business carefully and written most wittily. So I think I won't buy. For there is enough salt and not enough savour.[2]
CCCCLXXI (F IX, 18)
TO L. PAPIRIUS PÆTUS (AT NAPLES)
Tusculum (July)
Being quite at leisure in my Tusculan villa, because I had
sent my pupils[3] to meet him,[4] that they might at the same
time present me in as favourable a light as possible to their
friend, I received your most delightful letter, from which I
learnt that you approved my idea of having begun—now
that legal proceedings are abolished and my old supremacy
- ↑ Q. Selicius, a money-lender, whose villa near Naples Cicero was thinking of buying.
- ↑ Schutz supposes that there may have been salinæ, "salt-works," on the property, and Cicero puns on the other meaning of salt—"wit." He seems to mean, "I won't buy the property, for, though there is plenty of salt in it (as there was wit in your letter), there is a lack of sound attractions (sanorum)." Tyrrell and Purser read saniorum, and translate, "We have had enough of joking, too little common sense." The MSS. have sannionum, "of jesters," which perhaps might be rendered, "though there is enough salt (material for jest), there are not enough people to take advantage of it."
- ↑ Dolabella and Hirtius.
- ↑ Cæsar, on his return from his victory in Africa.
