B.C. 46, ÆT. 60 you, if you can't find purchasers for your foreclosures[1] and so fill your pot with denarii, back you must come to Rome. It is better to die of indigestion here, than of starvation there. I see you have lost money: I hope these friends of yours[2] have done the same. You are a ruined man if you don't look out. You may possibly get to Rome on the only mule that you say you have left, since you have eaten up your pack horse.[3] Your seat in the school, as second master, will be next to mine: the honour of a cushion will come by-and-by.
CCCCLXXII (F VII, 33)
TO P. VOLUMNIUS EUTRAPELUS[4]
Rome (July)
You don't lose much by not being present at my oratorical
lectures. You say you would have been envious of Hirtius,
if you had not loved him: you had no reason for being
envious; unless it was of his own eloquence by any chance
that you were envious rather than of his being my pupil.
The fact is, my dearest Volumnius, I am either a complete
failure, or feel myself to be so, now that those members of
my set, by whose support (joined with your applause) I
once flourished, are lost: so that if I ever did produce anything
worthy of my reputation, let us sigh that, as Philoctetes
says in Accius,
"These arrows now are fleshed
On winged not armèd forms—all glory lost."
But, after all, things will be more cheerful with me all round if you come: though you will come, as you understand with-*
- ↑ æstimationes, properties taken over for debts at a valuation under Cæsar's law. See p. 93.
- ↑ The other Cæsarians at Naples.
- ↑ I.e., sold it to buy necessaries. We don't know what grumbling about money losses from Pætus drew out all this chaff. For the mule to ride and the horse to carry luggage, see vol. ii., p. 213.
- ↑ Vol. ii., p. 90.
