CCCCLXXV (F VII, 28)
TO MANIUS CURIUS (IN ACHAIA)
Rome (August)
I remember the time when I thought you foolish for associating
with your friends over there rather than with us:
for a residence in this city—while it was still a city at all—was
much better suited to your culture and refinement than
all the Peloponnesus put together, to say nothing of Patræ.
Now, however, on the contrary you seem to me to have been
long-sighted for having settled in Greece when things here
were in a desperate condition, and at the present crisis not
only to be wise for being abroad, but happy as well. And
yet what man of any discernment can be happy at present?
But what you, who could do so, have secured by the use of
your feet—removal to a place "Where of the Pelopidæ"[1]
(you know the rest)—I am getting by a different method.
For, after giving myself up to the reception of my friends
which is more crowded than it used to be, precisely because
they imagine that in a citizen of honest sentiments they see
a rare bird of good omen, I bury myself in my library.
Accordingly, I am completing works of an importance
which you will perhaps appreciate. For in a certain talk I
had with you at your house, when you were finding fault
with my gloom and despair, I understood you to say, that
you could not recognize the old high spirit in my books.[2]
But, by Hercules, at that time I was mourning for the
- ↑ A quotation from the Pelops of Accius, which he applies more than
once again to the Cæsarians:
"evolem,
ubi nec Pelopidarum nomen nec facta aut famam audiam.""Oh that I might fly away, where neither name nor deed nor fame of the sons of Pelops might reach my ear!"
- ↑ I retain dicere in this sentence. Tyrrell and Purser read discere, and translate intellexi discere, "I remember learning," which I cannot follow. It would be better to omit dicere altogether.
