- ing the state of the times, I was well content to be out of it
all. I take the truth, indeed, to be that without the kindness of such gallant men and true friends no one, whether in adversity or prosperity, can live a real life. Accordingly, I congratulate myself on this. But for yourself, I will prove to you in a practical manner that you have been loyal to a man who loves you most deeply.
CCCCXCV (F IX, 21)
TO PAPIRIUS PÆTUS (AT NAPLES)
Rome (about October)
You don't say so! You think yourself a madman for imitating
the thunder of my eloquence, as you call it?[1] You
certainly would have been beside yourself if you had failed
to do so: but since you even beat me at it, you ought to
jeer at me rather than at yourself. So you had no need of
that quotation from Trabea,[2] rather the fiasco was mine.
But, after all, what do you think of my style in letters? Don't
I talk with you in the vulgar tongue? Why, of course one
doesn't write always in the same style. For what analogy
has a letter with a speech in court or at a public meeting?
Nay, even as to speeches in court, it is not my practice to
handle all in the same style. Private causes and such as are
of slight importance we plead in simpler language; those
that affect a man's civil existence or reputation, of course, in
a more ornate style: but letters it is our custom to compose
in the language of everyday life. Well, but letting that
pass, how did it come into your head, my dear Pætus, to
- ↑ Pætus had apparently compared his presumption to that of Salmoneus: "Demens, qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen Ære et cornipedum pulsu simularet equorum" (Verg. Æn. vi. 590).
- ↑ Quintus Trabea, a writer of comedies, who flourished about B.C. 120. Cicero quoted him before (see vol. ii., p. 80); but it does not appear what the quotation made by Pætus was—some think the remark about imitating thunder.
