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of goodwill.[1] On this subject not only ought I not to ask you to be more zealous in that respect for my sake also—for nothing could go beyond your promises—but I should be wrong even to thank you, since you have acted for his own sake and on your own initiative. However, I will say this, that I am exceedingly gratified at what you have done. For such appreciation on your part of a man who has a place apart in my affections cannot fail to be supremely delightful to me: and, that being so, it of course excites my gratitude. But all the same, since considering our intimacy a faux pas in writing to you is allowable to me, I will do both the things that I said that I ought not to do. In the first place, to what you have shewn that you will do for the sake of Atticus I would have you make as large an addition as our mutual affection can suggest: in the second place, though I said just now that I feared to thank you, I now do so outright: and I would wish you to believe that, under whatever obligations you place Atticus, whether in regard to his affairs in Epirus or elsewhere, I shall consider myself to be equally bound to you by them.



DXII (F XIII, 19)

TO SERVIUS SULPICIUS RUFUS (IN ACHAIA)

Rome


With Lyso of Patræ[2] I have indeed a long-standing tie of hospitality—a tie which, I think, ought to be conscientiously maintained. That is a position shared by many others: but I never was so intimate with any other foreigner, and that intimacy has been so much enhanced both by many services[Footnote: The doctor at Patræ who attended Tiro. See vol. ii., p. 209.]

  1. We know that Atticus had many transactions with towns in the Peloponnese, and he probably required the countenance of Sulpicius, as governor of Achaia, to get his interest on capital paid (vol. i., pp. 57, 60 66).