- ingly from the high style of Homer I transfer myself to the
true maxims of Euripides:
"Out on the sage that cannot guide himself!"
This is a verse that the elder Precilius praises to the skies, and says that a man may be able to see both "before and behind," and yet
"Still may excel and rise above the crowd."
But to return to what I began with: you will greatly oblige me, if you give this young man the benefit of the kindness which so distinguishes you, and will add to what I think you would do for the sake of the Precilii themselves as much as my recommendation may be worth. I have adopted a new style of letter to you, that you might understand that my recommendation is no common one.[1]
DLXXI (F V, 13)
TO L. LUCCEIUS
Astura (March)
Although the consolation contained in your letter is in
itself exceedingly gratifying to me—for it displays the greatest
kindness joined to an equal amount of good sense—yet
quite the greatest profit which I received from that letter
was the assurance that you were shewing a noble disdain of
human vicissitudes, and were thoroughly armed and pre-*
- ↑ Cicero may well have apologized for the style of letter. The accumulation of not very apt tags from Homer, the rather flippant allusion to his own conduct to Cæsar, the familiar En, hic ille est, etc., all go to make up a letter very unlike even the most off-hand of Cicero's letters, though full of his usual phrases. It is not the sort of letter which one would expect to be written to the head of the state, and I should not be surprised if it was never sent.
