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B.C. 45, ÆT. 61 merely felt grateful, you have shewn it in practice also by the most complete return possible. Therefore, in all your remaining concerns, you shall find that I have the same zeal and the same goodwill to you.

You commend to me that most honourable lady your wife Pompeia. I therefore at once spoke to Sura on reading your letter, and bade him tell her from me to let me know anything she wanted done, and to say that I would do it with the greatest zeal and assiduity. And this I will do, and if it seems necessary I will call upon her personally. Please write and tell her not to consider anything to be so great or so small, as to seem to me difficult or beneath my notice. Everything which I may do in your interest will appear to me at once unlaborious and honourable.

As to Dionysius,[1] as you love me, settle the business. Whatever pledge you give him I will make good. If, however, he shews himself the villain that he is, you will lead him captive in your triumph. Confound the Dalmatians who are giving you all this trouble! But, as you say, they will soon be taken prisoners, and will add a lustre to your campaign, for they have always been considered a warlike people.



DCLXXIV (F VII, 29)

MANIUS CURIUS TO CICERO (AT ROME)

Patræ, 29 October


If you are well, I am glad; for I am yours by usus, Atticus's in full dominium: therefore the usufruct of me is yours, the ownership his.[2] If indeed he puts us up for sale in one lot, he) is the holding of property of which the ownership belongs to another; dominium ([Greek: ktêsis]) is full ownership; fructus or usus fructus is the right to the profit of the property which the man who has usus takes; mancipium is (1) property acquired by mancipatio, (2) the full ownership of such property.]

  1. Cicero's runaway slave. See p. 172.
  2. Curius uses legal terms connected with the ownership of land—first in Greek and then in Latin. Usus ([Greek: chrêsis