CXXII (Q FR II, 8)
TO HIS BROTHER QUINTUS (AT ROME)
Cumæ (April)
B.C. 55, ÆT. 51
Afraid that you will interrupt me—you? In the first place, if I were as busy as you think, do you know what interruption means? Have you taken a lesson from Ateius?[533] So help me heaven, in my eyes you give me a lesson in a kind of learning which I never enjoy unless you are with me. Why, that you should talk to me, interrupt me, argue against me, or converse with me, is just what I should like. Nothing could be more delightful! Never, by Hercules, did any crazy poet read with greater zest his last composition than I listen to you, no matter what business is in hand, public or private, rural or urban. But it was all owing to my foolish scrupulousness that I did not carry you off with me when I was leaving town. You confronted me the first time with an unanswerable excuse—the health of my son: I was silenced. The second time it was both boys, yours and mine: I acquiesced.[534] Now comes a delightful letter, but with this drop of gall in it—that you seem to have been afraid, and still to be afraid, that you might bore me. I would go to law with you if it were decent to do so; but, by heaven! if ever I have a suspicion of such a feeling on your part, I can only say that I shall begin to be afraid of boring you at times, when in your company. [I perceive that you have sighed at this. 'Tis the way of the world: "But if you lived on earth" ...I will never finish the quotation and say, "Away with all care!"[535] Marius,[536] again, I should certainly have forced into my sedan—I don't mean that famous one of Ptolemy that Anicius got hold of:[537] for I remember when I was conveying him from Naples to Baiæ in Anicius's eight-bearer sedan, with a hundred armed guards in our train, I had a real good laugh when Marius, knowing nothing of his escort, suddenly drew back the curtains of the sedan—he was almost dead with fright and I with laughing; well, this same friend, I say, I should at least have carried off, to secure, at any rate, the delicate charm of that old-fashioned courtesy, and of a conversation which is the essence of culture. But I did not like to invite a man of weak health to a villa practically without a roof, and which even now it would be a compliment to describe as unfinished. It would indeed be a special treat to me to have the enjoyment of him here also. For I assure you that the neighbourhood of Marius makes the sunshine of that other country residence of mine.[538] I will see about getting him put up in the house of Anicius. For I myself, though a student, can live with workpeople in the house. I get this philosophy, not from Hymettus, but from Arpinum.[539] Marius is feebler in health and constitution. As to interrupting my book[540]—I shall take from you just so much time for writing as you may leave me. I only hope you'll leave me none at all, that my want of progress may be set down to your encroachment rather than to my idleness! In regards to politics, I am sorry that you worry yourself too much, and are a better citizen than Philoctetes, who, on being wronged himself, was anxious for the very spectacle[541] that I perceive gives you pain. Pray hasten hither: I will console you and wipe all sorrow from your eyes: and, as you love me, bring Maruis. But haste, haste, both of you! There is a garden at my house.[542]
CXXIII (A IV, 11)
TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)
Cumæ (April)
B.C. 55, ÆT. 51