[228] On the via Appia. Cicero halts at Appii Forum and at once despatches a short note, probably by some one he finds there going to Rome, to announce a change of plan. He had meant to get back to Antium on 6th May, because Tullia wanted to see the games. See Letter [XXXIV], p. [96].
[229] Homer, Odyss. ix. 27.
[230] τηλέπυλον Λαιστρυγονίην, whose king Lamus (Odyss. x. 81) was supposed to have founded Formiæ (Horace, Od. iii. 17).
[231] A despatch from senate or consuls. See Letter [XXIV], p. [60].
[232] At comparem for at quam partem. At has its usual force of introducing a supposed objection. I can't, say you, compare the Æmilian tribe, the Formiani, to a crowd in a court-house! They are not so bad as that, not so wasteful of time! I take basilica to mean the saunterers in a basilica, as we might say "the park" for the company in it, "the exchange" for the brokers in it. I feel certain that Prof. Tyrrell is wrong in ascribing the words sed—sunt to a quotation from Atticus's letter. What is wanted is to remove the full stop after sunt. The contrast Cicero is drawing is between the interruption to literary work of a crowd of visitors and of one or two individuals always turning up. The second is the worse—and here I think all workers will agree with him: the crowd of visitors (vulgus) go at the regular hour, but individuals come in at all hours.
[233] Because he would be inclined to sell it cheap in his disgust.
[234] The spectacle Cicero hopes for is Clodius's contests with the triumvirs.
[235] To Arpinum (see [last letter]). The verse is not known, and may be a quotation from his own poem on Marius. He often quotes himself.
[236] This is not mentioned elsewhere. The explanation seems to be that for the ager publicus allotted under the Sempronian laws a small rent had been exacted, which was abolished by a law of B.C. 111 (the name of the law being uncertain). But some ager publicus still paid rent, and the publicanus Mulvius seems to have claimed it from some land held by Terentia, perhaps on the ground that it was land (such as the ager Campanus) not affected by the law of Gracchus, and therefore not by the subsequent law abolishing rent.
[237] Cæsar.