The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1. Marcus Cicero
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suitable for a gymnasium, which would look well in the place you wot of,31 please don't let them slip. I am so delighted with my Tusculan villa that I never feel really happy till I get there. Let me know exactly what you are doing and intending to do about everything.
III (a i, 7)
TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)
Rome, December
b.c. 68, æt. 38
All's well at your mother's,32 and I keep an eye on her. I have undertaken to pay L. Cincius 20,400 sesterces33 to your credit on the Ides of February. Pray see that I receive at the earliest possible opportunity what you say in your letters that you have bought and secured for me. I should also be very much obliged if you would, as you promised, think over the means of securing the library for me. My hope of getting the one enjoyment which I care for, when I come to retire, depends entirely on your kindness.
IV (a i, 9)
b.c. 67. Coss., C. Calpurnius Piso, M. Acilius Glabrio.
The year of Cicero's election to the prætorship. It is the year also of Pompey's great commission by the lex Gabinia against the Pirates. But Cicero does not seem as yet much concerned with "foreign politics."
TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)
Rome
b.c. 67, æt. 39
I get letters from you far too seldom considering that you can much more easily find people starting for Rome than I to Athens: considering, too, that you are more certain of my being at Rome than I of your being at Athens. For instance, it is owing to this uncertainty on my part that this very letter is somewhat short, because not being sure as to where you are, I don't choose my confidential talk to fall into strange hands. The Megaric statues and the Hermæ, which you mentioned in your letters, I am waiting for impatiently. Anything you have of the same kind which may strike you as worthy of my "Academia," do not hesitate to send, and have complete confidence in my money-chest. My present delight is to pick up anything particularly suitable to a "gymnasium." Lentulus promises the use of his ships. I beg you to be zealous in these matters. Thyillus begs you (and I also at his request) to get him some writings of the Eumolpidæ.34
V (a i, 8)
TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)
Rome
b.c. 67, æt. 39
All well at your house. Your mother and sister are regarded with affection by me and my brother Quintus. I have spoken to Acutilius. He says that he has not heard from his agent, and professes surprise that you should make any difficulty of his having refused to guarantee you against farther demands. As to the business of Tadius, the announcement in your letter that you have settled the matter out of court I saw gratified and pleased him very much. That friend of mine35—a most excellent man, upon my honour, and most warmly attached to me—is very angry with you. If I could but know how much you care about it, I should be able to decide how much trouble I am to take in the matter. I have paid L. Cincius the 20,400 sesterces for the Megaric statues in accordance with your letter to me. As to your Hermæ of Pentelic marble with bronze heads, about which you wrote to me—I have fallen in love with them on the spot. So pray send both them and the statues, and anything else that may appear to you to suit the place you wot of, my passion, and your taste—as large a supply and as early as possible. Above all, anything you think appropriate to a gymnasium and terrace. I have such a passion for things of this sort that while I expect assistance from you, I must expect something like rebuke from others. If Lentulus has no vessel there, put them on board anyone you please. My pet Tulliola claims your present and duns me as your security. I am resolved, however, to disown the obligation rather than pay up for you.
VI (a i, 10)
TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)
Tusculum
b.c. 67, æt. 39
"Being in my Tusculan villa" (that's for your "being in the Ceramicus")—however, I being there, a courier sent by your sister arrived from Rome and delivered me a letter from you, announcing at the same time that the courier who was going to you started that very afternoon. The result is that, though I do send an answer, I am forced by the shortness of the time to write only these few words. First, as to softening my friend's feeling towards you, or even reconciling him outright, I pledge you my word to do so. Though I have been attempting it already on my own account, I will now urge the point more earnestly and press him closer, as I think I gather from your letter that you are so set upon it. This much I should like you to realize, that he is very deeply offended; but since I cannot see any serious ground for it, I feel confident that he will do as I wish and yield to my influence. As for my statues and Hermeracles, pray put them on board, as you say in your letter, at your very earliest convenience, and anything else you light upon that may seem to you appropriate to the place you wot of, especially anything you think suitable to a palæstra and gymnasium. I say this because I am sitting there as I write, so that the very place itself reminds me. Besides these, I commission you to get me some medallions to let into the walls of my little entrance-court, and two engraved stone-curbs. Mind you don't engage your library to anyone, however keen a lover you may find; for I am hoarding up my little savings expressly to secure that resource for my old age. As to my brother, I trust that all is as I have ever wished and tried to make it. There are many signs of that result—not least that your sister is enceinte. As for my election, I don't forget that I left the question entirely to you, and I have all along been telling our common friends that I have not only not asked you to come, but have positively forbidden you to do so, because I understood that it was much more important to you to carry through the business you have now in hand, than it is to me to have you at my election. I wish you therefore to feel as though you had been sent to where you are in my interests. Nay, you will find me feeling towards you, and hear of it from others, exactly as though my success were obtained not only in your presence, but by your direct agency.
Tulliola gives notice of action against you. She is dunning me as your surety.
VII (a i, 11)
TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)
Rome
b.c. 67, æt. 39
I was doing so before spontaneously, and have been since greatly stirred by your two letters, with their earnest expressions to the same effect. Besides, Sallustius has been always at my side to prompt me to spare no pains to induce Lucceius to be reconciled to you. But after doing everything that could be done, not only did I fail to renew his old feelings towards you, but I could not even succeed in eliciting the reason of his alienation. On his part, however, he keeps harping on that arbitration case of his, and the other matters which I knew very well before you left Rome were causing him offence. Still, he has certainly got something else fixed deeper in his mind; and this no letters from you, and no commissioning of me will obliterate as easily as you will do in a personal interview, I don't mean merely by your words, but by the old familiar expression of your face—if only you think it worth while, as you will if you will listen to me, and be willing to act with your habitual kindness. Finally, you need not wonder why it is that, whereas I intimated in my letters that I felt hopeful of his yielding to my influence, I now appear to have no such confidence; for you can scarcely believe how much more stubborn his sentiment appears to me than I expected, and how much more obstinate he is in this anger. However, all this will either be cured when you come, or will only be painful to the party in fault.
As to the sentence in your letter, "you suppose by this time I am prætor-elect," let me tell you that there is no class of people at Rome so harassed by every kind of unreasonable difficulty as candidates for office; and that no one knows when the elections will be.36 However, you will hear all this from Philadelphus.
Cicero's "gymnasium" was some arrangement of buildings and plantations more or less on the model of the Greek gymnasia, at his Tusculan villa.
The mother of Atticus lived to be ninety, dying in b.c. 33, not long before Atticus himself, who at her funeral declared that "he had never been reconciled to her, for he had never had a word of dispute with her" (Nep.
This sum (about £163) is for the works of art purchased for the writer by Atticus.
Thyillus (sometimes written Chilius), a Greek poet living at Rome. See Letters XVI and XXI. The Eumolpidæ were a family of priests at Athens who had charge of the temple of Demeter at Eleusis. The πάτρια Εὐμολπιδῶν (the phrase used by Cicero here) may be either books of ritual or records such as priests usually kept: πάτρια is an appropriate word for such rituals or records handed down by priests of one race or family.
Lucceius, as in the first letter and the next.
The