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However, just as there was difference of opinion in the Senate, so there
is the same with the general public. Those who approved the proposal of
Caepio find fault with that of Macer as being vindictive and severe;
those who agree with Macer condemn Caepio's motion as lax and even
inconsistent, for they say it is incongruous to allow a man to keep his
place in the Senate when judges have been allotted to try him. There
was also a third proposal. Valerius Paulinus, who agreed in the main
with Caepio, proposed that an inquiry should be instituted into the case
of Theophanes, as soon as he had concluded his work on the deputation.
It was urged that during his conduct of the prosecution he had committed
a number of offences which came within the scope of the law under which
he had accused Bassus. However, the consuls did not approve this
proposal, though it found great favour with a large proportion of the
Senate. None the less, Paulinus gained a reputation thereby for justice
and consistency. When the Senate rose, Bassus came in for an ovation;
crowds gathered round him and greeted him with a remarkable
demonstration of their joy. Public sympathy had been aroused in his
favour by the old story of the hazards he had gone through being told
over again, by the association of his name with grave perils, by his
tall physique and the sadness and poverty of his old age. You must
consider this letter as the forerunner of another: you will be looking
out for my speech in full and with every detail, and you will have to
look out for it for some time to come, because, owing to the importance
of the subject, it will require more than a mere brief and cursory
revision. Farewell.

4.X.--TO STATIUS SABINUS.

You tell me that Sabina, who left us her heirs, never gave any
instructions that her slave Modestus was to be granted his freedom,
though she left him a legacy in these words: "I give...to Modestus,
whom I have ordered to receive his liberty." You ask me what I think of
the matter. I have consulted some eminent lawyers and they all agree
that Modestus need not be given his freedom, because it was not
expressly granted by Sabina, nor his legacy, because she left it to him
as a slave. But the mistake is obvious to me, and so I think that we
ought to act as though Sabina had ordered him to be freed in express
terms, since she certainly was under the impression that she had ordered
it. I am sure that you will be of my way of thinking, for you are most
punctilious in carrying out the intentions of a dead person, which are,
with honourable heirs, tantamount to legal obligations. For with us
honour has as much weight as necessity has with others. So I propose
that we should allow Modestus to have his liberty and enjoy his legacy,
as if Sabina had taken all proper precautions to ensure that he should.
For a lady who has made a good choice of her heirs has surely taken all
the precautions necessary. Farewell.

4.XI.--TO CORNELIUS MINICIANUS.

Have you heard that Valerius Licinianus is teaching rhetoric in Sicily?
I do not think you can have done, for the news is quite fresh. He is of
praetorian rank, and he used at one time to be considered one of our
most eloquent pleaders at the bar, but now he has fallen so low that he
is an exile instead of being a senator, and a mere teacher of rhetoric
instead of being a prominent advocate. Consequently in his opening
remarks he exclaimed, sorrowfully and solemnly: "O Fortune, what sport
you make to amuse yourself! For you turn senators into professors, and
professors into senators." There is so much gall and bitterness in that
expression that it seems to me that he became a professor merely to have
the opportunity of uttering it. Again, when he entered the hall wearing
a Greek pallium--for those who have been banished with the fire-and-
water formula are not allowed to wear the toga--he first pulled himself
together and then, glancing at his dress, he said, "I shall speak my
declamations in Latin."

You will say that this is all very sad and pitiful, but that a man who
defiled his profession of letters by the guilt of incest deserves to
suffer. It is true that he confessed his guilt, but it is an open
question whether he did so because he was guilty or because he feared an
even heavier punishment if he denied it. For Domitian was in a great
rage and was boiling over with fury because his witnesses had left him
in the lurch. His mind was set upon burying alive Cornelia, the chief
of the Vestal Virgins, as he thought to make his age memorable by such
an example of severity, and, using his authority as Chief Pontiff, or
rather exercising the cruelty of a tyrant and the wanton caprice of a
ruler, he summoned the rest of the pontiffs not to the Palace but to his
Villa at Alba. There, with a wickedness just as monstrous as the crime
which he pretended to be punishing, he declared her guilty of incest,
without summoning her before him and giving her a hearing, though he
himself had not only committed incest with his brother's daughter but
had even caused her death, for she died of abortion during her
widowhood. He immediately despatched some of the pontiffs to see that
his victim was buried alive and put to death. Cornelia invoked in turns
the aid of Vesta and of the rest of the deities, and amid her many cries
this was repeated most frequently: "How can Caesar think me guilty of
incest, when he has conquered and triumphed after my hands have
performed the sacred rites?" It is not known whether her purpose was to
soften Caesar's heart or to deride him, whether she spoke the words to
show her confidence in herself or her contempt of the Emperor. Yet she
continued to utter them until she was led to the place of execution, and
whether she was innocent or not, she certainly appeared to be so. Nay,
even when she was being let down into the dreadful pit and her dress
caught as she was being lowered, she turned and readjusted it, and when
the executioner offered her his hand she declined it and drew back, as
though she put away from her with horror the idea of having her chaste
and pure body defiled by his loathsome touch. Thus she preserved her
sanctity to the last and displayed all the tokens of a chaste woman,
like Hecuba, "taking care that she might fall in seemly wise."

Moreover, when Celer, the Roman knight who was accused of having
intrigued with Cornelia, was being scourged with rods in the Forum, he
did nothing but cry out, "What have I done? I have done nothing."
Consequently Domitian's evil reputation for cruelty and injustice blazed
up on all hands. He fastened upon Licinianus for hiding a freedwoman of
Cornelia on one of his farms. Licinianus was advised by his friends who
interested themselves on his behalf to take refuge in making a
confession and beg for pardon, if he wished to escape being flogged in
the Forum, and he did so. Herennius Senecio spoke for him in his
absence very much in the words of Homer, "Patroclus is fallen," for he
said, "Instead of being an advocate, I am the bearer of news:
Licinianus has removed himself." This so pleased Domitian that he
allowed his gratification to betray him into exclaiming, "Licinianus has
cleared us." He even went on to say that it would not do to press a man
who admitted his fault too hard, and gave him permission to get together
what he could of his belongings before his goods were confiscated, and
granted him a pleasant place of exile as a reward for his consideration.
Subsequently, by the clemency of the Emperor Nerva, he was removed to
Sicily, where he now is a Professor of Rhetoric and takes his revenge
upon Fortune in his prefatory remarks.

You see how careful I am to obey your wishes, as I not only give you the
news of the town, but news from abroad, and minutely trace a story from
its very beginning. I took for granted that, as you were away from Rome
at the time, all you heard of Licinianus was that he had been banished
for incest. For rumour only gives one the gist of the matter, not the
various stages through which it passes. Surely I deserve that you
should return the compliment and write and tell me what is going on in
your town and neighbourhood, for something worthy of note is always
happening. But say what you will, provided you give me the news in as
long a letter as I have written to you. I shall count up not only the
pages, but the lines and the syllables. Farewell.

4.XII.--TO MATURUS ARRIANUS.

You have a regard for Egnatius Marcellinus and you often commend him to
my notice; you will love him and commend him the more when you hear what
he has recently done. After setting out as quaestor for his province,
he lost by death a secretary, who was allotted to him, before the day
when the man's salary fell due, and he made up his mind and resolved
that he ought not to keep the money which had been paid over to him to
give to the secretary. So when he returned he consulted first Caesar
and then the Senate, on Caesar's recommendation, as to what was to be
done with the money. It was a trifling question, but, after all, it was
a question. The secretary's heirs claimed it should pass to them; the
prefects of the treasury claimed it for the people. The case was heard,
and counsel for the heirs and for the people pleaded in turn, and both
spoke well to the point. Caecilius Strabo proposed that it should be
paid over to the treasury; Baebius Macer that it should be given to the
man's heirs; Strabo carried the day. I hope you will praise Marcellinus
for his conduct, as I did on the spot, for, although he thinks it more
than enough to have been congratulated by the Emperor and the Senate, he
will be glad to have your commendation as well. All who are anxious for
glory and reputation are wonderfully pleased with the approbation and
praise even of men of no particular account, while Marcellinus has such
regard for you that he attaches the greatest importance to your opinion.
Besides, if he knows that the fame of his action has penetrated so far,
he cannot but be pleased at the ground his praises have covered and the
rapidity and distance they have travelled. For it somehow happens that
men prefer a wide even to a well-grounded reputation. Farewell.

4.XIII.--TO TACITUS.

I am delighted that you have returned to Rome, for though your arrival
is always welcome, it is especially so to me at the present moment. I
shall be spending a few more days at my Tusculan villa in order to
finish a small work which I have in hand, for I am afraid that if I do
not carry it right through now that it is nearly completed I shall find
it irksome to start on it again. In the meanwhile, that I may lose no
time, I am sending this letter as a sort of forerunner to make a request
which, when I am in town, I shall ask you to grant.

But first of all, let me tell you my reasons for asking it. When I was
last in my native district a son of a fellow townsman of mine, a youth
under age, came to pay his respects to me. I said to him, "Do you keep
up your studies?" "Yes," said he. "Where?" I asked. "At Mediolanum,"
he replied. "But why not here?" I queried. Then the lad's father, who
was with him, and indeed had brought him, replied, "Because we have no
teachers here." "How is that?" I asked. "It is a matter of urgent
importance to you who are fathers"--and it so happened, luckily, that a
number of fathers were listening to me--"that your children should get
their schooling here on the spot. For where can they pass the time so
pleasantly as in their native place; where can they be brought up so
virtuously as under their parents' eyes; where so inexpensively as at
home? If you put your money together you could hire teachers at a
trifling cost, and you could add to their stipends the sums you now
spend upon your sons' lodgings and travelling money, which are no light
amounts. I have no children of my own, but still, in the interest of
the State, which I may consider as my child or my parent, I am prepared
to contribute a third part of the amount which you may decide to club
together. I would even promise the whole sum, if I were not afraid that
if I did so my generosity would be corrupted to serve private interests,
as I see is the case in many places where teachers are employed at the
public charge. There is but one way of preventing this evil, and that
is by leaving the right of employing the teachers to the parents alone,
who will be careful to make a right choice if they are required to find
the money. For those who perhaps would be careless in dealing with
other people's money will assuredly be careful in spending their own,
and they will take care that the teacher who gets my money will be worth
his salt when he will also get money from them as well. So put your
heads together, make up your minds, and let my example inspire you, for
I can assure you that the greater the contribution you lay upon me the
better I shall be pleased. You cannot make your children a more
handsome present than this, nor can you do your native place a better
turn. Let those who are born here be brought up here, and from their
earliest days accustom them to love and know every foot of their native
soil. I hope you may be able to attract such distinguished teachers
that boys will be sent here to study from the towns round about, and
that, as now your children flock to other places, so in the future other
people's children may flock hither."

I thought it best to repeat this conversation in detail and from the
very beginning, to convince you how glad I shall be if you will
undertake my commission. As the subject is one of such importance, I
beg and implore you to look out for some teachers from among the throng
of learned people who gather round you in admiration of your genius,
whom we can sound on the matter, but in such a way that we do not pledge
ourselves to employ any one of them. For I wish to give the parents a
perfectly free hand. They must judge and choose for themselves; my
responsibilities go no further than a sympathetic interest and the
payment of my share of the cost. So if you find any one who is
confident in his own abilities, let him go to Comum, but on the express
understanding that he builds upon no certainty beyond his own confidence
in himself. Farewell.

4.XIV.--TO PATERNUS.

Perhaps you are asking and looking out for a speech of mine, as you
usually do, but I am sending you some wares of another sort, exotic
trifles, the fruit of my playtime. You will receive with this letter
some hendecasyllabics of mine with which I pass my leisure hours
pleasantly when driving, or in the bath, or at dinner. They contain my
jests, my sportive fancies, my loves, sorrows, displeasures and wrath,
described sometimes in a humble, sometimes in a lofty strain. My object
has been to please different tastes by this variety of treatment, and I
hope that certain pieces will be liked by every one. Some of them will
possibly strike you as being rather wanton, but a man of your
scholarship will bear in mind that the very greatest and gravest authors
who have handled such subjects have not only dealt with lascivious
themes, but have treated them in the plainest language. I have not done
that, not because I have greater austerity than they--by no means, but
because I am not quite so daring. Otherwise, I am aware that Catullus
has laid down the best and truest regulations governing this style of
poetry in his lines: "For it becomes a pious bard to be chaste himself,
though there is no need for his verses to be so. Nay, if they are to
have wit and charm, they must be voluptuous and not too modest."

You may guess from this what store I set on your critical judgment when
I say that I prefer you should weigh the whole in the balance rather
than pick out a few for your special praise. Yet pieces, perfect in
themselves, cease to appear so the moment they are all on a dead level
of perfection. Besides, a reader of judgment and acumen ought not to
compare different pieces with one another, but to weigh each on its own
merits and not to think one inferior to another, if it is perfect of its
kind. But why say more? What more foolish than to excuse or commend
mere trifles with a long preface? Still there is one thing of which I
think I should advise you, and it is that I am thinking of calling these
trifles "Hendecasyllables," a title which simply refers to the single
metre employed. So, whether you prefer to call them epigrams, or
idylls, or eclogues, or little poems, as many do, or any other name,
remember that I only offer you "Hendecasyllables." I appeal to your
candour to speak to me frankly about my tiny volume as you would to a
third person, and this is no hard request. For if this trifling work of
mind were my chef d'oeuvre, or my one solitary composition, it might
perhaps seem harsh to say, "Seek out some other employment for your
talent," but it is perfectly gentle and kindly criticism to say, "You
have another sphere in which you show to greater advantage." Farewell.

4.XV.--TO FUNDANUS.

If I have ever been guided by judgment, it has been in the strength of
regard I have for Asinius Rufus. He is one of a thousand, and a devoted
admirer of all good men among whom why may I not include myself? He is
on the very closest of terms of friendship with Cornelius Tacitus, and
you know what an honourable man Tacitus is. So if you have any high
opinion of both Tacitus and myself, you must also think as highly of
Rufus as you do of us, since similarity of character is perhaps the
strongest bond for cementing friendships. Rufus has a number of
children. Even in this respect he has acted the part of a good citizen,
in that he was willing to freely undertake the responsibilities entailed
upon him by the fruitfulness of his wife, in an age when the advantages
of being childless are such that many people consider even one son to be
a burden. He has scorned all those advantages, and has also become a
grandfather. For a grandfather he is, thanks to Saturius Firmus, whom
you will love as I do when you know him as intimately.

I mention these particulars to show you what a large and numerous
household you can oblige by a single favour, and I am induced to ask it
from you, in the first place, because I wish to do so, and in the
second, owing to a good omen. For we hope and prophesy that next year
you will be consul, and we are led to make that forecast by your own
good qualities, and by the opinion that the Emperor has of you. But it
also happens that Asinius Bassus, the eldest son of Rufus, will be
quaestor in the same year, and he is a young man even more worthy than
his father, though I don't know whether I ought to mention such a fact,
which the modesty of the young fellow would deny, but which his father
desires me to think and openly declare. Though you always repose
confidence in what I say, it is difficult, I know, for you to credit my
account of an absent man when I say that he possesses splendid industry,
probity, learning, wit, application, and powers of memory, as you will
discover for yourself when you have tried him. I only wish that our age
was so productive of men of high character that there were others to
whom you ought to give preference over Bassus; if it did, I should be
the first to advise and exhort you to take a good look round, and
consider long and carefully on whom your choice should fall. But as it
is--yet no, I do not wish to boast about my friend, I will merely say
that he is a young man well deserving of adoption by you as a son in the
old-fashioned way. For prudent men, like yourself, ought to receive as
children from the State children such as we are accustomed to hope that
Nature will bestow upon us. When you are consul it will become you to
have as quaestor a man whose father was praetor, and whose relatives are
of consular rank, especially as he, although still young, is in his turn
already in their judgment an honour to them and their family. So I hope
you will grant my request and take my advice.

Above all, pardon me if you think I am acting prematurely, first,
because in a State where to get a thing done depends on the earliness of
the application, those who wait for the proper time find the fruit not
only ripe but plucked, and, secondly, when one is anxious to get a
favour it is very pleasant to enjoy in advance the certainty of
obtaining it. Give Bassus the opportunity of respecting you even now as
consul, and do you entertain a friendly regard for him as your quaestor,
and let us who are devoted to both of you have the enjoyment of this
double satisfaction. For while our regard for you and Bassus is such
that we shall use all our resources, energy, and influence to obtain the
advancement of Bassus, no matter to what consul he is assigned as
quaestor--as well as the advancement of any quaestor that may be
allotted to you--it would be immensely gratifying to us if we could at
one and the same time prove our friendship and advance your interests as
consul by helping the cause of our young friend, and if you of all
people, whose wishes the Senate is so ready to gratify, and in whose
recommendations they place such implicit trust, were to stand forth as
the seconder of my desires. Farewell.

4.XVI.--TO VALERIUS PAULINUS.

Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice, on my account, on your own, and on that of
the public. The student still has his meed of recompense. Just
recently, when I had to speak in the Court of the Hundred, I could find
no way in except by crossing the tribunal and passing through the
judges, all the other places were so crowded and thronged. Moreover, a
certain young man of fashion who had his tunic torn to pieces--as often
happens in a crowd--kept his ground for seven long hours with only his
toga thrown round him. For my speech lasted all that time; and though
it cost me a great effort, the results were more than worth it. Let us
therefore prosecute our studies, and not allow the idleness of other
people to be an excuse for laziness on our part. We can still find an
audience and readers, provided only that our compositions are worth
hearing, and worth the paper they are written on. Farewell.

4.XVII.--TO ASINIUS GALLUS.

You recommend and press me to take up the case of Corellia, in her
absence, against Caius Caecilius, the consul-designate. I thank you for
the recommendation, but I am a little hurt at your pressing me; it was
right of you to recommend me to do so, and so inform me of the case, but
I needed no pressing to do what it would have been scandalous for me to
leave undone. Am I the man to hesitate a second about protecting the
rights of a daughter of Corellius? It is true that I am not only an
acquaintance, but also a close friend of him whom you ask me to oppose.
Moreover, he is a man of position and the office for which he has been
chosen is a great one, one indeed for which I cannot but feel all the
greater respect, inasmuch as I recently held it myself. It is natural
that a man should desire the dignities to which he has himself attained
to be held in the very highest esteem.

However, all those considerations seem unimportant and trifling when I
consider that I am about to champion the daughter of Corellius. I
picture to myself that worthy gentleman, a man second to none in our age
for gravity, uprightness of life, and quickness of judgment. I began to
love him because I admired him so much, and the better I learned to know
him the more my admiration grew--a result that rarely happens. Yes, and
I knew his character thoroughly; he had no secrets from me, I knew him
in his sportive and serious moods, in his moments both of sorrow and
joy. I was but a young man, yet, young as I was, he held me in honour,
and I will make bold to say that he paid me the respect he would have
paid to one of his own years. When I sought advancement, it was he who
canvassed and spoke for me; when I entered upon an office he introduced
me and stood by my side; in all administrative work he gave me counsel
and kept me straight; in short, in all my public duties, despite his
weakness and his years, he showed himself to have the energy and fire of
youth. How he helped to build up my reputation at home and in public,
and even with the Emperor himself! For when it so happened that the
conversation in the presence of the Emperor Nerva turned upon the
subject of the promising young men of the day, and several speakers sang
my praises, Corellius kept silence for a little while--a fact which
added material weight to his remarks--and then he said in that grave
manner you knew so well, "I must be careful how I praise Secundus, for
he never does anything without taking my advice." The words were a
tribute such as it would have been unreasonable for me to ask for or
expect, for they amounted to this, that I never acted except in the most
prudent manner, since I invariably acted on the advice of a man of his
consummate prudence.

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