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I have brought you up to date as well as I could. You will say, "It was
not worth while, for what have I to do with such a long letter?" If you
do, don't ask again what is going on at Rome, and bear in mind that you
cannot call a letter long which covers so many days, so many trials, and
so many defendants and pleadings. I think I have dealt with all these
subjects as briefly as I am sure they are exactly dealt with. But no, I
was rash to say "exactly"; I remember a point which I had omitted, and I
will tell you about it even now, though it is out of its proper place.
Homer does this, and many other authors have followed his example--with
very good effect too--though that is not my reason for so doing. One of
the witnesses, annoyed at being summoned to appear, or bribed by some
one of the defendants in order to weaken the prosecution, laid an
accusation against Norbanus Licinianus, a member of the deputation, who
had been instructed to get up the case, and charged him with having
acted in collusion with the other side in relation to Casta, the wife of
Classicus. It is a legal rule in such instances that the trial of the
accused must be finished before inquiry is made into a charge of
collusion, on the ground that one can best form an opinion on the bona
fides of the prosecution by noticing how the case has been carried
through. However, Norbanus reaped no advantage from this point of law,
nor did his position as member of the deputation, nor his duties as one
of those getting up the action stand him in good stead. A storm of
prejudice broke out against him, and there is no denying that his hands
were crime-stained, that he, like many others, had taken advantage of
the evil times of Domitian, and that he had been selected by the
provincials to get up the case, not as a man of probity and honour, but
because he had been a personal enemy of Classicus, by whom, indeed, he
had been banished.

He demanded that a day should be fixed for his trial, and that the
charge against him should be published; both were refused, and he was
obliged to answer on the spot. He did so, and though the thorough
badness and depravity of the fellow make me hesitate to say whether he
showed more impudence or resolution, he certainly replied with great
readiness. There were sundry things brought against him which did him
much greater damage than the charge of collusion, and two men of
consular rank, Pomponius Rufus and Libo Frugi, severely damaged him by
giving evidence to the effect that during the reign of Domitian he had
assisted the prosecution of Salvius Liberalis before the judge. He was
convicted and banished to an island. Consequently, when I was accusing
Casta, I specially pressed the point that her accuser had been found
guilty of collusion. But I did so in vain, and we had the novel and
inconsistent result that the accused was acquitted though her accuser
was found guilty of collusion with her. You may ask what we were about
while this was going on. We told the Senate that we had received all
our instructions for this public trial from Norbanus, and that the case
ought to be tried afresh if he were proved guilty of collusion, and so,
while his trial was proceeding, we sat still. Subsequently Norbanus was
present every day the trial lasted, and showed right up to the end the
same resolute or impudent front.

I wonder if I have forgotten anything else. Well, I almost did. On the
last day Salvius Liberalis bitterly assailed the rest of the deputation
on the ground that they had not brought accusations against all whom
they were commissioned to accuse by the province. He is a powerful and
able speaker, and he put them in some danger. However, I went to the
protection of those excellent and most grateful men, and they declare
that they owe it entirely to me that they safely weathered that storm.
This is the end, positively the end of my letter: I will not add
another syllable, even if I discover that I have still omitted to tell
you something. Farewell.

3.X.--TO VESTRICIUS SPURINNA AND HIS WIFE COTTIA.

When I was last at your house I did not tell you that I had composed
some verses about your son. I refrained from so doing, first, because I
had not written them simply for the sake of reciting them, but in order
to relieve my feelings of love and sorrow; and, in the second place,
Spurinna, I thought that when you were told that I had given a
recitation--as you mentioned to me--you had also heard its subject.
Moreover, I was afraid of troubling you in your happiness by recalling
to your remembrance your bitter sorrow. Even now I have been hesitating
somewhat as to whether I should send you at your request only the verses
that I actually read, or whether I should also send those which I am
thinking of reserving for another volume. For my love for him was such
that I find it impossible to do justice to the memory of one who was so
dear and precious to me in a single volume, and his fame will be best
consulted if it is husbanded and carefully expressed. But though, as I
say, I am doubtful whether to show you all that I have composed on the
subject, or whether I should still keep back a part, it has seemed to me
that frankness and our friendship demand that I should let you have the
whole, especially as you promise that you will keep them strictly entre
nous until I decide to publish them. The only other request I make is
that you will be equally candid with me and tell me if you think any
additions, alterations, or omissions should be made. It is difficult to
focus the mind on such subjects when one is in trouble, but in spite of
that I want you to deal with me as you would with a sculptor or a
painter who was making a model or portrait of your son. In such a case,
you would advise him as to the points he should bring out and alter, and
similarly I hope you will guide and direct me, for I am essaying a
likeness, neither frail nor perishable, but one, as you think, which
will last for ever. It will be the more durable, according to its
trueness to life and correctness of detail. Farewell.

3.XI.--TO JULIUS GENITOR.

Our friend Artemidorus has so much goodness of heart that he always
exaggerates the services his friends render him, and hence, in my case,
though it is true that I have done him a good turn, he speaks of it in
far too glowing language. When the philosophers were banished from the
city I was staying with him in his suburban residence, and the visit was
the more talked about and the more dangerous to me, because I was
praetor at the time. Moreover, as he stood in need of a considerable
sum of money to discharge some debts which he had incurred for the most
honourable of reasons, I borrowed the sum and gave it to him as a free
gift, when certain of his powerful and rich friends held aloof. I did
so in spite of the fact that seven of my friends had been put to death
or banished; Senecio, Rusticus, and Helvidius having suffered the
former, and Mauricus, Gratilla, Arria, and Fannia the latter punishment.
With all these thunderbolts falling round me, I felt scorched, and there
were certain clear indications that a like fate was hanging over my
head, but I do not on that account think I deserve the splendid credit
which Artemidorus assigns me--I only claim to have avoided the disgrace
of deserting my friends. For I loved and admired his father-in-law,
Caius Musonius, as far as the difference in our ages would permit, while
as for Artemidorus himself, even when I was on active service as tribune
in Syria, I was on terms of close intimacy with him, and the first sign
I gave of possessing any brains at all was that I appeared to appreciate
a man who was either the absolute sage, or the nearest possible
approximation to such a character. For, of all those who nowadays call
themselves philosophers, you will hardly find another to match him in
the qualities of sincerity and truth. I say nothing of the physical
fortitude with which he bears the extremes both of summer and winter, or
of the way in which he never shrinks from work, never indulges himself
in the pleasures of eating and drinking, and keeps constant restraint
over his appetites and desires. In another man these would appear great
virtues, but in Artemidorus they appear mere trifles compared with his
other noble qualities, which obtained for him the distinction of being
chosen by Caius Musonius as his son-in-law amid a crowd of disciples
belonging to all ranks of society. As I think of all these things it is
pleasant to know that he sings my praises so loudly, not only to others
but also to you, but I am afraid he overdoes them, for--to go back again
to the point whence I started--he is so good-hearted that he is given to
exaggeration. It is one of his faults--an honourable one, no doubt, but
still a fault--that, though he is otherwise most level-headed, he
entertains a higher opinion of his friends than they deserve. Farewell.

3.XII.--TO CATILIUS SEVERUS.

Yes, I will come to dinner, but even now I must stipulate that the meal
be short and frugal, and brimming over only with Socratic talk. Nay,
even in this respect there must be a limit fixed, for there will be
crowds of people going to make calls before day breaks, and even Cato
did not escape when he fell in with them, though Caius Caesar, in
telling the story, blames him in such a way that it redounds to his
praise. For he says that when those who met him drunk uncovered his
head and saw who it was, they blushed at the sight, and he adds: "You
would think it was not they who had caught Cato, but Cato who had caught
them." What greater testimony could there be to Cato's character than
that men respected him even when he was in liquor? But for our dinner
let us agree not only to have a modest and inexpensive feast but to
break up in good time, for we are not Catos that our enemies cannot
censure us without praising us in the same breath. Farewell.

3.XII.--TO VOCONIUS ROMANUS.

I am sending you, at your request, the speech in which I lately thanked
our best of emperors for my nomination as Consul, and I should have sent
it to you even though you had not asked for it. I hope you will take
into consideration both the beauty and the difficulty of the theme. For
in other speeches the attention of the reader is kept fixed by the
novelty of the subject, but in this case every detail is familiar, a
matter of common knowledge, and has been said before. Consequently the
reader will be lazy and careless and will only pay attention to the
diction, and when merely the diction is attended to, it is not easy to
give satisfaction. I wish that people would pay equal regard to the
arrangement of the speech, to its transitions, and the figures of speech
employed. For even the unlearned sometimes manage to get a noble
inspiration and express it in powerful language, but skilful arrangement
and variety of metaphor are only attained by the scholarly. Besides,
one must not for ever keep at the same high and lofty level. For, just
as in painting there is nothing like shadow to bring out the effect of
light, so in a speech it is as important on occasions to reduce the
treatment to an ordinary level as to raise it to a high one. But why do
I talk of first principles to a man of your accomplishments? What I do
wish to insist upon is to ask you to mark the passages which you think
should be corrected. For I shall think that you are all the better
pleased with the remainder if I find that there are certain portions
that you do not like. Farewell.

3.XIV.--TO ACILIUS.

A shocking affair, worthy of more publicity than a letter can bestow,
has befallen Largius Macedo, a man of praetorian rank, at the hands of
his own slaves. He was known to be an overbearing and cruel master, and
one who forgot--or rather remembered to keenly--that his own father had
been a slave. He was bathing at his villa near Formiae, when he was
suddenly surrounded by his slaves. One seized him by the throat,
another struck him on the forehead, and others smote him in the chest,
belly, and even--I am shocked to say--in the private parts. When they
thought the breath had left his body they flung him on to the hot tiled
floor to see if he was still alive. Whether he was insensible, or
merely pretended to be so, he certainly did not move, and lying there at
full length, he made them think that he was actually dead. At length
they carried him out as though he had been overcome by the heat and
handed him over to his more trusty servants, while his mistresses ran
shrieking and wailing to his side. Aroused by their cries and restored
by the coolness of the room where he lay, he opened his eyes and moved
his limbs, betraying thereby that he was still alive, as it was then
safe to do so. His slaves took to flight; most of them have been
captured, but some are still being hunted for. Thanks to the attentions
he received, Macedo was kept alive for a few days and had the
satisfaction of full vengeance before he died, for he exacted the same
punishment while he still lived as is usually taken when the victim of a
murder dies. You see the dangers, the affronts and insults we are
exposed to, and no one can feel at all secure because he is an easy and
mild-tempered master, for villainy not deliberation murders masters.

But enough of that subject! Have I any other news to tell you? Let me
see! No, there is nothing. If there were, I would tell you, for I have
room enough on this sheet, and, as to-day is a holiday, I should have
plenty of time to write more. But I will just add an incident which I
chance to recall that happened to the same Macedo. When he was in one
of the public baths in Rome, a curious and--the event has shown--an
ominous accident happened to him. Macedo's servant lightly tapped a
Roman knight with his hand to induce him to make room for them to pass,
and the knight turned round and struck, not the slave who had touched
him but Macedo himself, such a heavy blow with his fist that he almost
felled him. So one may say that the bath has been by certain stages the
scene first of humiliation to him and then of death. Farewell.

3.XV.--TO SILIUS PROCULUS.

You ask me to read your poems while I am in the country, and see whether
I think they are worth publishing; you even add entreaties, and quote an
authority for the request; for you beg me to take a few holiday hours
from my own studies and spend them on your efforts, and you say that
Marcus Tullius showed wonderful good nature in encouraging the talent of
poets. Well, there was no need to beg and pray of me to do such a
thing, for I have the most profound regard for the poetic art and I have
a very strong affection for you, so I will comply with your request and
give them a careful and willing reading. But even now I think I am
justified in writing and telling you that your work is charming and
should on no account be kept from publication, as far as I could judge
from the pieces that you read aloud in my hearing--unless, indeed, your
delivery took me in, for you read with great charm and skill. But I
feel pretty sure that I am not so completely led away by the mere
pleasures of the ear that my critical powers are wholly disarmed by the
pleasure of listening--they might be blunted possibly and have their
edge turned somewhat, but they certainly could not be subverted or
destroyed. Consequently, I am not rash in pronouncing a general verdict
on the whole even now, but in order to judge of them in detail, I must
read them through. Farewell.

3.XVI.--TO NEPOS.

I have often observed that the greatest words and deeds, both of men and
women, are not always the most famous, and my opinion has been confirmed
by a talk I had with Fannia yesterday. She is a granddaughter of the
Arria who comforted her husband in his dying moments and showed him how
to die. She told me many stories of her grandmother, just as heroic but
not so well known as the manner of her death, and I think they will seem
to you as you read them quite as remarkable as they did to me as I
listened to them.

Her husband, Caecina Paetus, was lying ill, and so too was their son,
both, it was thought, without chance of recovery. The son died. He was
a strikingly handsome lad, modest as he was handsome, and endeared to
his parents for his other virtues quite as much as because he was their
son. Arria made all the arrangements for the funeral and attended it in
person, without her husband knowing anything of it. When she entered
his room she pretended that the boy was still alive and even much
better, and when her husband constantly asked how the lad was getting
on, she replied: "He has had a good sleep, and has taken food with a
good appetite." Then when the tears, which she had long forced back,
overcame her and burst their way out, she would leave the room, and not
till then give grief its course, returning when the flood of tears was
over, with dry eyes and composed look, as though she had left her
bereavement at the door of the chamber. It was indeed a splendid deed
of hers to unsheath the sword, to plunge it into her breast, then to
draw it out and offer it to her husband, with the words which will live
for ever and seem to have been more than mortal, "Paetus, it does not
hurt." But at that moment, while speaking and acting thus, there was
fame and immortality before her eyes, and I think it an even nobler deed
for her without looking for any reward of glory or immortality to force
back her tears, to hide her grief, and, even when her son was lost to
her, to continue to act a mother's part.

When Scribonianus had started a rebellion in Illyricum against Claudius,
Paetus joined his party, and, on the death of Scribonianus, he was
brought prisoner to Rome. As he was about to embark, Arria implored the
soldiers to take her on board with him. "For," she pleaded, "as he is
of consular rank, you will assign him some servants to serve his meals,
to valet him and put on his shoes. I will perform all these offices for
him." When they refused her, she hired a fishing-boat and in that tiny
vessel followed the big ship. Again, in the presence of Claudius she
said to the wife of Scribonianus, when that woman was voluntarily giving
evidence of the rebellion, "What, shall I listen to you in whose bosom
Scribonianus was killed and yet you still live?" Those words showed
that her resolve to die gloriously was due to no sudden impulse.
Moreover, when her son-in-law Thrasea sought to dissuade her from
carrying out her purpose, and urged among his other entreaties the
following argument: "If I had to die, would you wish your daughter to
die with me?" she replied, "If she had lived as long and as happily with
you as I have lived with Paetus, yes." This answer increased the
anxiety of her friends, and she was watched with greater care. Noticing
this, she said, "Your endeavours are vain. You can make me die hard,
but you cannot prevent me from dying." As she spoke she jumped from her
chair and dashed her head with great force against the wall of the
chamber, and fell to the ground. When she came to herself again, she
said, "I told you that I should find a difficult way of dying if you
denied me an easy one."

Do not sentences like these seem to you more noble than the "Paetus, it
does not hurt," to which they gradually led up? Yet, while that saying
is famous all over the world, the others are unknown. But they confirm
what I said at the outset, that the noblest words and deeds are not
always the most famous. Farewell.

3.XVII.--TO JULIUS SERVIANUS.

Is everything quite well with you, that I have not had a letter from you
for so long? Or if all is well, are you busy? Or if you are not busy,
is it that you rarely get a chance of writing, or never a chance at all?
Relieve my anxiety, which is altogether too much for me, and do so even
if you have to send a special messenger. I will pay the travelling
expenses and give him a present for himself, provided only he brings me
the news I wish to hear. I am in good health if being in good health is
to live in a state of constant anxiety, expecting and fearing every hour
to hear that my dearest friend has met with any one of the dreadful
accidents to which men are liable. Farewell.

3.XVIII.--TO CURIUS SEVERUS.

As Consul, it naturally devolved upon me to thank the Emperor in the
name of the State. After doing so in the Senate in the usual way and in
a speech befitting the place and the occasion, I thought that it would
highly become me, as a good citizen, to cover the same ground in greater
detail and much more fully in a book. In the first place, I desired
that the Emperor might be encouraged by well-deserved praise of his
virtues; and, secondly, that future Emperors might be shown how best to
attain similar glory by having such an example before them, rather than
by any precepts of a teacher. For though it is a very proper thing to
point out to an Emperor the virtues he ought to display, it involves a
heavy responsibility to do so and it has rather a presumptuous look,
whereas to eulogise an excellent ruler and so hold up a beacon to his
successors by which they may steer their path, is not only an act of
public service but involves no assumption of superiority.

But I have been more than a little pleased to find that when I proposed
to give a public reading of this speech, my friends, whom I invited not
by letters and personal notes, but in general terms, such as "if you
find it convenient," or "if you have plenty of time"--for no one has
ever plenty of time at Rome, nor is it ever convenient to listen to a
recital--attended two days running, in spite of shockingly bad weather,
and when my modesty would have brought the recital to an end, they
forced me to continue it for another day. Am I to take this as a
compliment to myself or to learning? I should prefer to think to the
latter, for learning, after having almost drooped to death, is now
reviving a little. Yet consider the subject which occasioned all this
enthusiasm! Why, in the Senate, when we had to listen to these
panegyrics we used to be bored to death after the first moment; yet now
there are people to be found who are willing to read and listen to the
readings for three days, not because the subject is dealt with more
eloquently than before, but because it is treated with greater freedom,
and therefore the work is more willingly undertaken. This will be
another feather in the cap of our Emperor, that those speeches which
used to be as odious as they were unreal are now as popular as they are
true to facts.

But I especially noticed with pleasure both the attention and the
critical faculties of the audience, for I remarked that they seemed most
pleased with the passages which were least adorned. I do not forget
that I have read only to a few what I have written for all the reading
public, yet none the less I take for granted that the multitude will
pass a similar judgment, and I am delighted with their taste for simple
passages. Just as the audience in the theatres made the musicians
cultivate a false taste in playing, so now I am encouraged to hope that
they will encourage the players to cultivate a good taste. For all who
write to please will write in the style which they see is popular. As
for myself, I hope that with such a subject a luxuriant style may pass
muster, inasmuch as the passages which are closely reasoned and stripped
of all ornament are more likely to seem forced and far-fetched than
those treated in a more buoyant and, as it were, more exultant strain.
Nevertheless, I am just as anxious for the day to come (I hope it has
come already!) when mere charming and honeyed words, however justly
applied, shall give way to a chaste simplicity. Well, I have told you
all about my three days' work; when you read it I hope that, though you
were absent at the time, you may be as pleased at the compliment paid to
learning and to me as you would have been if you had been there.
Farewell.

3.XIX.--TO CALVISIUS RUFUS.

I want to ask your advice, as I have often done, on a matter of private
business. Some land adjoining my own, and even running into mine, is
for sale, and while there are many considerations tempting me to buy it,
there are equally weighty reasons to dissuade me. I feel tempted to
purchase, first, because the estate will look well if rounded off, and,
secondly, because the conveniences resulting therefrom would be as great
as the pleasures it would give me. The same work could be carried on at
both places, they could be visited at the same cost of travelling, they
could be put under one steward and practically one set of managers, and,
while one villa was kept up in style, the other house might be just kept
in repair. Moreover, one must take into account the cost of furniture
and head-servants, besides gardeners, smiths, and even the gamekeepers,
and it makes a great difference whether you have all these in one place
or have them distributed in several. Yet, on the other hand, I am
afraid it may be rash to risk so much of one's property to the same
storms and the same accidents, and it seems safer to meet the caprices
of Fortune by not putting all one's eggs into the same basket. Again,
there is something exceedingly pleasant in changing one's air and place,
and in the travelling from one estate to another.

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