B.C. 46, ÆT. 60 fix your mind upon and handle themes, the study and delight of which are to be preferred to all their employments and pleasures: so I consider these days you are spending at Tusculum to be a specimen of true life, and I would with pleasure resign all the wealth in the world to anybody on condition of being allowed, without the interruption of violence, to live a life like yours. And this, indeed, I imitate to the best of my ability, and with the utmost delight find repose in the studies which we both pursue. For who will grudge us this privilege, that, when our country either cannot or will not employ our services, we should return to that way of life, which many learned men have, perhaps wrongly, but still have thought was to be preferred even to public business? These studies, in the opinion of some eminent men, involve a kind of furlough from public duties: why then, when the state allows it, should we not enjoy them to the full?
But I have more than fulfilled Caninius's demand; for he quite legitimately[1] asked me for anything I knew which you didn't: but I am telling you what you know better than I myself who tell it. I will accordingly do what I was asked, that is, prevent your being ignorant of anything that is in your way connected with this crisis which I may hear.[2]
CCCCLXIX (A XII, 5, §§ 1, 2)
TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)
Tusculum (July)
"Quintus the elder for the fourth time"[3] (or rather for
the thousandth time)—is a fool, for being rejoiced at his*
- ↑ Iure, the MS. reading. I am not satisfied that it is rightly rejected, as it is by all editors; ut scriberem is easily understood after rogarat. He elsewhere (vol. i., p. 354) says that the proper purpose of a letter is to inform the recipient of what he does not but ought to know, and the writer does. So in asking that, Caninius asked iure, in accordance with the law of letter writing.
- ↑ The reading is doubtful.
- ↑ The beginning of a line of Ennius, Quintu' pater quartum consul.
