B.C. 45, ÆT. 61 am ashamed of being a slave. Accordingly, I pose as being busy about other things, to avoid the reproach of Plato.[1] We have no certain intelligence from Spain as yet—in fact no news at all. For my sake I am sorry that you are out of town, for your own I am glad. But your letter-carrier is getting clamorous. Good-bye then, and love me as you have done from boyhood.
DXXX (F XV, 16)
TO C. CASSIUS LONGINUS (AT BRUNDISIUM)
Rome (January)
I think you must be a little ashamed at this being the third
letter inflicted on you before I have a page or a syllable
from you. But I will not press you: I shall expect, or
rather exact, a longer letter. For my part, if I had a messenger
always at hand, I should write even three an hour.
For somehow it makes you seem almost present when I
write anything to you, and that not "by way of phantoms of
images," as your new friends express it,[2] who hold that
"mental pictures" are caused by what Catius called "spectres"—for
I must remind you that Catius Insuber the
Epicurean, lately dead, calls "spectres" what the famous
- [Footnote: him of what he should, without enabling him to do it—video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor.]"according to the appearance of idols"
or "shapes"; [Greek: dianoêtikas phantasias] "mental impressions." These refer to the doctrines of Democritus as to the formation of mental impressions by fine atoms thrown off the surface of things, which, retaining the same position and relation, and hurrying through the void, strike the senses, which convey these "atom-pictures" to the mind. Cicero hits the true objection, founded on the fact that we can recall these pictures at will.]
- ↑ Who said that men ought to "be free and fear slavery worse than death," Rep. 387B. To be "busy about other things" or "about something else" is a kind of proverbial way of saying that one is not attending to serious business.
- ↑ The Epicureans. The Greek terms which follow are those used by them—[Greek: kat eidôlôn phantasias
