DCLXXXIX (F XVI, 18)
TO TIRO (AT TUSCULUM)
Rome (December)
What do you say? Ought it not be so? I think it ought
for my part. The word SUO ought also to be added. But,
if you please, let us avoid exciting prejudice, which however
I have myself often neglected.[1] I am glad the sweating has
done you good. If only Tusculum has done so also, good
heavens! what a charm that would add to the place in my
eyes! But if you love me, as you do, or make a very pretty
imitation of doing—an imitation which quite answers its
purpose—well, however that may be, nurse your health now,
to which, while devoting yourself to my service, you have
not been devoted enough. You know what it requires—good
digestion, freedom from fatigue, moderate walking,
friction of the skin, easy operation of the bowels.[2] Be sure
you come back looking well. That would make me still
fonder of Tusculum as well as of you. Stir up Parhedrus
to hire the garden for himself: by doing so you will keep
the actual gardener up to the mark.[3] That utter scoundrel
Helico used to pay a thousand sesterces, when there was no
hot-bed, no water turned on, no wall, no garden-shed. Is he
to have the laugh of us, after we have spent all that money?
- ↑ This seems to have no reference which we can now hope to explain. Tiro had apparently objected to some phrase in a writing of Cicero's, partly at any rate on grammatical grounds.
- ↑ These words are given in Greek, as medical terms usually were.
- ↑ It is impossible to be sure of the state of things to which allusion is made. Tiro seems to have complained that the gardener Helico at Tusculum wasn't doing well. Cicero says, "Get Parhedrus to take it—supplying what is wanted in the house as part rent—he will keep the workman up to his work. Helico is a great rascal not to do better by the garden, for he has had it at a small rent, never raised in spite of all the improvements which I have made. Parhedrus will pay more, and also be more satisfactory."
