(_Fam._, XXIV, 8)
I should wish (if it were permitted from on high) either that I had
been born in thine age or thou in ours; in the latter case our age
itself, and in the former I personally should have been the better
for it. I should surely have been one of those pilgrims who visited
thee. For the sake of seeing thee I should have gone not merely to
Rome, but indeed, from either Gaul or Spain I should have found my
way to thee as far as India.[73] As it is, I must fain be content
with seeing thee as reflected in thy works--not thy whole self, alas,
but that portion of thee which has not yet perished, notwithstanding
the sloth of our age. We know that thou didst write one hundred
and forty-two books on Roman affairs. With what fervor, with what
unflagging zeal must thou have labored; and of that entire number
there are now extant scarcely thirty.[74]
Oh, what a wretched custom is this of wilfully deceiving ourselves!
I have said “thirty,” because it is common for all to say so. I
find, however, that even from these few there is one lacking. They
are twenty-nine in all, constituting three decades, the first, the
third, and the fourth, the last of which has not the full number of
books.[75] It is over these small remains that I toil whenever I wish
to forget these regions, these times, and these customs. Often I am
filled with bitter indignation against the morals of today, when
men value nothing except gold and silver, and desire nothing except
sensual, physical pleasures. If these are to be considered the goal
of mankind, then not only the dumb beasts of the field, but even
insensible and inert matter has a richer, a higher goal than that
proposed to itself by thinking man. But of this elsewhere.
It is now fitter that I should render thee thanks, for many reasons
indeed, but for this in especial: that thou didst so frequently cause
me to forget the present evils, and transfer me to happier times. As
I read, I seem to be living in the midst of the Cornellii Scipiones
Africani, of Laelius, Fabius Maximus, Metellus, Brutus and Decius, of
Cato, Regulus, Cursor, Torquatus, Valerius Corvinus, Salinator, of
Claudius, Marcellus, Nero, Aemilius, of Fulvius, Flaminius, Attilius,
Quintius, Curius, Fabricius, and Camillus. It is with these men that
I live at such times and not with the thievish company of today among
whom I was born under an evil star. And Oh, if it were my happy lot
to possess thee entire, from what other great names would I not seek
solace for my wretched existence, and forgetfulness of this wicked
age! Since I cannot find all these in what I now possess of thy work,
I read of them here and there in other authors, and especially in
that book where thou art to be found in thy entirety, but so briefly
epitomized that, although nothing is lacking as far as the number of
books is concerned, everything is lacking as regards the value of the
contents themselves.[76]
Pray greet in my behalf thy predecessors Polybius and Quintus
Claudius and Valerius Antias, and all those whose glory thine own
greater light has dimmed; and of the later historians, give greeting
to Pliny the Younger, of Verona, a neighbor of thine, and also to
thy former rival Crispus Sallustius. Tell them that their ceaseless
nightly vigils have been of no more avail, have had no happier lot,
than thine.
Farewell forever, thou matchless historian!
_Written in the land of the living, in that part of Italy and in that
city in which I am now living and where thou wert once born and
buried, in the vestibule of the Temple of Justina Virgo, and in view
of thy very tombstone;[77] on the twenty-second of February, in the
thirteen hundred and fiftieth year[78] from the birth of Him whom
thou wouldst have seen, or of whose birth thou couldst have heard,
hadst thou lived a little longer._