friends the citizens of Verona, who have long loved, looked up to, and
honoured, you; while it was from that city too you received that amiable
object of your most tender affection, your late excellent wife. And
since you owed some monument or public representation to her memory,
what other spectacle could you have exhibited more appropriate to the
occasion? Besides, you were so unanimously pressed to do so that to have
refused would have looked more like hardness than resolution. The
readiness too with which you granted their petition, and the magnificent
manner in which you performed it, is very much to your honour; for a
greatness of soul is seen in these smaller instances, as well as in
matters of higher moment. I wish the African panthers, which you had
largely provided for this purpose, had arrived on the day appointed, but
though they were delayed by the stormy weather, the obligation to you is
equally the same, since it was not your fault that they were not
exhibited. Farewell.
LXXIII -- To RESTITUTUS
THIS obstinate illness of yours alarms me; and though I know how
extremely temperate you are, yet I fear lest your disease should get the
better of your moderation. Let me entreat you then to resist it with a
determined abstemiousness: a remedy, be assured, of all others the most
laudable as well as the most salutary. Human nature itself admits the
practicability of what I recommend: it is a rule, at least, which I
always enjoin my family to observe with respect to myself. "I hope," I
say to them, "that should I be attacked with any disorder, I shall
desire nothing of which I ought either to be ashamed or have reason to
repent; however, if my distemper should prevail over my resolution, I
forbid that anything be given me but by the consent of my physicians;
and I shall resent your compliance with me in things improper as much as
another man would their refusal." I once had a most violent fever; when
the fit was a little abated, and I had been anointed,[110] my physician
offered me something to drink; I held out my hand, desiring he would
first feel my pulse, and upon his not seeming quite satisfied, I
instantly returned the cup, though it was just at my lips. Afterwards,
when I was preparing to go into the bath, twenty days from the first
attack of my illness, perceiving the physicians whispering together, I
enquired what they were saying. They replied they were of opinion I may
possibly bathe with safety, however that they were not without some
suspicion of risk. "What need is there," said I, "of my taking a bath at
all?" And so, with perfect calmness and tranquillity, I gave up a
pleasure I was upon the point of enjoying, and abstained from the bath
as serenely and composedly as though I were going into it. I mention
this, not only by way of enforcing my advice by example, but also that
this letter may be a sort of tie upon me to persevere in the same
resolute abstinence for the future. Farewell.
LXXIV -- To CALPURNIA[111]
You will not believe what a longing for you possesses me. The chief
cause of this is my love; and then we have not grown used to be apart.
So it comes to pass that I lie awake a great part of the night, thinking
of you; and that by day, when the hours return at which I was wont to
visit you, my feet take me, as it is so truly said, to your chamber, but
not finding you there, I return, sick and sad at heart, like an excluded
lover. The only time that is free from these torments is when I am being
worn out at the bar, and in the suits of my friends. Judge you what must
be my life when I find my repose in toil, my solace in wretchedness and
anxiety. Farewell.
LXXV -- To MACRINUS
A VERY singular and remarkable accident has happened in the affair of
Varenus,[112] the result of which is yet doubtful. The Bithynians, it is
said, have dropped their prosecution of him being convinced at last that
it was rashly undertaken. A deputy from that province is arrived, who
has brought with him a decree of their assembly; copies of which he has
delivered to Cæsar,[113] and to several of the leading men in Rome, and
also to us, the advocates for Varenus. Magnus,[114] nevertheless, whom I
mentioned in my last letter to you, persists in his charge, to support
which he is incessantly teasing the worthy Nigrinus. This excellent
person was counsel for him in his former petition to the consuls, that
Varenus might be compelled to produce his accounts. Upon this occasion,
as I attended Varenus merely as a friend, I determined to be silent. I
thought it highly imprudent for me, as I was appointed his counsel by
the senate, to attempt to defend him as an accused person, when it was
his business to insist that there was actually no charge subsisting
against him. However, when Nigrinus had finished his speech, the consuls
turning their eyes upon me, I rose up, and, "When you shall hear," I
said, "what the real deputies from the province have to object against
the motion of Nigrinus, you will see that my silence was not without
just reason." Upon this Nigrinus asked me, "To whom are these deputies
sent?" I replied, "To me among others; I have the decree of the province
in my hands." He returned, "That is a point which, though it may be
clear to you, I am not so well satisfied of." To this I answered,
"Though it may not be so evident to you, who are concerned to support
the accusation, it may be perfectly clear to me, who am on the more
favourable side." Then Polyaenus, the deputy from the province,
acquainted the senate with the reasons for superseding the prosecution,
but desired it might be without prejudice to Cæsar's determination.
Magnus answered him; Polyaenus replied; as for myself, I only now and
then threw in a word, observing in general a complete silence. For I
have learned that upon some occasions it is as much an orator's business
to be silent as to speak, and I remember, in some criminal cases, to
have done even more service to my clients by a discreet silence than I
could have expected from the most carefully prepared speech. To enter
into the subject of eloquence is indeed very foreign to the purpose of
my letter, yet allow me to give you one instance in proof of my last
observation. A certain lady having lost her son suspected that his
freedmen, whom he had appointed coheirs with her, were guilty of forging
the will and poisoning him. Accordingly she charged them with the fact
before the emperor, who directed Julianus Suburanus to try the cause. I
was counsel for the defendants, and the case being exceedingly
remarkable, and the counsel engaged on both sides of eminent ability, it
drew together a very numerous audience. The issue was, the servants
being put to the torture, my clients were acquitted. But the mother
applied a second time to the emperor, pretending she had discovered some
new evidence. Suburanus was therefore directed to hear the cause, and
see if she could produce any fresh proofs. Julius Africanus was counsel
for the mother, a young man of good parts, but slender experience. He is
grandson to the famous orator of that name, of whom it is reported that
Passienus Crispus, hearing him one day plead, archly said, "Very fine, I
must confess, very fine; but is all this fine speaking to the purpose?"
Julius Africanus, I say, having made a long harangue, and exhausted the
portion of time allotted to him, said, "I beg you, Suburanus, to allow
me to add one word more." When he had concluded, and the eyes of the
whole assembly had been fixed a considerable time upon me, I rose up. "I
would have answered Africanus," said I, "if he had added that one word
he begged leave to do, in which I doubt not he would have told us all
that we had not heard before." I do not remember to have gained so much
applause by any speech that I ever made as I did in this instance by
making none. Thus the little that I had hitherto said for Varenus was
received with the same general approbation. The consuls, agreeably to
the request of Polyaenus, reserved the whole affair for the
determination of the emperor, whose resolution I impatiently wait for;
as that will decide whether I may be entirely secure and easy with
respect to Varenus, or must again renew all my trouble and anxiety upon
his account. Farewell.
LXXVI -- To TUSCUS
You desire my opinion as to the method of study you should pursue, in
that retirement to which you have long since withdrawn. In the first
place, then, I look upon it as a very advantageous practice (and it is
what many recommend) to translate either from Greek into Latin or from
Latin into Greek. By this means you acquire propriety and dignity of
expression, and a variety of beautiful figures, and an ease and strength
of exposition, and in the imitation of the best models a facility of
creating such models for yourself. Besides, those things which you may
possibly have overlooked in an ordinary reading over cannot escape you
in translating: and this method will also enlarge your knowledge, and
improve your judgment. It may not be amiss, after you have read an
author, to turn, as it were, to his rival, and attempt something ol your
own upon the same topic, and then make a careful comparison between your
performance and his, in order to see in what points either you or he may
be the happier. You may congratulate yourself indeed if you shall find
in some things that you have the advantage of him, while it will be a
great mortification if he is always superior. You may sometimes select
very famous passages and compete with what you select. The competition
is daring enough, but, as it is private, cannot be called impudent. Not
but that we have seen instances of persons who have publicly entered
this sort of lists with great credit to themselves, and, while they did
not despair of overtaking, have gloriously outstripped those whom they
thought it sufficient honour to follow. A speech no longer fresh in your
memory, you may take up again. You will find plenty in it to leave
unaltered, but still more to reject; you will add a new thought here,
and alter another there. It is a laborious and tedious task, I own, thus
to re-enflame the mind after the first heat is over, to recover an
impulse when its force has been checked and spent, and, worse than all,
to put new limbs into a body already complete without disturbing the
old; but the advantage attending this method will overbalance the
difficulty. I know the bent of your present attention is directed
towards the eloquence of the bar; but I would not for that reason advise
you never to quit the polemic, if I may so call it, and contentious
style. As land is improved by sowing it with various seeds, constantly
changed, so is the mind by exercising it now with this subject of study,
now with that. I would recommend you, therefore, sometimes to take a
subject from history, and you might give more care to the composition of
your letters. For it frequently happens that in pleading one has
occasion to make use not only of historical, but even poetical, styles
of description; and then from letters you acquire a concise and simple
mode of expression. You will do quite right again in refreshing yourself
with poetry: when I say so, I do not mean that species of poetry which
turns upon subjects of great length and continuity (such being suitable
only for persons of leisure), but those little pieces of the sprightly
kind of poesy, which serve as proper reliefs to, and are consistent
with, employments of every sort. They commonly go under the title of
poetical amusements; but these amusements have sometimes gained their
authors as much reputation as works of a more serious nature; and thus
(for while I am exhorting you to poetry, why should I not turn poet
myself?)
"As yielding wax the artist's skill commands, Submissive shap'd beneath
his forming hands; Now dreadful stands in arms a Mars confest; Or now
with Venus's softer air imprest; A wanton Cupid now the mould belies;
Now shines, severely chaste, a Pallas wife: As not alone to quench the
raging flame, The sacred fountain pours her friendly stream; But sweetly
gliding through the flow'ry green, Spreads glad refreshment o'er the
smiling scene: So, form'd by science, should the ductile mind Receive,
distinct, each various art refin'd."
In this manner the greatest men, as well as the greatest orators, used
either to exercise or amuse themselves, or rather indeed did both. It is
surprising how much the mind is enlivened and refreshed by these little
poetical compositions, as they turn upon love, hatred, satire,
tenderness, politeness, and everything, in short, that concerns life and
the affairs of the world. Besides, the same advantage attends these, as
every other sort of poems, that we turn from them to prose with so much
the more pleasure after having experienced the difficulty of being
constrained and fettered by metre. And now, perhaps, I have troubled you
upon this subject longer than you desired; however, there is one thing I
have left out: I have not told you what kind of authors you should read;
though indeed that was sufficiently implied when I told you on what you
should write. Remember to be careful in your choice of authors of every
kind: for, as it has been well observed, "though we should read much, we
should not read many books." Who those authors are, is so clearly
settled, and so generally known, that I need not particularly specify
them; besides, I have already extended this letter to such an immoderate
length that, while suggesting how you ought to study, I have, I fear,
been actually interrupting your studies. I will here resign you
therefore to your tablets, either to resume the studies in which you
were before engaged or to enter upon some of those I have recommended.
Farewell.
LXX VII -- To FABATUS (HIS WIFE'S GRANDFATHER)
You are surprised, I find, that my share of five-twelfths of the estate
which lately fell to me, and which I had directed to be sold to the best
bidder, should have been disposed of by my freedman Hermes to Corellia
(without putting it up to auction) at the rate of seven hundred thousand
sesterces[115] for the whole. And as you think it might have fetched
nine hundred thousand,[116] you are so much the more desirous to know
whether I am inclined to ratify what he has done. I am; and listen,
while I tell you why, for I hope that not only you will approve, but
also that my fellow-coheirs will excuse me for having, upon a motive of
superior obligation, separated my interest from theirs. I have the
highest esteem for Corellia, both as the sister of Rufus, whose memory
will always be a sacred one to me, and as my mother's intimate friend.
Besides, that excellent man Minutius Tuscus, her husband, has every
claim to my affection that a long friendship can give him; as there was
likewise the closest intimacy between her son and me, so much so indeed
that I fixed upon him to preside at the games which I exhibited when I
was elected praetor. This lady, when I was last in the country,
expressed a strong desire for some place upon the borders of our lake of
Comum; I therefore made her an offer, at her own price, of any part of
my land there, except what came to me from my father and mother; for
that I could not consent to part with, even to Corellia, and accordingly
when the inheritance in question fell to me, I wrote to let her know it
was to be sold. This letter I sent by Hermes, who, upon her requesting
him that he would immediately make over to her my proportion of it,
consented. Am I not then obliged to confirm what my freedman has thus
done in pursuance of my inclinations? I have only to entreat my fellow-
coheirs that they will not take it ill at my hands that I have made a
separate sale of what I had certainly a right to dispose of. They are
not bound in any way to follow my example, since they have not the same
connections with Corellia. They are at full liberty therefore to be
guided by interest, which in my own case I chose to sacrifice to
friendship. Farewell.
LXXVIII -- To CORELLIA
You are truly generous to desire and insist that I take for my share of
the estate you purchased of me, not after the rate of seven hundred
thousand sesterces for the whole, as my freedman sold it to you; but in
the proportion of nine hundred thousand, agreeably to what you gave to
the farmers of the twentieths for their part. But I must desire and
insist in my turn that you would consider not only what is suitable to
your character, but what is worthy of mine; and that you would suffer me
to oppose your inclination in this single instance, with the same warmth
that I obey it in all others. Farewell.
LXXIX -- To CELER
EVERY author has his particular reasons for reciting his works; mine, I
have often said, are, in order, if any error should have escaped my own
observation (as no doubt they do escape it sometimes), to have it
pointed out to me. I cannot therefore but be surprised to find (what
your letter assures me) that there are some who blame me for reciting my
speeches: unless, perhaps, they are of opinion that this is the single
species of composition that ought to be held exempt from any correction.
If so, I would willingly ask them why they allow (if indeed they do
allow) that history may be recited, since it is a work which ought to be
devoted to truth, not ostentation? or why tragedy, as it is composed for
action and the stage, not for being read to a private audience? or lyric
poetry, as it is not a reader, but a chorus of voices and instruments
that it requires? They will reply, perhaps, that in the instances
referred to custom has made the practice in question usual: I should be
glad to know, then, if they think the person who first introduced this
practice is to be condemned? Besides the rehearsal of speeches is no
unprecedented thing either with us or the Grecians. Still, perhaps, they
will insist that it can answer no purpose to recite a speech which has
already been delivered. True; if one were immediately to repeat the very
same speech word for word, and to the very same audience; but if you
make several additions and alterations; if your audience is composed
partly of the same, and partly of different persons, and the recital is
at some distance of time, why is there less propriety in rehearsing your
speech than in publishing it? "But it is difficult," the objectors urge,
"to give satisfaction to an audience by the mere recital of a speech;"
that is a consideration which concerns the particular skill and pains of
the person who rehearses, but by no means holds good against recitation
in general. The truth is, it is not whilst I am reading, but when I am
read, that I aim at approbation; and upon this principle I omit no sort
of correction. In the first place, I frequently go carefully over what I
have written, by myself, after this I read it out to two or three
friends, and then give it to others to make their remarks. If after this
I have any doubt concerning the justness of their observations, I
carefully weigh them again with a friend or two; and, last of all, I
recite them to a larger audience, then is the time, believe me, when I
correct most energetically and unsparingly; for my care and attention
rise in proportion to my anxiety; as nothing renders the judgment so
acute to detect error as that deference, modesty, and diffidence one
feels upon those occasions. For tell me, would you not be infinitely
less affected were you to speak before a single person only, though ever
so learned, than before a numerous assembly, even though composed of
none but illiterate people? When you rise up to plead, are you not at
that juncture, above all others, most self-distrustful? and do you not
wish, I will not say some particular parts only, but that the whole
arrangement of your intended speech were altered? especially if the
concourse should be large in which you are to speak? for there is
something even in a low and vulgar audience that strikes one with awe.
And if you suspect you are not well received at the first opening of
your speech, do you not find all your energy relaxed, and feel yourself
ready to give way? The reason I imagine to be that there is a certain
weight of collective opinion in a multitude, and although each
individual judgment is, perhaps, of little value, yet when united it
becomes considerable. Accordingly, Pomponius Secundus, the famous tragic
poet, whenever some very intimate friend and he differed about the
retaining or rejecting anything in his writings, used to say, "I
appeal[117] to the people"; and thus, by their silence or applause,
adopted either his own or his friend's opinion; such was the deference
he paid to the popular judgment! Whether justly or not, is no concern of
mine, as I am not in the habit of reciting my works publicly, but only
to a select circle, whose presence I respect, and whose judgment I
value; in a word, whose opinions I attend to as if they were so many
individuals I had separately consulted, at the same time that I stand in
as much awe before them as I should before the most numerous assembly.
What Cicero says of composing will, in my opinion, hold true of the
dread we have of the public: "Fear is the most rigid critic imaginable."
The very thought of reciting, the very entrance into an assembly, and
the agitated concern when one is there; each of these circumstances
tends to improve and perfect an author's performance. Upon the whole,
therefore, I cannot repent of a practice which I have found by
experience so exceedingly useful; and am so far from being discouraged
by the trifling objections of these censors that I request you would
point out to me if there is yet any other kind of correction, that I may
also adopt it; for nothing can sufficiently satisfy my anxiety to render
my compositions perfect. I reflect what an undertaking it is resigning
any work into the hands of the public; and I cannot but be persuaded
that frequent revisals, and many consultations, must go to the
perfecting of a performance, which one desires should universally and
forever please. Farewell.
LXXX -- To PRISCUS