Marcus Tullius Cicero→Titus Pomponius Atticus|c. 45 BC|Cicero|From Rome|To Rome/Athens|AI-assisted
What a scandal! That clansman of yours [a fellow member of the gens, here ironically of Caesar's circle] is enlarging the city he first laid eyes on only two years ago, and even that has seemed to him too small a thing-the city that was able to hold even him! On this matter, then, I am waiting for a letter from you. You write that you will give Varro the books as soon as he arrives. [2] So they have now been handed over, and you are no longer free to change your mind-ah, if only you knew at what risk to yourself! Or perhaps my letter has held you back; but you had not yet read it when you wrote this last one. So I am eager to know how the matter stands. As for Brutus's affection and your walks together, although you bring me nothing new but only the same thing you often say, still I hear it the more gladly the more often it comes, and it is the more delightful to me because you take such joy in it, and the more certain because it is you who says it.
As I was writing against the Epicureans before daybreak, I scribbled something or other to you by the same lamp and at the same sitting and despatched it before daybreak. Then as I was getting up with the sun after another sleep, I get a letter from your sister's son, which I enclose. The beginning of it is most insulting: but perhaps he did not stop to think. This is how it runs: "For, whatever there is to be said to your discredit, I...." He wants me to understand there is plenty to be said to my discredit, but he does not agree with it. Could anything be more disgusting? You may read the rest (for I have sent it on) and judge for yourself. I fancy it is the daily and continual complimentary remarks which, as I hear from many, our friend Brutus is making about us, which have provoked him into writing something to me and to you—let me know if he has written to you. For what he has written to his father about me I don't know: about his mother how affectionately! "I should have liked," he says, "to be with you as much as possible and to have a house taken for me somewhere: and so I told you. You took no notice: so we shall not be together much: for I cannot bear the sight of your house: you know why." His father tells me the reason is his hatred of his mother. Now, Atticus, help me with your advice. "By honest means shall I the high wall climb?" that is to say shall I openly renounce and
abjure the fellow, or shall I act "with wiles"? For, like Pindar's, "my mind divided cannot truly tell." The first would suit my character best, of course, but the second perhaps the times. But take it I have made up my mind to do whatever you have made up your mind to do. I am horribly afraid of being caught at Tusculum. It would be more comfortable in company. At Astura then? What if Caesar arrives unexpectedly? Please assist me with advice. I will do what you decide.
O rem indignam! gentilis tuus urbem auget quam hoc biennio primum vidit et ei parum magna visa est quae etiam ipsum capere potuerit. hac de re igitur exspecto litteras tuas. Varroni scribis te, simul ac venerit. [2] dati igitur iam sunt nec tibi integrum est, hui, si scias quanto periculo tuo! aut fortasse litterae meae te retardarunt; sed eas nondum legeras cum has proximas scripsisti. scire igitur aveo quo modo res se habeat. de Bruti amore vestraque ambulatione etsi mihi nihil novi adfers sed idem quod saepe, tamen hoc audio libentius quo saepius, eoque mihi iucundius est quod tu eo laetaris certiusque eo est quod a te dicitur.
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What a scandal! That clansman of yours [a fellow member of the gens, here ironically of Caesar's circle] is enlarging the city he first laid eyes on only two years ago, and even that has seemed to him too small a thing-the city that was able to hold even him! On this matter, then, I am waiting for a letter from you. You write that you will give Varro the books as soon as he arrives. [2] So they have now been handed over, and you are no longer free to change your mind-ah, if only you knew at what risk to yourself! Or perhaps my letter has held you back; but you had not yet read it when you wrote this last one. So I am eager to know how the matter stands. As for Brutus's affection and your walks together, although you bring me nothing new but only the same thing you often say, still I hear it the more gladly the more often it comes, and it is the more delightful to me because you take such joy in it, and the more certain because it is you who says it.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek below for scholarly use.
Latin / Greek Original
O rem indignam! gentilis tuus urbem auget quam hoc biennio primum vidit et ei parum magna visa est quae etiam ipsum capere potuerit. hac de re igitur exspecto litteras tuas. Varroni scribis te, simul ac venerit. [2] dati igitur iam sunt nec tibi integrum est, hui, si scias quanto periculo tuo! aut fortasse litterae meae te retardarunt; sed eas nondum legeras cum has proximas scripsisti. scire igitur aveo quo modo res se habeat. de Bruti amore vestraque ambulatione etsi mihi nihil novi adfers sed idem quod saepe, tamen hoc audio libentius quo saepius, eoque mihi iucundius est quod tu eo laetaris certiusque eo est quod a te dicitur.