Marcus Tullius Cicero→Titus Pomponius Atticus|c. 58 BC|Cicero|From Rome|To Rome/Athens|AI-assisted
My whole route is uncertain while I wait for your letters dated August 1. If there is hope, I shall go to Epirus; if not, I shall head for Cyzicus or somewhere else. The more often I read your letters, the less hope they give me. When they are read carefully, the very thing they bring as hope weakens that hope, so that one can easily see you are trying to serve both consolation and truth. So I ask you plainly: write to me what you know as it is, and what you think just as you think it.
Written August 19.
I am waiting for your letters of the first of August before I can decide
at all where I shall go. If there is any hope, I shall go to Epirus: if
not, I shall make for Cyzicus, or take some other direction. The more
often I read your letters, the less hope I have: for, though they are
cheerful, they tone down any hope they raise, so that one can easily see
that your allegiance wavers between consolation of me and truth. I must
therefore beg you to report facts just as they are, and what you really
think of them.
August 19.
totum iter mihi incertum facit exspectatio litterarum vestrarum Kal. Sextil. datarum. nam si spes erit, Epirum, si minus, Cyzicum aut aliud aliquid sequemur. tuae quidem litterae quo saepius a me leguntur, hoc spem faciunt mihi minorem; quae cum . . . . lectae sunt, tum id quod attulerunt ad spem infirmant, ut facile appareat te et consolationi servire et veritati. itaque te rogo plane ut ad me quae scies ut erunt, quae putabis ita scribas. data xii Kal.
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My whole route is uncertain while I wait for your letters dated August 1. If there is hope, I shall go to Epirus; if not, I shall head for Cyzicus or somewhere else. The more often I read your letters, the less hope they give me. When they are read carefully, the very thing they bring as hope weakens that hope, so that one can easily see you are trying to serve both consolation and truth. So I ask you plainly: write to me what you know as it is, and what you think just as you think it.
Written August 19.
AI-assisted translation - This translation was produced with AI assistance and has not been peer-reviewed.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
totum iter mihi incertum facit exspectatio litterarum vestrarum Kal. Sextil. datarum. nam si spes erit, Epirum, si minus, Cyzicum aut aliud aliquid sequemur. tuae quidem litterae quo saepius a me leguntur, hoc spem faciunt mihi minorem; quae cum . . . . lectae sunt, tum id quod attulerunt ad spem infirmant, ut facile appareat te et consolationi servire et veritati. itaque te rogo plane ut ad me quae scies ut erunt, quae putabis ita scribas. data xii Kal.