Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/93

Rh After completing his own library, Atticus set his slaves to work to make extra copies of his books, or which he found a ready sale. Be[ore he left Athens we find that he had a whole library to dispose of; and that Cicero marked it for his own. "By no means pledge your offspring to anyone else, though you meet with a wooer never so ardent. I am keeping all my odd moneys for that object, and I look to those books as the stand-by of my old age." Cicero's own compositions naturally passed into the workshop of his friend, and Atticus became his publisher. There was no copyright either of author or publisher, but the labour of Atticus' literary slaves doubtless brought in handsome returns to their master. Cicero commonly had the benefit of Atticus' criticisms while each work was in progress and looked with anxiety or his "red pencil marks." His suggestions on the Second Philippic are known to us from Cicero's letter in reply. When Cicero has put the last hand to a book, he sends Atticus word "now you may begin copying out." When he resolves to cancel the first version of his Academics and to recast the dialogue with a fresh set of interlocutors, he writes, "You will easily console yourself for the loss involved in those copies which you have had written out to no purpose. The new version is more brilliant, more concise, better in every way." Sometimes these relations cause a momentary unpleasantness, as when Cicero finds that copies