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you, if you can't find purchasers for your foreclosures and so fill your pot with denarii, back you must come to Rome. It is better to die of indigestion here, than of starvation there. I see you have lost money: I hope these friends of yours have done the same. You are a ruined man if you don't look out. You may possibly get to Rome on the only mule that you say you have left, since you have eaten up your pack horse. Your seat in the school, as second master, will be next to mine: the honour of a cushion will come by-and-by.

CCCCLXXII (, 33)

TO P. VOLUMNIUS EUTRAPELUS

You don't lose much by not being present at my oratorical lectures. You say you would have been envious of Hirtius, if you had not loved him: you had no reason for being envious; unless it was of his own eloquence by any chance that you were envious rather than of his being my pupil. The fact is, my dearest Volumnius, I am either a complete failure, or feel myself to be so, now that those members of my set, by whose support (joined with your applause) I once flourished, are lost: so that if I ever did produce anything worthy of my reputation, let us sigh that, as Philoctetes says in Accius,

"These arrows now are fleshed On winged not armèd forms—all glory lost."

But, after all, things will be more cheerful with me all round if you come: though you will come, as you understand with-*