Page:The Letters of Cicero Shuckburg III.pdf/132

 CCCCLXXV (, 28)

TO MANIUS CURIUS (IN ACHAIA)

I remember the time when I thought you foolish for associating with your friends over there rather than with us: for a residence in this city—while it was still a city at all—was much better suited to your culture and refinement than all the Peloponnesus put together, to say nothing of Patræ. Now, however, on the contrary you seem to me to have been long-sighted for having settled in Greece when things here were in a desperate condition, and at the present crisis not only to be wise for being abroad, but happy as well. And yet what man of any discernment can be happy at present? But what you, who could do so, have secured by the use of your feet—removal to a place "Where of the Pelopidæ" (you know the rest)—I am getting by a different method. For, after giving myself up to the reception of my friends which is more crowded than it used to be, precisely because they imagine that in a citizen of honest sentiments they see a rare bird of good omen, I bury myself in my library. Accordingly, I am completing works of an importance which you will perhaps appreciate. For in a certain talk I had with you at your house, when you were finding fault with my gloom and despair, I understood you to say, that you could not recognize the old high spirit in my books. But, by Hercules, at that time I was mourning for the