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 of goodwill. On this subject not only ought I not to ask you to be more zealous in that respect for my sake also—for nothing could go beyond your promises—but I should be wrong even to thank you, since you have acted for his own sake and on your own initiative. However, I will say this, that I am exceedingly gratified at what you have done. For such appreciation on your part of a man who has a place apart in my affections cannot fail to be supremely delightful to me: and, that being so, it of course excites my gratitude. But all the same, since considering our intimacy a faux pas in writing to you is allowable to me, I will do both the things that I said that I ought not to do. In the first place, to what you have shewn that you will do for the sake of Atticus I would have you make as large an addition as our mutual affection can suggest: in the second place, though I said just now that I feared to thank you, I now do so outright: and I would wish you to believe that, under whatever obligations you place Atticus, whether in regard to his affairs in Epirus or elsewhere, I shall consider myself to be equally bound to you by them.

DXII (F XIII, 19)

TO SERVIUS SULPICIUS RUFUS (IN ACHAIA)

With Lyso of Patræ[2] I have indeed a long-standing tie of hospitality—a tie which, I think, ought to be conscientiously maintained. That is a position shared by many others: but I never was so intimate with any other foreigner, and that intimacy has been so much enhanced both by many services[Footnote: The doctor at Patræ who attended Tiro. See vol. ii., p. 209.]