Page:The Letters of Cicero Shuckburg III.pdf/274

 DLXXXII (A XII, 39)

TO ATTICUS (AT A VILLA NEAR ROME)



As the letter-carrier arrived without a letter from you, I imagined that your reason for not writing was what you mentioned yesterday in the very epistle to which I am now replying. Yet, after all, I was expecting to hear something from you about Asinius Pollio's letter. But I am too apt to judge of your leisure by my own. However, if nothing imperative occurs, I absolve you from the necessity of writing, unless you are quite at leisure. About the letter-carriers I would have done as you suggest, had there been any letters positively necessary, as there were some time ago, when, though the days were shorter, the carriers nevertheless arrived every day up to time, and there was something to say—about Silius, Drusus, and certain other things. At present, if Otho had not cropped up, there would have been nothing to write about: and even that has been deferred. Nevertheless, I feel relieved when I talk to you at a distance, and much more even when I read a letter from you. But since you are out of town—for so I suppose—and there is no immediate necessity for writing, there shall be a lull in our letters, unless anything new turns up.