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 DCXXVIII (A XIII, 17 AND 18)

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)

I was expecting some news from Rome on the 27th, so I could wish that you had given your men some message. As you have not, I have only the same questions to ask as before: What is Brutus doing? Or, if he has already taken any step, is there any news from Cæsar? But why talk of these things which I care less about? What I am anxious to know is how Attica is. Though your letter—which however is now rather out of date—bids me hope for the best, yet I am anxious for something recent. You see what advantage there is in our being near each other. By all means let us get suburban pleasure-grounds: we seemed to be conversing with each other when I was in my Tusculan villa—so frequent was the interchange of letters. But that at least will soon be the case again. Meanwhile, acting on your hint, I have completed some books—really quite clever ones—addressed to Varro. Nevertheless I await your answer to what I wrote to you: first, how you learnt that he wanted something of the sort from me, since he has never, for all his extraordinary literary activity, addressed a line to me: secondly, of whom he was jealous, unless I am to think it to be Brutus. For if he is not jealous of him, much less can he be so of Hortensius or of the interlocutors in the de Republica. I should like you to make this quite clear to me: especially whether you abide by your opinion that I should send him what I have written, or whether you think it unnecessary. But of this when we meet.