Page:The Letters of Cicero Shuckburg III.pdf/352

 *

carefully; and please send me the funeral orations written by Marcus Varro and Ollius, at any rate that of Ollius. For though I have read the latter, I want to have a second taste of it. There are some things in it that I can scarcely believe that I have read.

DCLIV (A XIII, 37)

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)

This is my second letter to-day. As to Xenon's debt to you and the forty sestertia due to you in Epirus, no arrangement could be more convenient or suitable than what you suggest in your letter. Balbus the younger had made the same suggestion to me in conversation.

I have absolutely no news except that Hirtius has kept up a keen controversy with Quintus on my behalf: that the latter talks violently in all kinds of places and especially at dinner parties: that much of this talk is directed against me, but that he also falls upon his father. Nothing he says, however, has a greater vraisemblance than his assertion that we are bitterly opposed to Cæsar: that we are neither of us to be trusted, while I personally ought to be regarded with suspicion—this would have been truly terrible had I not perceived that our monarch knew that I had no courage left. Lastly, that my son is being bullied by me. But that he may say as much as he chooses.

I am glad I had handed Porcia's funeral oration to Lepta's letter-carrier before I got your letter. Take care then, as you love me, that it is sent to Domitius and Brutus—if it is going to be sent-in the form you mention.

About the gladiators and the other things, which you call in your letter "airy nothings," give me particulars day by day. I should wish, if you think it right, to apply to Balbus