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Whether it is well or ill to do so, that is my look-out: but whatever it is, it is our speciality. Work on then, and don't stir a nail's breadth, as they say, from the pen; for it is the creator of eloquence: and for my part I now devote a considerable part of the night to it also.

DCLXVI (A XIII, 51)

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)

The reason of my not sending you at the time a copy of the letter which I wrote to Cæsar was that I forgot. Neither was the motive what you suspected it to have been—shame of appearing in your eyes to be ridiculously time-serving; nor, by heaven, did I write otherwise than I should have written to an equal and a man like myself. For I really do think well of those books of his, as I told you when we met. Accordingly, I wrote without any flattery, and at the same time in such a tone as I think will give him as much pleasure to read it as possible.

At last I have certain news of Attica. So please congratulate her all over again. Tell me all about Tigellius, and that promptly; for I am feeling uneasy. Now listen to this: Quintus arrives to-morrow, but whether at my house or yours I don't know. He wrote me word that he would be at Rome on the 25th. But I have sent a man to invite him here: though, by heaven, I must come to Rome, lest Cæsar should make a descent there before me.