Page:The Letters of Cicero Shuckburg III.pdf/381

 opinion is," said I, "that you should do it before starting. You will thus oblige your father also." "I will do as you think right," said he. This was the end of our conversation.

But listen to me! You know the 3rd of January is my birthday. You must come to dinner therefore.

I had written thus far, when lo and behold comes a summons to Rome from Lepidus. I suppose the augurs want me for consecrating a temple-site. Well, I must go. Don't let's have any rumpus. I shall see you therefore.

[The following letters of introduction cannot be dated. They probably were written early in the year.]

DCLXXIX (F XIII, 30)

TO MANIUS ACILIUS GLABRIO (IN SICILY)

There is a certain L. Manlius Sosis. He is a native of Catina; but along with the rest of the people of Naples became a Roman citizen, and is a member of the council at Naples, as he had been enrolled as a citizen of that municipality before the citizenship was granted to the Italian allies. His brother has lately died at Catina. I don't think he is likely to have any dispute about the inheritance, and he is at this moment in possession of the property. But as he has besides some business of old standing in his native Sicily, I commend to you both this inheritance from his brother and all other of his concerns, and above all the man himself as being of the highest character and very intimate with myself, accomplished in those studies(Tyrrell and Purser's brilliant emendation of the unintelligible word in the MSS.), lit. "No garlic!" Garlic was supposed to make people pugnacious, and is often mentioned in Aristophanes as used for feeding fighting-cocks: Eq. 494, 946; Acharn. 166; Pax, 502; Lys. 690. So Lucian in his Vera Historia (i. 13) names one of his imaginary people [Greek: skorodomachoi], "garlic fighters."]