Latin Texts & Translations

DLXXXVII (A XII, 41)

TO ATTICUS (AT OR NEAR ROME) ASTURA (11 MAY)

I have nothing to write about. However, I want to know where you are: if you are out of town or about to be so, when you intend to return. Please, therefore, let me know. And, as you wish to be informed when I leave this place, I write to tell you that I have arranged to stay at Lanuvium on the 16th, thence next day at Tusculum or Rome. Which of the two I am going to do you shall know on the day itself. You know how misery is inclined to grumble. It is not at all in regard to yourself, yet I feel a restless desire as to the shrine. I don't say unless it is built, but unless I see it being built—I venture to say this much, and you will take it as you ever do words of mine—my vexation will redound upon you, not that you deserve that it should do so; but you will have to endure what I say, as you endure and always have endured everything that affects me. Pray

concentrate all your methods of consoling me upon this one thing. If you want to know my wishes, they are these: first Scapula's, second Clodia's; then, if Silius refuses and Drusus does not behave fairly, the property of Cusinius and Trebonius. I think there is a third owner; I know for certain that Rebilus was one. If however you are for Tusculum, as you hinted in one of your letters, I will agree to your suggestion. Pray bring this business to a conclusion in any case, if you wish me to feel consoled. You are already finding fault with me in somewhat severer terms than is customary with you; but you do so with the utmost affection, and perhaps tired out by my weakness. Yet all the same, if you wish me to be consoled, this is the very greatest of consolations and, if you would know the truth, the only one.

If you have read Hirtius's letter, which appears to me to be a kind of "first sketch" of the invective which Caesar has composed against Cato, please let me know, when you can conveniently do so, what you think of it. To return to the shrine: unless it is finished this summer, which you perceive is all before us, I shall not consider myself cleared of positive guilt.