Latin Texts & Translations

DCIX (A XIII, 32)

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME) TUSCULUM, 29 MAY

Having received a second letter from you today I did not wish you to be content with only one from me. Yes, pray do as you say about Faberius. For on our success in that

depends entirely what I have in my mind. If that idea had never occurred to me I should, believe me, have been as in different to that as I am about everything else. Wherefore as you are doing at present—and I am sure it cannot be improved upon-push the matter on: don't let it rest: carry it through. Please send me both the books of Dicaearchus—on the "Soul" and on the "Descent." I can't find his "Tripoliticus" and his letter to Aristoxenus. I should be specially glad to have these three books; they would bear upon what I have in my mind. "Torquatus" is at Rome: I have ordered it to be given to you. "Catulus" and "Lucullus" I think you have already. To these books a new preface has been added, in which both of them are spoken of with commendation. I wish you to have these compositions, ^[Note] and there are some others. You didn't quite understand what I said to you about the ten legates, I suppose, because I wrote in shorthand. What I wanted to know was about Tuditanus. Hortensius once told me that he was one of the ten. I see in Libo's annals that he was praetor in the consulship of P. Popilius and P. Rupilius. ^[Note] Could he have been a legatus fourteen years before he was praetor, unless his quaestorship was very late in life? ^[Note] And I don't think that that was so. For I notice that he easily obtained which Polybius was employed to explain to the inhabitants. The labours of the commissioners occupied six months, and Polybius thinks that they did a very noble piece of work in the way of constitution-building. Hence Cicero meant to choose them as speakers in a dialogue on constitutions, which, however, was never composed (Polyb. 39.15-16).

the curule magistracies in his regular years. However, I did not know that Postumius, whose statue you say you remember in the Isthmus, was one of them. He is the man who was consul with L. Lucullus. ^[Note] I have to thank you for this addition of a very suitable person to my "Conference." So please see to the rest, if you can, that I may make a fine show even with my dramatis personae.