with such earnestness and
in so many words? The reason is to be found in that burning desire, of
which I spoke at the beginning of my letter, for something _prompt_:
because I am in a flutter of impatience, both that men should learn what
I am from your books, while I am still alive, and that I may myself in
my lifetime have the full enjoyment of my little bit of glory. What you
intend doing on this subject I should like you to write me word, if not
troublesome to you. For if you do undertake the subject, I will put
together some notes of all occurrences: but if you put me off to some
future time, I will talk the matter over with you. Meanwhile, do not
relax your efforts, and thoroughly polish what you have already on the
stocks, and--continue to love me.

[Footnote 487: That is, the dowry and expenses of Tullia's betrothal to
Crassipes.]

[Footnote 488: _Tullia de via recta in hortos_, for _tu_, etc., and _ad
te postridie_. This may not be right, but no other suggestions as to the
meaning of these abrupt clauses have been made which are in the least
convincing. We must suppose that Atticus has asked Tullia to stay with
him and his wife Pilia, and Cicero is describing her journey from
Antium.]

[Footnote 489: L. Lucceius, of whom we have heard before, as having some
quarrel with Atticus. His work has not survived. No letter of the
correspondence has brought more adimadversion on Cicero, and yet
log-rolling and the appealing to friends on the press to review one's
book are not wholly unknown even in our time.]

[Footnote 490: Cicero appears by a slip to have written Themistocles
instead of Aristeides. The dramatic return of the latter just before the
battle of Salamis is narrated in Herodotus: whereas the former never
returned, though his dead body was said to have been brought to Athens.]

CIX (A IV, 6)

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)

FROM THE COUNTRY (APRIL-MAY)

[Sidenote: B.C. 56, AET. 50]

Of course I am as sorry about Lentulus as I am bound to be: we have lost
a good patriot and a great man, one who to great strength of character
united a culture equally profound. My consolation is a miserable one,
but still it is a consolation--that I do not grieve on his account: I
don't mean in the sense of Saufeius and your Epicurean friends, but, by
Hercules, because he loved his country so deeply, that he seems to me to
have been snatched away by a special favour of providence from its
conflagration. For what could