villa on the 26th of April.
That night I spent at Naples with Paetus. I write this very early on the
27th, on my road to my Pompeian house.

[Footnote 530: The tribunes had no _veto_ against the censors, they
could only hinder them by the indirect method of _obnuntiatio_,
declaring that the omens were bad, and so preventing business.]

[Footnote 531: This also is Phocylides's.]

[Footnote 532: In Pompey's new theatre.]

CXXII (Q FR II, 8)

TO HIS BROTHER QUINTUS (AT ROME)

CUMAE (APRIL)

[Sidenote: B.C. 55, AET. 51]

Afraid that you will interrupt me--you? In the first place, if I were as
busy as you think, do you know what interruption means? Have you taken a
lesson from Ateius?[533] So help me heaven, in my eyes you give _me_ a
lesson in a kind of learning which I never enjoy unless you are with me.
Why, that you should talk to me, interrupt me, argue against me, or
converse with me, is just what I should like. Nothing could be more
delightful! Never, by Hercules, did any crazy poet read with greater
zest his last composition than I listen to you, no matter what business
is in hand, public or private, rural or urban. But it was all owing to
my foolish scrupulousness that I did not carry you off with me when I
was leaving town. You confronted me the first time with an unanswerable
excuse--the health of my son: I was silenced. The second time it was
both boys, yours and mine: I acquiesced.[534] Now comes a delightful
letter, but with this drop of gall in it--that you seem to have been
afraid, and still to be afraid, that you might bore me. I would go to
law with you if it were decent to do so; but, by heaven! if ever I have
a suspicion of such a feeling on your part, I can only say that I shall
begin to be afraid of boring _you_ at times, when in your company. [I
perceive that you have sighed at this. 'Tis the way of the world: "But
if you lived on earth" ...I will never finish the quotation and say,
"Away with all care!"[535] Marius,[536] again, I should certainly have
forced into my sedan--I don't mean that famous one of Ptolemy that
Anicius got hold of:[537] for I remember when I was conveying him from
Naples to Baiae in Anicius's eight-bearer sedan, with a hundred armed
guards in our train, I had a real good laugh when Marius, knowing
nothing of his escort, suddenly drew back the curtains of the sedan--he
was almost dead with fright and I with laughing; well, this same friend,
I say, I should at l