ROME)

CUMAE (APRIL)

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

I was delighted with your two letters which I received together on the
26th. Go on with the story. I long to know all the facts of what you
write about. Also I should like you to find out what this means: you can
do so from Demetrius. Pompey told me that he was expecting Crassus in
his Alban villa on the 27th: that as soon as he arrived, they were going
at once to Rome to settle accounts with the _publicani_. I asked,
"During the gladiatorial exhibitions?" He answered, "Before they were
begun." What that means I wish you would send me word either at once, if
you know, or when he has reached Rome. I am engaged here in devouring
books with the aid of that wonderful fellow Dionysius,[543] for, by
Hercules, that is what he seems to me to be. He sends compliments to you
and all your party.

"No bliss so great as knowing all that is."

Wherefore indulge my thirst for knowledge by telling what happened on
the first and on the second day of the shows: what about the
censors,[544] what about Appius,[545] what about that she-Appuleius of
the people?[546] Finally, pray write me word what you are doing
yourself. For, to tell the truth, revolutions don't give me so much
pleasure as a letter from you. I took no one out of town with me except
Dionysius: yet I am in no fear of wanting conversation--so delightful do
I find that youth. Pray give my book to Lucceius.[547] I send you the
book of Demetrius of Magnesia,[548] that there may be a messenger on the
spot to bring me back a letter from you.

[Footnote 543: A learned freedman of Atticus's.]

[Footnote 544: See p. 250. Censors were elected this year, but the
powers of the censorship had been much curtailed by a law of Clodius in
B.C. 58.]

[Footnote 545: Apius Claudius (brother of Clodius) was a candidate for
the consulship of B.C. 54.]

[Footnote 546: Clodius, a revolutionary, like Appuleius Saturninus. The
feminine gender is an insult.]

[Footnote 547: Either his poem "On his own Times," or the notes of
events which he had promised in Letter CVIII, p. 231.]

[Footnote 548: A treatise on union ([Greek: peri homonoias]). The
rhetorician Dionysius of Magnesia had been with Cicero during his tour
in Asia.]

CXXIV (A IV, 12)

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)

CUMAE, APRIL

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

Egnatius[549] is at Rome. But I spoke strongly to him at Antium about
Halimetus's business. He assured me tha