we
keep our health.

There is an enormous recrudescence of bribery. Never was there anything
equal to it. On the 15th of July the rate of interest rose from four to
eight per cent., owing to the compact made by Memmius with the consul
Domitius:[599] I wish Scaurus could get the better of it. Messalla is
very shaky. I am not exaggerating--they arrange to offer as much as
10,000 sestertia (about L80,000) for the vote of the first century. The
matter is a burning scandal. The candidates for the tribuneship have
made a mutual compact--having deposited 500 sesteria (about L4,000)
apiece with Cato, they agree to conduct their canvass according to his
direction, with the understanding that anyone offending against it is to
be condemned by him. If this election then turns out to be pure, Cato
will have been of more avail than all laws and jurors put together.

[Footnote 599: For the nature of this compact, see p. 300.]

CXLII (A IV, 16 AND PART OF 17)

TO ATTICUS (IN EPIRUS OR ON HIS JOURNEY TO ASIA)

ROME (? 24 JUNE)

[Sidenote: B.C. 54, AET. 52]

The bare fact of my letter being by the hand of an amanuensis will be a
sign of the amount of my engagements. I have no fault to find with you
as to the number of your letters, but most of them told me nothing
except where you were, or at most shewed by the fact that they came from
you that no harm had happened to you. Of this class of letters there
were two which gave me very great pleasure, dated by you from Buthrotum
almost at the same time: for I was anxious to know that you had had a
favourable crossing. But this constant supply of your letters did not
give me so much pleasure by the richness of their contents as by their
frequency. The one which your guest, M. Paccius, delivered to me was
important and full of matter. I will therefore answer it. And this is
the first thing I have to say: I have shewn Paccius, both by word and
deed, what weight a recommendation from you has: accordingly, he is
among my intimate friends, though unknown to me before. Now for the
rest. Varro, of whom you write, shall be got in somewhere, if I can but
find a place for him.[600] But you know the style of my Dialogues: just
as in those "On the Orator," which you praise to the skies, a mention of
anyone by the interlocutors was impossible, unless he had been known to
or heard of by them, so in the "Dialogue on the Republic," which I have
begun, I have put the discussion in the mouths o