t the doctor says this is what
makes you ill. If you care for me, rouse from their sleep your studies
and your culture, which make you the dearest object of my affection. It
is your mind that requires strengthening now, in order that your body
may also recover. Pray do it both for your own and my sake. Keep Acastus
with you to help to nurse you. Preserve yourself for me. The day for the
fulfilment of my promise is at hand, and I will be true to it, if you
only come. Good-bye, good-bye!

11 April, noon.

III (F XVI, 15)

TO TIRO

(CUMAE) 12 APRIL

AEgypta arrived on the 12th of April. Though he brought the news that you
were entirely without fever and were pretty well, yet he caused me
anxiety by saying that you had not been able to write to me: and all the
more so because Hermia, who ought to have arrived on the same day, has
not done so. I am incredibly anxious about your health. If you will
relieve me from that, I will _liberate_ you from every burden. I would
have written at greater length, if I had thought that you were now
capable of taking any pleasure in reading a letter. Concentrate your
whole intelligence, which I value above everything, upon preserving
yourself for your own and my benefit. Use your utmost diligence, I
repeat, in nursing your health. Good-bye.

P.S.--When I had finished the above Hermia arrived. I have your letter
written in a shaky hand, and no wonder after so serious an illness. I am
sending AEgypta back to stay with you, because he is by no means without
feeling, and seems to me to be attached to you, and with him a cook for
your especial use. Good-bye!

IV (F XVI, 10)

TO TIRO

CUMAE, 19 MAY

I of course wish you to come to me, but I dread the journey for you. You
have been most seriously ill: you have been much reduced by a low diet
and purgatives, and the ravages of the disease itself. After dangerous
illnesses, if some mistake is made, drawbacks are usually dangerous.
Moreover, to the two days on the road which it will have taken you to
reach Cumae, there will have to be added at once five more for your
return journey to Rome. I mean to be at Formiae on the 30th: be sure, my
dear Tiro, that I find you there strong and well. My poor studies, or
rather _ours_, have been in a very bad way owing to your absence.
However, they have looked up a little owing to this letter from you
brought by Acastus. Pompey is staying with me at the moment of writing
this, and se