Letter 6007: Your letter was delivered while I was at the seventh milestone on the Ostian road, and I immediately arranged...
Tabumius evocatum me esse non siluit, et fortasse miremini, nihil super ea re
meis paginis indicatum ; sed quia multis ac necessariis causis domi manere decre- 25
veram, inanis esse operae iudicavi inrita ad vos et dissimulata perferre. credo autem
sanctae unanimitati vestrae inconperta non esse, quae me a peregrinandi consilio
retraxemnt. ' nam et fractam valetudinem meam nostis, et unici mei solitudinem con-
templamini , et emptiones fluminum usque ad metum diluvii conperistis , pontium quo-
2 que ruinas et montium labes apud vos, ut arbitror, fama non tacuit. ex- quo factum 30
est. ut ceteri quoque veniaAi postularent, quos similis accitus exciverat, praeter Ar-
centium et Euangelum, quomm alterum vigor adulescentiae , altemm incautus animus
obiecit incertis. intellego vos profectione hominis non amici posse terreri; sed ut
unauimitatis P I m, V quia ante credo inser. P 2 m. 12 c5npta P 15 foris V 16 praedia deUt
33 U08 corr, 2 m. ex uo P
LIBEE VI. 155
hnnc scrupulam reiciatis admoneo. nam et meis litteris multa curata sunt, et profi- PVM
ciscentibus datum negotium est, ut aemuli obtrectatio repellatur. quare curarum va-
cui agite otium meque, ut facere dignamiui, scriptorum adsiduitate refovete. vale.
Vin a. 398 ?
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I am dissuaded from writing often to you, learned as you are, by my timidity and my ignorance. But your persistent silence is different. What excuse can be offered for it?
By writing you honor me, but by neither granting what I asked nor explaining why you did not, you cause me pain.
Had you been for a long time considering how best you could reply to my letter about yours, you could not in my judgment have acquitted yourself better than by writing as you have written now. You call me a sophist, and you allege that it is a sophist's business to make small things great and great things small. And you maintain that the object ...
If this man arriving from Cyprus had not stood in your way, surely another would have come from Euboea or Scyros.