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DCIX (A XIII, 32)

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)
TUSCULUM, 29 MAY
Having received a second letter from you today I did not wish you to be content with only one from me. Yes, pray do as you say about Faberius. For on our success in that depends entirely what I have in my mind. If that idea had never occurred to me I should, believe me, have been as in different to that as I am about everything else. Wherefore as you are doing at present—and I am sure it cannot be improved upon-push the matter on: don't let it rest: carry it through. Please send me both the books of Dicaearchus—on the "Soul" and on the "Descent." I can't find his "Tripoliticus" and his letter to Aristoxenus. I should be specially glad to have these three books; they would bear upon what I have in my mind. "Torquatus" is at Rome: I have ordered it to be given to you. "Catulus" and "Lucullus" I think you have already. To these books a new preface has been added, in which both of them are spoken of with commendation. I wish you to have these compositions, 1 and there are some others. You didn't quite understand what I said to you about the ten legates, I suppose, because I wrote in shorthand. What I wanted to know was about Tuditanus. Hortensius once told me that he was one of the ten. I see in Libo's annals that he was praetor in the consulship of P. Popilius and P. Rupilius. 2 Could he have been a legatus fourteen years before he was praetor, unless his quaestorship was very late in life? 3 And I don't think that that was so. For I notice that he easily obtained which Polybius was employed to explain to the inhabitants. The labours of the commissioners occupied six months, and Polybius thinks that they did a very noble piece of work in the way of constitution-building. Hence Cicero meant to choose them as speakers in a dialogue on constitutions, which, however, was never composed (Polyb. 39.15-16). the curule magistracies in his regular years. However, I did not know that Postumius, whose statue you say you remember in the Isthmus, was one of them. He is the man who was consul with L. Lucullus. 4 I have to thank you for this addition of a very suitable person to my "Conference." So please see to the rest, if you can, that I may make a fine show even with my dramatis personae.


1 Literas (see vo1. i., p.34). "Torquatus" means the first book of the de Finibus, "Catulus" and "Lucullus" the first and second books of the Academica, in which they are the speakers.

2 B.C. 132.

3 For the ten commissioners in the Peloponnesus, see p.268. Cicero's difficulty is this. To be a commissioner in B.C. 146 a man must have been a senator, that is, he must at least have been quaestor in B.C. 147 (at latest). But if Tuditanus was quaestor in B.C. 147 and obtained the praetorship in his regular year (legitimo anno) he would be praetor in B.C. 139; whereas Tuditanus was not quaestor till B.C. 145 and praetor till B.C. 132, seven years late. The solution is given in Letter DCXII. It was a son who was quaestor in B.C. 145, praetor in B.C. 132. The commissioner was his father and had held his offices (not, however, the consulship) many years before, and therefore was eligible for the commissionership in B.C. 146.

4 B.C. 151.

Cicero. The Letters of Cicero; the whole extant correspondence in chronological order, in four volumes. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh. London. George Bell and Sons. 1908-1909.

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