DXLV (A XII, 14)
TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)
ASTURA (8 MARCH)
I wrote to you yesterday about making my
excuses to Appuleius. I think there is no
difficulty. No matter to whom you apply, no one
will refuse. But see Septimius, Laenas, and
Statilius about it. For three are required.
Laenas, however, undertook the whole business for
me. You say that you have been dunned by Iunius:
Cornificius 1 is certainly a man of
substance, yet I should nevertheless like to know
when I am said to have given the guarantee, and
whether it was for the father or son. None the
less pray do as you say, and interview the agents
of Cornificius and Appuleius the land-dealer.
You wish me some
relaxation of my mourning: you are kind, as usual,
but you can bear me witness that I have not been
wanting to myself. For not a word has been written
by anyone on the subject of abating grief which I
did not read at your house. But my sorrow is too
much for any consolation. Nay, I have done what
certainly no one ever did before
me—tried to console myself by writing a
book, which I will send to you as soon as my
amanuenses have made copies of it. I
assure you that there is no more efficacious
consolation. I write all day long, not that I do
any good, but for a while I experience a kind of
check, or, if not quite that—for the
violence of my grief is overpowering-yet I get
some relaxation, and I try with all my might to
recover composure, not of heart, yet, if possible,
of countenance. When doing that I sometimes feel
myself to be doing wrong, sometimes that I shall
be doing wrong if I don't. Solitude does me some
good, but it would have done me more good, if you
after all had been here: and that is my only
reason for quitting this place, for it does very
well in such miserable circumstances. And even
this suggests another cause of sorrow. For you
will not be able to be to me now what you once
were: everything you used to like about me is
gone. I wrote to you before about Brutus's letter
to me: it contained a great deal of good sense,
but nothing to give me any comfort. As to his
asking in his letter to you whether I should like
him to come to see me—by all means: he
would be sure to give me some help, considering
his strong affection for me. If you have any news,
pray write and tell me, especially as to when
Pansa goes. 2 I am sorry about Attica: yet I
believe in Craterus. Tell Pilia not to be anxious:
my sorrow is enough for us all.
ASTURA (8 MARCH)