CXCVIII (F XIII, I)
TO GAIUS MEMMIUS (IN EXILE AT
MITYLENE)
ATHENS, JULY
THOUGH I had not quite made up my mind whether
the prospect of seeing you at Athens was painful
or pleasant-because your undeserved calamity 1 would have caused me
sorrow, yet the philosophic spirit with which you
bear it delight—nevertheless, I should
have preferred to have seen you. For I do not feel
the pain much less when you are out of sight,
while such pleasure as is possible would at any
rate have been greater had I seen you. Therefore I
shall not hesitate to endeavour to see you
whenever I shall be conveniently able to do so.
Meanwhile, such business as can be put before you
by letter, and, as I think, can be brought to a
conclusion, I will put before you now at once I
will preface my request by asking you not to do
anything for my sake against your own inclination;
but if the matter is one which is important to me,
and in no way of much importance to yourself,
still only grant it in case of having first made
up your mind to do so cheerfully. I am in thorough
sympathy with Patron the Epicurean, except that I
differ from him widely in philosophy. But not only
at the very beginning in Rome, when he was paying
attention to you as well as all your friends, did
he also cultivate my acquaintance with special
care, but recently also, after having gained all
that he wanted in the way of personal profit and
reward, he has continued to regard me as almost
the first of his supporters and friends. Besides
this, he was introduced and
recommended to me by Phaedrus, 2 who, when I was a boy
and before I knew Philo, was highly valued by me
as a philosopher, and afterwards as, at any rate,
a good, agreeable, and kindly man. This Patron,
therefore, having written to me at Rome, begging
me to reconcile you to him, and to ask you to
grant him some ruined house or other once
belonging to Epicurus, I did not write to you on
the subject, because I did not want any plan of
building which you might have to be hampered by a
recommendation of mine. On my arrival at Athens,
however, having been asked by the same person to
write to you on the subject, I have granted his
request, because all your friends agreed in saying
that you had given up that building idea. If this
is so, and if it is now of no importance to you, I
would ask you, if some little offence has been
caused you by the wrong-headedness of certain
persons—and I know the class of
men—to take a lenient view of the
matter, either from your own great natural
kindness or, if you like, out of compliment to me.
For my part, if you ask me what I think about it
myself, I neither see why he is so anxious for it,
nor why you make difficulties; I only feel that it
is much less natural for you to trouble yourself
without reason, than for him to do so. However, I
am sure that Patron's line of argument and the
merits of his case are known to you. He says that
he has to maintain his own honour and duty, the
sanctity of a will, the prestige of Epicurus, the
solemn injunction of Phaedrus, the home, the
dwelling-place, the footprints of famous men. We
may ridicule the man's entire life and the system
which he follows in philosophy, if we take upon
ourselves to find fault with what he is now
contending for. But, by Hercules, since I am not
very unfriendly to him or to others who find
pleasure in such things, I think we must be
indulgent to him for being so very keen about it.
For even if he is wrong in this, it is a fault of
the head, not the heart. But to come to the
point—for I must mention this sooner or
later—I love Pomponius Atticus as a
second brother. Nothing can be dearer
or more delightful than he is to me. Atticus,
then-not that he is of their sect (for he is
cultivated to the highest degree in all liberal
learning 3 ), but he is very fond of Patron, and was
much attached to Phaedrus—presses this
upon me as he has never done anything else, though
he is the very reverse of self-seeking, the last
person in the world to be troublesome in making
requests; and he feels no doubt of my being able
to obtain this favour from you on the slightest
hint, even if you still had the intention of
building. In the present circumstances, however,
if he hears that you have laid aside your plan of
building and that yet I have not obtained this
favour from you, he will think, not, indeed, that
you have been ungenerous towards me, but that I
have been careless in what concerned himself.
Wherefore I beg you to write word to your agents
that the decree of the Areopagites, which they
call a "minute," 4 may
be canceled with your free consent. But I return
to what I said at first. Before making up your
mind to do this, I would have you be sure that you
do it for my sake with a willing heart. At any
rate have no doubt of this: if you do what I ask,
I shall take it as a very great favour. Farewell.
ATHENS, JULY
