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DCX (A XIII, 3)

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)
TUSCULUM, 30 MAY
Yes, the debtors you mention appear to be so satisfactory that my only hesitation arises from the fact that you seem to have doubts. The fact is, I don't like your referring the matter to me. What! was I to manage my own business without your advice? But, after all, I quite understand that you do so more from your habitual caution than because you doubt the soundness of the debtors. The fact is, you don't think well of Caelius, and you don't want a multiplicity of debtors. In both sentiments I concur. We must therefore be content with the present list. 1 Sooner or later, indeed, you would have had to go security for me even in the auction with which we are now concerned. 2 All then shall be provided from my own pocket: but as to the delay in getting in the debts, I think—if we do but hit upon what we want—that a time of grace may be obtained from the auctioneer, and at any rate from the heirs.

See about Crispus and Mustela, and let me know what the share of the two is. I had already been informed of the arrival of Brutus; 3 for my freedman Aegypta brought me a letter from him. I am sending it to you, because it is expressed in obliging terms.


1 The question is of certain debts due to Faberius, which he offers to assign to Cicero in payment of the money owed to him (see p.265). Cicero is satisfied with the list of names; but Atticus would rather have had one name, or at least fewer, and yet does not approve of the substitution of Caelius for all or some of them. Thereupon Cicero says that they had better make the best of the list as it stands.

2 The auction of the horti Scapulani which Cicero had contemplated buying for Tullia's shrine. He goes on to say that Atticus, no doubt, would have to be his security for the purchase-money till the debts above-mentioned were got in, but a corresponding time of grace can be obtained from the vendors, so that Atticus's guarantee would not be called upon, and the money would be paid out of his own pocket. This sense I think can be fairly got from the text as given by Tyrrell

3 From his province of Gallia Cisalpina. Mustela and Marcius Crispus were two of the co-heirs of Scapula.

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.

The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.

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