CDLXXVII (F IX, 26)
TO L. PAPIRIUS PAETUS (AT NAPLES)
ROME (AUGUST?)
I have just lain down to dinner at three
o'clock, when I scribble a copy of this note to
you in my pocket-book. 1 You will say, "where?" With
Volumnius Eutrapelus. One place above me is
Atticus, one below Verrius, both friends of yours.
Do you wonder that our slavery is made so gay?
Well, what am I to do? I ask your advice as the
pupil of a philosopher. 2 Am I to be miserable, to torment myself?
What should I get by that? And, moreover, how
long? "Live with your books," say you. Well, do
you suppose that I do anything else? Or could I
have kept alive, had I not lived with my books?
But even to them there is, I don't say a surfeit,
but a certain limit. When I have left them, though
I care very little about my dinner—the
one problem which you put before the philosopher
Dion—still, what better to do with my
time before taking myself off to bed I cannot
discover. Now listen to
the rest. Below Eutrapelus lay Cytheris. 3 At such a party as that,
say you, was the famous Cicero, "To whom all
looked with rev'rence, on whose face Greeks turned
their eyes with wonder?" To tell you the truth, I
had no suspicion that she would be
there. But, after all, even the Socratic
Aristippus himself did not blush when he was
taunted with having Lais as his mistress: "Yes,"
quoth he, "Lais is my mistress, but not my
master." It is better in Greek; 4 you must make a translation
yourself, if you want one. As for myself, the fact
is that that sort of thing never had any
attraction for me when I was a young man, much
less now I am an old one. I like a dinner party. I
talk freely there, whatever comes upon the tapis,
as the phrase is, and convert sighs into loud
bursts of laughter. Did you behave better in
jeering at a philosopher and saying, when he
invited anyone to put any question he chose, that
the question you asked the first thing in the
morning was: "Where shall I dine?" The blockhead
thought that you were going to inquire whether
there was one heaven or an infinite number! What
did you care about that? "Well, but, in heaven's
name—you will say to me—"was a
dinner a great matter to you, and there of all
places ?" 5
Well then, my course of
life is this. Every day something read or written:
then, not to be quite churlish to my friends, I
dine with them, not only without exceeding the
law, but even within it, and that by a good deal.
6 So you have no reason to be
terrified at the idea of my arrival. You will
receive a guest of moderate appetite, but of
infinite jest.
ROME (AUGUST?)