ism. She is devoted to you, to your sister, and your
mother, and adds her kindest regards in a postscript. So does my pet
Tulliola. Love me, and be assured that I love you as a brother.

[Footnote 23: Pomponia, married to Cicero's younger brother Quintus. We
shall frequently hear of this unfortunate marriage. Quintus was four
years younger than his brother, who had apparently arranged the match,
and felt therefore perhaps somewhat responsible for the result (Nep.
_Att._ 5).]

[Footnote 24: Atticus had estates and a villa near Buthrotum in
Epirus,--_Butrinto_ in Albania, opposite Corfu.]

[Footnote 25: This is probably Sext. Peducaeus the younger, an intimate
friend of Atticus (Nep. _Att._ 21); his father had been praetor in Sicily
when Cicero was quaestor (B.C. 76-75), the son was afterwards a partisan
of Caesar in the Civil War, governor of Sardinia, B.C. 48, and propraetor
in Spain, B.C. 39.]

[Footnote 26: The person alluded to is L. Lucceius, of whom we shall
hear again. See Letters V, VII, VIII, CVIII. What his quarrel with
Atticus was about, we do not know.]

[Footnote 27: Prescriptive right to property was acquired by possession
(_usus_) of two years. But no such right could be acquired to the
property of a girl under guardianship (_pro Flacco_, Sec. 84).]

II (A I, 6)

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)

ROME, DECEMBER

[Sidenote: B.C. 68, AET. 38]

I won't give you any excuse hereafter for accusing me of neglecting to
write. It is you that must take care that with all your leisure you keep
up with me.

Rabirius's house at Naples,[28]for the improvement of which you have
designs drawn out and completed in imagination, has been bought by M.
Fonteius[29] for 130,000 sesterces (about L1,040). I wished you to know
this in case you were still hankering after it.

We may be quite satisfied, I think, with my brother's feelings towards
Pomponia. He is with her at present in his villa at Arpinum, and has
Decimus Turanius with him, who is great in _belles lettres_.

The date of my father's death was the 28th of November.

That is about all my news. If you light on any articles of _vertu_
suitable for a gymnasium, which would look well in the place you wot
of,[30] please don't let them slip. I am so delighted with my Tusculan
villa that I never feel really happy till I get there. Let me know
exactly what you are doing and intending to do about everything.

[Footnote 28: C. Rabirius, whom Cicero defended in B