urry for
that clause. For cancelling the senatorial decree the time is not yet
ripe, because there are none to complain of it, and because also many
are glad to have it so, some from spite, some from a notion of its
equity. Your friend Metellus is an admirable consul: I have only one
fault to find with him--he doesn't receive the news from Gaul of the
restoration of peace with much pleasure. He wants a triumph, I suppose.
I could have wished a little less of that sort of thing: in other
respects he is splendid. But the son of Aulus behaves in such a way,
that his consulship is not a consulship but a stigma on our friend
Magnus. Of my writings I send you my consulship in Greek completed. I
have handed that book to L. Cossinius. My Latin works I think you like,
but as a Greek you envy this Greek book. If others write treatises on
the subject I will send them to you, but I assure you that, as soon as
they have read mine, some how or other they become slack. To return to
my own affairs, L. Papirius Paetus, an excellent man and an admirer of
mine, has presented me with the books left him by Servius Claudius. As
your friend Cincius told me that I could take them without breaking the
_lex Cincia_[143], I told him that I should have great pleasure in
accepting them, if he brought them to Italy. Wherefore, as you love me,
as you know that I love you, do try by means of friends, clients,
guests, or even your freedmen or slaves, to prevent the loss of a single
leaf. For I am in urgent need of the Greek books which I suspect, and of
the Latin books which I know, that he left: and more and more every day
I find repose in such studies every moment left to me from my labours in
the forum. You will, I say, do me a very great favour, if you will be as
zealous in this matter as you ever are in matters in which you suppose
me to feel strongly; and Paetus's own affairs I recommend to your
kindness for which he thanks you extremely. A prompt visit from yourself
is a thing which I do not merely ask for, I advise it.

[Footnote 137: Contained in Letter XXII, pp. 46-47.]

[Footnote 138: Reading _tibi_ for _mihi_, as Prof. Tyrrell suggests.]

[Footnote 139: [Greek: Sparten elaches keinen kosmei.] "Sparta is your
lot, do it credit," a line of Euripides which had become proverbial.]

[Footnote 140: [Greek: hoi men par' ouden eisi, tois d' ouden melei.]
Rhinton, a dramatist, _circa_ B.C. 320-280 (of Tarentum or Syracuse).]

[Footnote 141: See