cely got out a sigh when "Good
day," says Arrius. This is what you call going out of town! I shall
really be off to

"My native mountains and my childhood's haunts."[235]

In fine, if I can't be alone I would rather be with downright
countryfolk than with such ultra-cockneys. However, I shall, since you
don't say anything for certain, wait for you up to the 5th of May.
Terentia is much pleased with the attention and care you have bestowed
on her controversy with Mulvius. She is not aware that you are
supporting the common cause of all holders of public land. Yet, after
all, _you_ do pay something to the _publicani_; she declines to pay even
that,[236] and, accordingly, she and Cicero--most conservative of
boys--send their kind regards.

[Footnote 234: The spectacle Cicero hopes for is Clodius's contests with
the triumvirs.]

[Footnote 235: To Arpinum (see last letter). The verse is not known, and
may be a quotation from his own poem on Marius. He often quotes
himself.]

[Footnote 236: This is not mentioned elsewhere. The explanation seems to
be that for the _ager publicus_ allotted under the Sempronian laws a
small rent had been exacted, which was abolished by a law of B.C. 111
(the name of the law being uncertain). But some _ager publicus_ still
paid rent, and the _publicanus_ Mulvius seems to have claimed it from
some land held by Terentia, perhaps on the ground that it was land (such
as the _ager Campanus_) not affected by the law of Gracchus, and
therefore not by the subsequent law abolishing rent.]

XLII (A II, 16)

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)

FORMIAE, 29 APRIL

[Sidenote: B.C. 59, AET. 47]

On the day before the Kalends of May, when I had dined and was just
going to sleep, the letter was delivered to me containing your news
about the Campanian land. You needn't ask: at first it gave me such a
shock that there was no more sleep for me, though that was the result of
thought rather than pain. On reflexion, however, the following ideas
occurred to me. In the first place, from what you had said in your
previous letter--"that you had heard from a friend of his[237] that a
proposal was going to be made which would satisfy everybody"--I had
feared some very sweeping measure, but I don't think this is anything of
the sort. In the next place, by way of consolation, I persuaded myself
that the hope of a distribution of land is now all centred on the
Campanian territory.[238] That land cannot support mor