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endured, because you are at the same time out of the way of many serious annoyances; I should send you a complete list of them, were I not afraid that, far from home as you are, you might be made aware of things which you do not actually see, and are therefore, it seems to me, better off than we who do see them.

³ I think the consolation I have offered you is justified, so far as it meant your being informed by one who is most friendly to you of what might mitigate your distress. You have other means of consolation in your own hands, and they are neither unknown to me nor the least important—indeed, I feel they are by far the most important—and I have so tested their efficacy by daily trial, that they seem to me to represent salvation.

Now I well remember that you have been from the early days of your adolescence deeply devoted to every form of philosophical learning, and have mastered with enthusiastic diligence all the traditions of the wisest philosophers on the way to live aright. These could, of course, be a profit and a pleasure to us at the best of times, but in these days we have nothing else in which to find repose. I am not going to be impertinent, nor am I going to exhort one so gifted with professional skill,^[1] or shall I say natural ability, to return to those accomplishments to which you have devoted your enthusiasm from the early days of your adolescence. IV.iii.4⁴ No, I am only going to say this (and I hope you will agree with me) that, in my case, when I saw that there was no scope either in the senate-house or in the forum for that art which I had made my study, I concentrated all my attention and all my energy upon philosophy. There is not