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Epistulae ad Familiares, IV. iii.-iv.

much more scope left for that outstanding and incomparable legal skill of yours than for mine. And so I do not pose as your mentor, but I am quite sure that you, too, are occupying yourself with matters which, though not so profitable, would distract the mind from brooding-on its troubles.

Your son Servius busies himself with conspicuous success in all the liberal arts, and especially in that in which I have already told you that I find repose; and really my affection for him is such that I should, yield in that respect to you alone, and no man else; and I have my reward in his gratitude; and in this, as may easily be seen, he thinks that when he shows me respect and deference, he is thereby doing what gives you too the greatest pleasure.

IV

To the same

Rome, late in September, 45 B.C.

1 I accept the excuse you offer for having so often sent me a letter in duplicate,[1] but I accept only that part of it in which you attribute it to the carelessness or the rascality of the carriers that your letters do not reach me. As to that part of your excuse in which you declare that "poverty of language"—that is how you put it—makes you use the same words too often in your letters, I neither recognize nor approve it. Why, even I myself—and you, though jestingly (as I take it), describe me as a man of "opulent vocabulary"—admit that I am not exactly embarrassed for lack of words (for there is no need to be "mock

  1. ↑ Or "with the same contents."
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