is, that some of my own property is scarcely so completely mine as is
some of yours; the only difference being that I get more thoroughly and
attentively looked after by your servants than I do by my own. You will
very likely find the same thing yourself when you come to stay in one of
my villas. I hope you will, in the first place that you may get as much
pleasure out of what belongs to me as I have from what belongs to you,
and in the second that my people may be roused a little to a sense of
their duties. I find them rather remiss in their behaviour and almost
careless. But that is their way; if they have a considerate master,
their fear of him grows less and less as they get to know him, while a
new face sharpens their attention and they study to gain their master's
good opinion, not by looking after his wants but those of his guests.
Farewell.


1.V.--TO VOCONIUS ROMANUS.

Did you ever see a man more abject and fawning than Marcus Regulus has
been since the death of Domitian? His misdeeds were better concealed
during that prince's reign, but they were every bit as bad as they were
in the time of Nero. He began to be afraid that I was angry with him
and he was not mistaken, for I certainly was annoyed. After doing what
he could to help those who were compassing the ruin of Rusticus
Arulenus, he had openly exulted at his death, and went so far as to
publicly read and then publish a pamphlet in which he violently attacks
Rusticus and even calls him "the Stoics' ape," adding that "he is marked
with the brand of Vitellius." You recognise, of course, the Regulian
style! He tears to pieces Herennius Senecio so savagely that Metius
Carus said to him, "What have you to do with my dead men? Did I ever
worry your Crassus or Camerinus?"--these being some of Regulus's victims