nourishment he said, "My mind is made up," and the word has awakened
within me not only a sense of loss, but of admiration. I keep thinking
what a friend, what a manly friend is now lost to me. He was at the end
of his seventy-sixth year, an age long enough even for the stoutest of
us. True. He has escaped a lifelong illness; he has died leaving
children to survive him, and knowing that the State, which was dearer to
him than everything else beside, was prospering well. Yes, yes, I know
all this. And yet I grieve at his death as I should at the death of a
young man in the full vigour of life; I grieve--you may think me weak
for so doing--on my own account too. For I have lost, lost for ever,
the guide, philosopher, and friend of my life. In short, I will say
again what I said to my friend Calvisius, when my grief was fresh: "I
am afraid I shall not live so well ordered a life now." Send me a word
of sympathy, but do not say, "He was an old man, or he was infirm."
These are hackneyed words; send me some that are new, that are potent to
ease my trouble, that I cannot find in books or hear from my friends.
For all that I have heard and read occur to me naturally, but they are
powerless in the presence of my excessive sorrow. Farewell.


1.XIII.--TO SOSIUS SENECIO.

This year has brought us a fine crop of poets: right through April
hardly a day passed without some recital or other. I am delighted that
literature is so flourishing and that men are giving such open proofs of
brains, even though audiences are found so slow in coming together.
People as a rule lounge in the squares and waste the time in gossip when
they should be listening to the recital. They get some one to come and
tell them whether the reciter has entered the hall yet, whether he has
got through his introduction, or whether he has nearly reached the end