Ad Atticum 1.9
Ad Atticum 1.9
Headnote
Cicero to Atticus, written at Rome in March or April 67 BC. A note explicitly short because Cicero does not know where Atticus is and refuses to entrust intimate talk to a letter that may go astray — the first instance of a recurring anxiety that will mark the corpus through the civil wars. The body of the letter is once again the art-shipment business: the Megarian statues, the Hermae, “what is most in the gymnasium style.” At the end the poet Thyillus (one of Atticus’s Greek h\’erangers) asks Cicero to ask Atticus for a copy of the Eumolpid\=on patria, the unwritten laws of the Eleusinian priests, and Cicero passes the request along.
Letters reach us too rarely from you, since you can far more easily find men setting out for Rome than I can men setting out for Athens, and since it is more certain to you that I am at Rome than to me that you are at Athens. So, on account of this uncertainty of mine, this very letter is the shorter — because, not knowing where you were, I did not wish that familiar talk of ours to fall into other hands.
nimium raro nobis abs te litterae adferuntur, cum et multo tu facilius reperias qui Romam proficiscantur quam ego qui Athenas, et certius tibi sit me esse Romae quam mihi te Athenis. itaque propter hanc dubitationem meam brevior haec ipsa epistula est quod, cum incertus essem ubi esses, nolebam illum nostrum familiarem sermonem in alienas manus devenire.
The Megarian statues and the Hermae you wrote to me about, I am vehemently waiting for. Whatever you have of the same kind that will seem to you worthy of the Academy, do not hesitate to send, and trust our coffer for it. This is the kind of pleasure I have: what is most in the gymnasium style, gymnasiōde, that is what I look for. Lentulus promises his ships. I beg you to see to this carefully. Thyillus asks of you, and I, at his asking, ask too — the rites of the Eumolpidae, Eumolpidōn patria.
signa Megarica et Hermas, de quibus ad me scripsisti, vehementer exspecto. quicquid eiusdem generis habebis dignum Academia tibi quod videbitur ne dubitaris mittere et arcae nostrae confidito. genus hoc est voluptatis meae; quae γυμνασιώδη maxime sunt, ea quaero. Lentulus navis suas pollicetur. peto abs te ut haec diligenter cures. Thyillus te rogat et ego eius rogatu Εὐμολπιδῶν πάτρια.