On the eleventh day after I had left you, I scratched out these few lines, setting out from the villa before daybreak. I was thinking to spend that day at the Anagninum, the next at the Tusculanum, and one day there. So on the fifth before the Kalends I shall be at the appointed meeting. And how I wish I could run straight to my Tullia’s embrace, to a kiss from Attica! Write to me, I beg you, about precisely this, so that while I am at the Tusculanum I may know what she is chattering about; or if she is in the country, what she writes to you. Meanwhile, do either send her a greeting from me or give her one, and the same to Pilia. And although we shall be meeting any moment now, write to me anyhow if you have anything.

undecimo die, postquam a te discesseram, hoc litterularum exaravi egrediens e villa ante lucem atque eo die cogitabam in Anagnino, postero autem in Tusculano, ibi unum diem; v Kalend. igitur ad constitutum. atque utinam continuo ad complexum meae Tulliae, ad osculum Atticae possim currere! quod quidem ipsum scribe, quaeso, ad me ut, dum consisto in Tusculano, sciam quid garriat, sin rusticatur, quid scribat ad te; eique interea aut scribes salutem aut nuntiabis itemque Piliae. et tamen etsi continuo congressuri sumus, scribes ad me si quid habebis.

As I was folding up this letter, a courier reached me through the night with a letter of yours; on reading it, I was naturally much distressed about Attica’s little fever. As for the rest I had been expecting from your letter, I have it all now. But where you write that the morning fire is gerontikon — the mark of an old man — it is more gerontikon still for the little memory to wobble. For I had given a letter to Axius on the fourth before the Kalends, to you on the third, and to Quintus on the day I arrived — that is, on the fifth before the Kalends. So this is what you will have: nothing new. What need, then, was there for a letter? What need is there, when we are face to face and chatter whatever first comes to mind? Surely there is something in mere conversation leschē which has, even when nothing lies beneath it, a sweetness in the very talking.

cum complicarem hanc epistulam, noctuabundus ad me venit cum epistula tua tabellarius; qua lecta de Atticae febricula scilicet valde dolui. reliqua quae exspectabam ex tuis litteris cognovi omnia; sed quod scribis igniculum matutinum γεροντικόν, γεροντικώτερον est memoriola vacillare. ego enim iiii Kal. Axio dederam, tibi iii, Quinto quo die venissem, id est v Kal. Hoc igitur habebis, novi nihil. quid ergo opus erat epistula? quid, cum coram sumus et garrimus quicquid in buccam? est profecto quiddam λέσχη, quae habet, etiam si nihil subest, conlocutione ipsa suavitatem.

C icero by Claude

Ad Atticum 12.1

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