You are the one man, I think, who flatters less than I do; and if either of us is ever so to someone else, between ourselves we never are. Listen then to what I say without enchantment, agoēteutōs (with no spell laid on it). May I not live, my dear Atticus, if my Tusculan villa — where, in everything else, I am content to be — if even the makarōn nēsoi (Isles of the Blessed) are worth so much to me as to be without you for so many days. So I shall harden myself through this three-day stretch, so as to put you, too, into the same pathos (state of feeling); and so in fact it is. But I should like to know whether you are coming today, straight off, about the auction, and on what day you come. Meanwhile, I am with my little books; and I am annoyed not to have Vennonius’s history. But, not to say nothing about the business: that debt of mine from Caesar has three possible settlements — either purchase at the auctioneer’s spear (I should rather lose it outright, though that, quite apart from its disgrace, is itself what I count as losing it), or assignment from the contractor on a one-year term (and to whom shall I extend credit, or when will that Metonic year of his come round?), or, on Vettienus’s terms, the half. skepsai (think it over), then. And I am afraid the fellow won’t hold any auction at all now, but, the games over, will go running off to the rescue of Atypos (the dimwit, our Sir Witless), so that such a man may not be left alogēthēi (without his reckoning). But melēsei (he’ll see to it). You look after Attica, please, and give her my warmest greetings, and Pilia and Tullia’s too.