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Epistulae ad Familiares, III. vii.

you wish me to do. So no more about the Appian deputation.

4 I was told in so many words by Lentulus's freedman, Pausanias, my own beadle,[1] that you complained in conversing with him that I had not gone to meet you. O yes, of course I treated you with contempt, and my arrogance is inconceivable! Well, when your serving-man came to me about the second watch,[2] and reported that you would arrive at Iconium before dawn, and that it was not certain by which road (for there were two), I sent Varro, your most intimate friend, by one road, and Q. Lepta, the commander of my engineers by the other, to meet you, and I instructed each of them to post away from you to me so as to give me time to come and meet you. Lepta came running to me, and reported that you had already passed the Camp. I hastened to Iconium. The rest you already know. Could I have possibly failed to meet you, firstly an Appius Claudius, secondly an imperator? Then, since it is an ancient custom, then (and this is the main thing) because you were my friend? And that too when in affairs of this kind it is my habit to act with a courtesy far more punctilious than is demanded by my public status and dignity. But no more of this.

5 Pausanias also kept telling me that you said:, "Why, of course! An Appius went to meet a Lentulus, and a Lentulus an Ampius[3]: but a Cicero—no, he would not go to meet an Appius! " Now, I ask you, talking of these sillinesses, do you of all people—a man, in my estimation, of sound commonsense, of great erudition too and of wide experience in affairs—I recall your urbanity also, which the

  1. ↑ The accensi were special attendants mostly employed as court criers or marshals by magistrates who had the imperium.
  2. ↑ Between nine and twelve at night.
  3. ↑ Lentulus succeeded Ampius in part of the province of Cilicia.
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