Y ou shall hear from me, my Pompeianus, the true state of the case; and I would ask you to accept it from me as the truth. It is nearly a year ago that I took that speech For the Bithynians1 in hand and set about revising it. I also made certain promises to you about the speech when you were in Rome at that time. And, indeed, if I remember rightly, when we were discussing the rhetorical heads of a speech, I claimed, and with some pride, that I had in that speech very thoroughly analyzed in argument and confuted the assumption which turned on the charge of murder by mandate. Meanwhile, a more than usually severe attack of neuritis came on, which proved to be more persistent and troublesome than usual. And I cannot pay any attention to writing or reading letters when my limbs are racked with pain; nor have I ever ventured to make such a demand upon my strength. When philosophers, those wondrous creatures, tell us that the wise man, even if shut up in the Bull of Phalaris,2 would still be happy, I could find it more easy to believe that he would be happy than that he would be able, while baking in the brass, to muse the while on an exordium or write pointed phrases.
Then when after a long interval I had recovered my health, I turned to other matters in preference. I took a dislike to that speech, and will not be ashamed to confess hatred and aversion . . . . . . . . So the speech has come back home to me after I had publicly disowned it, and taken up its abode with me again . . . . . .. . . . . .
? 162 A.D.
Fronto to Praecilius Pompeianus,3 greeting.