O n my return home I received your letter which you had, of course, written to me at Rome, and to Rome it had gone; then it was brought back to-day and delivered to me a little while ago. In it, with many happy arguments, you confute the little I had said for sleep so cleverly, so subtly and aptly, that if wakefulness brings you such sharpness and wit,1 I would absolutely prefer you to keep awake. But, indeed, you confess that you wrote in the evening just before going to sleep. It was the near approach, therefore, and overshadowing of sleep that produced so felicitous a letter. For, like the saffron, sleep, ere it comes close, sheds its fragrance from afar and delights at a distance.
To begin, then, with the opening of your letter, collusion with sleep, as you term it, is most happy . . . .2 the word3 is so apt that, were it withdrawn, nothing of equal value and force could be put in its place. That, again, is a happy expression4 . . . . or that turn of yours beside the mark where you say nor all the other things which make up the Odyssey.
Indeed all that Latin context is interwoven by you and alternates as skilfully with the Greek verses as the movements of the gaily-drest performers in the Pyrrhic reel when they run together, coalescing now with these, now with those, dressed some in scarlet, others in damask,5 and crimson, and purple.
Again, your transition from Laertius to Atrides was neatly done. But come, that was a nasty return you gave Q. Ennius when you said that, had he not awaked from sleep he could not have recounted his dream. See if my Marcus Caesar can evolve anything more dexterous than that. No sleight of word So clever, no snare, as Laevius says, so cunningly set. What if I beseech you never to wake up? Nay, I beseech you to sleep. Another jester's6 proverb: Marry, one with whom you can play odd and even in the dark! But am I not blest in seeing and realizing this, and above all in being called by the title master? How I master? who cannot get my way in this one thing I would have you learn—to sleep. Go your own way, provided that, whether you wake early or sleep long, the Gods keep you for me. Farewell, my joy, farewell.
M. Aurelius as Caesar to Fronto
143 A.D.
To my master.