S ince my last letter to you nothing has happened worth writing of, or the knowledge of which would be of the slightest interest to you. For we have passed whole days more or less in the same occupations: the same theatre, the same dislike of it, the same longing for you—the same, do I say? nay, one that is daily renewed and increases and, as Laberius, after his own manner and in his own peculiar style, says of love,
Your love as fast as any onion grows, as firm as any palm.
This then that he says of love, I apply to my longing for you. I should like to write you a longer letter, but nothing suggests itself.
Stay, I have just thought of something. We have been listening to panegyrists here, Greeks, of course, but wondrous creatures, so much so that I, who am as far removed from Greek literature as is my native Caelian hill1 from the land of Greece, could nevertheless hope, matched with them, to be able to rival even Theopompus, the most eloquent, as I hear, of all the Greeks. So I, who am all but a living barbarian, have been impelled to write in Greek by men, as Caecilius2 says, of unimpaired ignorance.
The climate of Naples is decidedly pleasant, but violently variable. Every two minutes it gets colder or warmer or rawer. To begin with, midnight is warm, as at Laurentum; then, however, the cock-crow watch chilly, as at Lanuvium; soon the hush of night and dawn and twilight till sunrise cold, for all the world like Algidus; anon the forenoon sunny, as at Tusculum; following that a noon as fierce as at Puteoli; but, indeed, when the sun has gone to his bath in Ocean, the temperature at last becomes more moderate, such as we get at Tibur; this continues the same during the evening and first sleep of night, until, as M. Porcius says, the dead of night falls swiftly down. But why do I string together these Masurian3 banalities, when I started with saying I should write a few words only? So farewell, most kindly of masters, most honourable of consuls, and let your love be the measure of your longing for me.
143 A.D.
The consul to his own Caesar.