Letter 8022: You claim to be living the country life -- tending vines and grafting fruit trees, nursing a vigorous old age.
You claim to be living the country life -- tending vines and grafting fruit trees, nursing a vigorous old age. Your letters tell a different story. Unless, of course, your corner of Gaul is a branch office of Mount Helicon [the Muses' mountain]. You plow different furrows with your pen and plant different rows with your prose.
As for me, since you want to know our news: I'm idling in the home of Latin eloquence [Rome], split between leisure and study. God willing, the years will be kind to my little boy, and he'll eventually invite me to share in his own studies. In the meantime, prod my laziness with frequent letters. Farewell.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
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