Letter 6014: You press me to stay with you at your villa near Formiae.
To Mauricus.
You press me to stay with you at your villa near Formiae. Well, I will come on condition that you do not inconvenience yourself at all - a stipulation in which I consult my own interest as well as yours. For it is not the sea and the shore which will tempt me, but yourself and retirement, and leave to do as I please. Otherwise it were better to remain in town, for one ought to refer everything either to someone else's judgment or to one's own, and, as far as I am personally concerned, my taste is to desire nothing, unless it is perfect and flawless. * Farewell.
[Note: He means - I would rather remain in Rome, entirely devoted to business, than go into the country, unless I can do there entirely what I like. One thing or the other : constant occupation or perfect freedom, I can't stand a mixture.]
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.
Related Letters
No, you could not have given me a pleasanter commission than to find a teacher of rhetoric for your brother's children.
You ask me to look out for a husband for your brother's daughter, and you do well to select me for such a commission.
You have done quite right, my dear Pliny, in cancelling the expenditure by the people of Byzantium of those twelve...
I know what an interest you take in the liberal arts, and how delighted you are when young men of rank do anything...
How can I better prove to you how greatly I admire your Greek epigrams than by the fact that I have tried to imitate...