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When he wishes to compliment Marcus he declares one or other of

his letters has the true Tullian ring. Marcus gives his nights to

reading when he ought to be sleeping. He exercises himself in

verse composition and on rhetorical themes.

'It is very nice of you,' he writes to Fronto,[19] 'to ask for my

hexameters; I would have sent them at once if I had them by me.

The fact is my secretary, Anicetus-you know who I mean-did not

pack up any of my compositions for me to take away with me. He

knows my weakness; he was afraid that if I got hold of them I

might, as usual, make smoke of them. However, there was no fear

for the hexameters. I must confess the truth to my master: I love

them. I study at night, since the day is taken up with the

theatre. I am weary of an evening, and sleepy in the daylight,

and so I don't do much. Yet I have made extracts from sixty

books, five volumes of them, in these latter days. But when you

read remember that the "sixty" includes plays of Novius, and

farces, and some little speeches of Scipio; don't be too much

startled at the number.