DOI article:
Aldington, Richard: A Roman letter
DOI Page / Citation link: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.29343#0017
A ROMAN LETTER
BY RICHARD ALDINGTON
OUR letters, my best Rufinus,
were handed to me late in the after-
noon as I was returning from the
chase. I had spent most of the
day in the immense oak and beech
forests which darken the northern
parts of this province with their
green shadow. As I came from the last fringe of
these trees on my way home, bringing, I must confess,
fuller tablets than nets (my body warm with moderate
exertion and my mind tranquil from these hours of
woodland silence), I looked acrossthe wide undulating
plain at my feet, noticing with pleasure the rich golden
haze which lay upon its fields and dwellings. The
warmth, the calmness of the sight, coinciding so pre-
cisely with my own sensations, created in me a content-
ment I can hardly explain, and I asked myself if anything
could increase my immediate delight in living. At that
moment, as if in answer, your messenger appeared,
guided by one of my slaves, and presented me with your
letters.
THE news you give me of Rome is curious.
Congratulate Sulpicius from me on his appoint-
ment as proconsul. This dignity is, I suppose,
the price of some unworthycomplaisance? Strange that
reasonable men should degrade themselves for so little!
And yet how natural! Such infamies will be common
so long as men place their felicity in a prince’s favour
or in the adulation of a multitude. I should not have
thought it possible that so well-bred a woman as Cal-
purnia could ever have deserved the infamous words of
the satirist:
Mulli, Thai, negas: sed si te non pudet istud
Hac saltem pudeat, Thai, negare nihil.
But I am become such a rustic that the manners of the
city are foreign to me. This lack of self-control, this
disregard of elementary prudence seem to me remark-
able in so distinguished a woman. Doubtless, her great-
est fault is her inability to conceal the others—that our
sophisticated society does not easily pardon.
!3
BY RICHARD ALDINGTON
OUR letters, my best Rufinus,
were handed to me late in the after-
noon as I was returning from the
chase. I had spent most of the
day in the immense oak and beech
forests which darken the northern
parts of this province with their
green shadow. As I came from the last fringe of
these trees on my way home, bringing, I must confess,
fuller tablets than nets (my body warm with moderate
exertion and my mind tranquil from these hours of
woodland silence), I looked acrossthe wide undulating
plain at my feet, noticing with pleasure the rich golden
haze which lay upon its fields and dwellings. The
warmth, the calmness of the sight, coinciding so pre-
cisely with my own sensations, created in me a content-
ment I can hardly explain, and I asked myself if anything
could increase my immediate delight in living. At that
moment, as if in answer, your messenger appeared,
guided by one of my slaves, and presented me with your
letters.
THE news you give me of Rome is curious.
Congratulate Sulpicius from me on his appoint-
ment as proconsul. This dignity is, I suppose,
the price of some unworthycomplaisance? Strange that
reasonable men should degrade themselves for so little!
And yet how natural! Such infamies will be common
so long as men place their felicity in a prince’s favour
or in the adulation of a multitude. I should not have
thought it possible that so well-bred a woman as Cal-
purnia could ever have deserved the infamous words of
the satirist:
Mulli, Thai, negas: sed si te non pudet istud
Hac saltem pudeat, Thai, negare nihil.
But I am become such a rustic that the manners of the
city are foreign to me. This lack of self-control, this
disregard of elementary prudence seem to me remark-
able in so distinguished a woman. Doubtless, her great-
est fault is her inability to conceal the others—that our
sophisticated society does not easily pardon.
!3