An gravius aliquid scribam: Roman seniores write to iuvenes

Abstract

I USED TO WONDER WHEN READING HORACE SERMO 2.1 the fictive dialogue with the real-life jurisconsult, C. Trebatius Testa, why this expert advises the poet to oil up and swim the Tiber whenever the satirical impulse keeps him from sleep.' Although the exercise is certainly appropriate to young jocks of Augustan Rome, it seems like a frivolous antidote to the literary obsessions of a man almost 40. Unexpectedly the answer popped out at me from a letter that Cicero had written to a much younger Testa in December 54 while Trebatius was serving as a member of Caesar's camp in Gaul. Not Horace's athletic proclivities are in question, but those of Testa. More cautious in military than in judicial affairs, as Cicero styles him, Testa is a studiossissimus homo natandi, who has nonetheless balked at a swim in the ocean.2 Undoubtedly, Cicero is referring to Caesar's first British expedition from which Testa had somehow managed to excuse himself. Either from him, or more likely from his brother Quintus, who was a member of the invading company,3 Cicero had heard of the soldiers' difficult landing. As Caesar reports, the soldiers of the tenth legion,