Marcus Tullius Cicero

“ For myself, I have so completely lost all nerve, that I prefer a despotism, with the existing peace, to a state of war with the best hopes in the world. As to literary composition, to which you frequently urge me, it is impossible! My house is a basilica rather than a villa, owing to the crowds of visitors from Formiae. But (you'll say) do I really compare the Aemilian tribe to the crowd in a basilica? ”

“ What a splendid opportunity, with such fellows in the house, if anyone wanted to buy my Formian property! [2] And in spite of all this am I to make good my words, "Let us attempt something great, and requiring much thought and leisure"? ”

“ They are not so bad as that, not so wasteful of time! I take basilica to mean the saunterers in a basilica, as we might say "the park" for the company in it, "the exchange" for the brokers in it. I feel certain that Prof. Tyrrell is wrong in ascribing the words sed ... sunt to a quotation from Atticus's letter. What is wanted is to remove the full stop after sunt. The contrast Cicero is drawing is between the interruption to literary work of a crowd of visitors and of one or two individuals always turning up. ”