ask you these questions "with any view to action,"[207] because my heart is yearning to take part in practical politics. I was long ago getting tired of being at the helm, even when it was in my power. And now that I am forced to quit the ship, and have not cast aside the tiller, but have had it wrenched out of my hands, my only wish is to watch their shipwreck from the shore: I desire, in the words of your favourite Sophocles, "And safe beneath the roof To hear with drowsy ear the plash of rain." As to the wall, see to what is necessary. I will correct the mistake of Castricius, and yet Quintus had made it in his letter to me 15,000, while now to your sister he makes it 30,000.[208] Terentia sends you her regards: my boy Cicero commissions you to give Aristodemus the same answer for him as you gave for his cousin, your sister's son.[209] I will not neglect your reminder about your Amaltheia.[210] Take care of your health. [Footnote 203: As he was a man _sui iuris_, Clodius's adoption into a new gens (_adrogatio_) would have to take place before the _comitia curiata_ (now represented by thirty lictors), which still retained this formal business. The ceremony required the presence of an augur and a pontifex to hold it. Cicero supposes Pompey and Cæsar as intending to act in that capacity. Pompey, it seems, did eventually attend.] [Footnote 204: One of the twenty commissioners under Cæsar's agrarian law. Cicero was offered and declined a place among them. The "only man," of course, refers to the intrusion on the mysteries.] [Footnote 205: To Egypt.] [Footnote 206: This seems also to refer to the twenty agrarian commissioners, who, according to Mommsen, were divided into committees of five, and were, therefore, spoken of indifferently as _quinqueviri_ and _vigintiviri_. But it is somewhat uncertain.] [Footnote 207: κατὰ τὸ πρακτικόν.] [Footnote 208: Castricius seems to have been a _negotiator_ or banker in Asia. We don't know what mistake is referred to; probably as to some money transmitted to Pomponia.] [Footnote 209: It is suggested that Aristodemus is some teacher of the two young Ciceros, to whom the young Marcus wishes to apologize for his absence or to promise some study.] [Footnote 210: Perhaps some inscription or other ornament for Atticus's gymnasium in his villa at Buthrotum.] XXXIV (A II, 8) TO ATTICUS (AT ROME) ANTIUM, APRIL [Sidenote: B.C. 59, ÆT. 47]