“MY DEAREST MASTER,--I am well. To-day I studied from three till eight in the morning after taking food. I then put on my slippers, and from eight till nine had a most enjoyable walk up and down before my chamber. Then, booted and cloaked--for so we were commanded to appear--I went to wait upon my lord the Emperor. We went a-hunting, did doughty deeds, heard a rumour that boars had been caught, but there was nothing to be seen. However, we climbed a pretty steep hill and in the afternoon returned home. I went straight to my books. Off with my boots, down with my cloak! I spent a couple of hours in bed. I read Cato’s speech on the property of Pulchra and another in which he impeaches a tribune. Ho, ho! I hear you cry to your man, off with you as fast as you can and bring me those speeches from the library of Apollo. No use to send; I have these books with me too. You must get round the Tiberian librarian; you will have to spend something on the matter; and when I return to town I shall expect to go shares with him. Well, after reading those speeches, I wrote a wretched trifle destined for drowning or burning. No, indeed, my attempt at writing did not come off at all to-day; the composition of a hunter or a vintager whose shouts are echoing through my chamber, hateful and wearisome as the law-courts. What have I said? Yes, it was rightly said, for my master is an orator. I think I have caught a cold, whether from walking in slippers or from writing badly, I do not know. I am always annoyed with phlegm, but to-day more than usual. Well, I will pour oil on my head and go off to sleep. I don’t mean to put one drop in my lamp to-day, so weary am I from riding and sneezing. Farewell, dearest and most beloved master, whom I miss, I may say, more than Rome itself.” I shall have so much to say of the virtue of Marcus Aurelius, and it is such a rare thing to get a saint or an emperor off his guard, putting on his slippers, grumbling at the noise outside his windows or catching a cold and sneezing--though I am sure they do those things--that I cannot refrain from quoting another letter; it tells us more about this cold, and is the only place in literature, as far as I know, where it is recorded that a philosopher, a saint, or an emperor took a bath and snored. He writes to Fronto:--