Letter 6011: I've wanted to write to you for some time, but the demands of public and private business have kept my pen idle.

Though I write much to you, you answer little, and I am vexed that the openings of your commissions run hot, right up to the point of causing me anxiety, but that thereafter their progress grows cold through silence. Perhaps you may ask what fault I still demand be charged against me even now. I had written that the price of the Capuan house had been settled with the seller: you write nothing back about the confirmation of it. The recovery and legal vindication of the Samnite property was entrusted to you: you informed me only too late that the fields had been stripped of their dowry-charges; and yet I still do not know what the enjoined formal exhibition has accomplished, the awaiting of which does not allow me to go off to the countryside. For I fear that, as has often happened, some clandestine creeping-in [fraudulent encroachment] may attempt something. Therefore either instruct me as to what remains for settling these affairs, or, if matters are in shallow water [safely concluded], open to me the way for taking up my retreat. With my brother Censorinus I am not troubled that, at whatever cost to us, an assessment has been made concerning the shoreline expanses. It remains that, by the interposition of a wall, the praetoria [the seaside residences] be divided, lest, once the present assessment lapses, the constraints of the neighboring boundary should again strive to extend themselves into other limits. Farewell.

Mnlta mihi ad vos scribenti panca respondes, et moleste fero mandatomm vestro- rum calere principia nsque ad sollicitudinem meam, mox antem per silentinm frigere processns. fortasse qnaeratis, quid etiam nnnc referri in no^centiam meam postnlem. 5 2 Capnanae domns pretinm scripseram cnm venditore decisnm: nihil de eins confirmar- tione rescribitis; Samniticae possessionis reformatio et vindicta mandata est: tantnm vacnatos dotibus agros sero docnisti ; adhnc tamen nescio, qnid exhibitio ininncta pro- fecerit, cuius me expectatio rus ire non patitnr. vereor enim, ne, quod saepe factnm est, clandestina aliqnid temptet obreptio. qnare ant instrnite, qnid supersit negotiis 10 3 explicandis, ant si res in vado snnt, viam mihi nsurpandae secessionis aperite. cnm fratre meo Censorino non moleste fero snb qnolibet dispendio nostro de litoralibns spatiis indicatum. restat ut interiectu mnri praetoria dividantnr , ne cessante indicio indicationis mrsns vicinae angnstiae in alios sese terminos nitantnr extendere. vale. XU a. 396. 16