to your being my friend! especially as you are cautious to admit such as are worthy; and are far from having any sinister ambitious views.  I can not reckon myself a lucky fellow on this account, as if it were by accident that I got you for my friend; for no kind of accident threw you in my way.  That best of men, Virgil, long ago, and after him, Varius, told you what I was.  When first I came into your presence, I spoke a few words in a broken manner (for childish bashfulness hindered me from speaking more); I did not tell you that I was the issue of an illustrious father:  I did not [pretend] that I rode about the country on a Satureian horse, but plainly what I really was; you answer (as your custom is) a few words:  I depart:  and you re-invite me after the ninth month, and command me to be in the number of your friends.  I esteem it a great thing that I pleased you, who distinguish probity from baseness, not by the illustriousness of a father, but by the purity of heart and feelings.

And yet if my disposition be culpable for a few faults, and those small ones, otherwise perfect (as if you should condemn moles scattered over a beautiful skin), if no one can justly lay to my charge avarice, nor sordidness, nor impure haunts; if, in fine (to speak in my own praise), I live undefiled, and innocent, and dear to my friends; my father was the cause of all this:  who though a poor man on a lean farm, was unwilling to send me to a school under [the pedant] Flavius, where great boys, sprung from great centurions, having their satchels and tablets swung over their left arm, used to go with money in their hands the very day it was due; but had the spirit to bring me a child to Rome, to be taught those arts which any Roman knight and senator can teach his own children.  So that, if any person had considered my dress, and the slaves who attended me in so populous a city, he would have concluded that those expenses were supplied to me out of some hereditary estate.  He himself, of all others the most faithful guardian, was constantly about every one of my preceptors.  Why should I multiply words?  He preserved me chaste (which is the first honor or virtue) not only from every actual guilt, but likewise from [every] foul imputation, nor was he afraid lest any should turn it to his reproach, if I should come to follow a business attended with small profits, in capacity of an auctioneer, or (what he was himself) a tax-gatherer.  Nor [had that been the case] should I have complained.  On this account the more praise is due to him, and from me a greater degree of gratitude.  As long as I am in my senses, I can never be ashamed of such a father as this, and therefore shall not apologize [for my birth], in the manner that numbers do, by affirming it to be no fault of theirs.  My language and way of thinking is far different from such persons.  For if nature were to make us from a certain term of years to go over our past time again, and [suffer us] to choose other parents, such as every man for