24
You are completely unaware, it seems to me, that good expectations are not to be sought from the booksellers but derived from one’s self and one’s daily life. Do you expect to find public advocates and character-witnesses in the scribes Atticus and Callinus? No: you will find them heartless fellows, bent upon ruining you, if the gods so will it, and reducing you to the uttermost depths of poverty. Even now you ought to come to your senses, sell these books to some learned man, and your new house along with them, and then pay the slave dealers at least a part of the large sums you owe them.
