1It is most gratifying to me that you read my uncle's books so diligently that you wish to have them all and ask what they all are. 2I shall play the part of a catalogue, and shall also let you know in what order they were written; 2for this too is knowledge not unwelcome to the studious. 3'On Throwing the Javelin from Horseback', one book; 3this he composed, with equal talent and care, when he was serving as prefect of a cavalry squadron. 3'The Life of Pomponius Secundus', two books; 3having been singularly loved by him, he paid this tribute to his friend's memory as if discharging a debt. 4'The German Wars', twenty books; 4in which he gathered together all the wars we have waged with the Germans.
4He began them while serving in Germany, prompted by a dream: as he slept, there stood beside him the likeness of Drusus Nero, who after conquering far and wide in Germany died there; he commended his memory to him and begged him to rescue him from the injustice of oblivion. 5'The Student', three books, divided into six volumes because of their length, in which he trains the orator from the cradle and brings him to perfection. 5'Doubtful Language', eight books: he wrote this under Nero in his last years, when slavery had made every kind of study that was at all free or elevated dangerous. 6'A Continuation of Aufidius Bassus', thirty-one books.
6'Natural History', thirty-seven books, a wide-ranging and learned work, and no less varied than nature herself. 7Do you wonder that a busy man completed so many volumes, and so much in them that is so painstaking? 7You will wonder more if you learn that for some time he pleaded cases, that he died in his fifty-sixth year, and that he spent the time between distracted and hampered partly by the highest offices, partly by the friendship of emperors. 8But he had a keen intellect, incredible application, and the utmost wakefulness. 8He began working by lamplight from the Vulcanalia, not for the sake of the omen but for study, straight away in the depth of the night, and in winter from the seventh hour, or at the latest the eighth, often the sixth.
8He was certainly very quick to sleep, which sometimes even came upon him and left him again in the midst of his studies. 9Before daybreak he would go to the emperor Vespasian — for he too made use of the nights — and from there to the duty assigned to him. 9On returning home he gave what remained of his time to study. 10After eating — which in the daytime he took light and simple, in the manner of the ancients — often in summer, if he had any leisure, he would lie in the sun; a book was read, and he made notes and extracts. 10For he read nothing without making extracts; 10he used to say, too, that no book was so bad that it was not useful in some part.
11After his time in the sun he usually bathed in cold water, then took a snack and slept very briefly; 11then, as if it were another day, he studied until dinner-time. 11During dinner a book was read and notes were made, and that rapidly. 12I remember that one of his friends, when the reader had pronounced some words wrongly, called him back and made him repeat them; 12and that my uncle said to him: 'You had understood, surely?' 12When he had nodded: 'Why then did you call him back? 12We have lost more than ten lines through this interruption of yours.' 13So sparing was he of time. 13In summer he rose from dinner while it was still light, in winter within the first hour of the night, as if some law compelled him.
14This was in the midst of his labours and the din of the city. 14In the country only the time of his bath was taken from study — when I say bath, I mean the inner part of it; 14for while he was being scraped and towelled he would listen to something or dictate —. 15On a journey, as if freed from all other cares, he gave himself to this one alone: at his side was a secretary with a book and writing tablets, whose hands in winter were protected by long sleeves, so that not even the harshness of the weather should snatch any time from study; 15and for this reason he was carried in a chair at Rome too.
16I recall being rebuked by him for walking: 'You could have avoided wasting these hours,' he said; 16for he thought that all time was lost that was not spent on study. 17With this application he completed all those volumes and left me a hundred and sixty notebooks of extracts, written moreover on both sides and in the tiniest hand; 17by which reckoning this number is multiplied. 17He used to relate that, when he was procurator in Spain, he could have sold these notebooks to Larcius Licinus for four hundred thousand sesterces; 17and at that time they were somewhat fewer. 18When you recall how much he read and how much he wrote, does it not seem to you that he was never engaged in any offices or in the emperor's friendship; 18and again, when you hear how much labour he spent on study, that he neither wrote nor read enough?
18For what is there that those occupations could not hinder, or that this persistence could not accomplish? 19So I usually laugh when people call me studious, I who, if compared with him, am the idlest of men. 19But am I the only one, distracted as I am partly by public duties, partly by those of friendship? 19Which of those who sit over their books their whole life long would not, compared with him, blush as one given over to sleep and idleness? 20I have stretched out my letter, though I had intended to write only what you asked, namely which books he had left; 20yet I trust that these things too will be no less welcome to you than the books themselves, since they can rouse you with the spur of emulation not only to read them but also to work at something similar.
20Farewell.