On several occasions in his letters, Cicero can be found worrying about how to decorate his properties appropriately, how to project an image of himself as a man of taste, learning and Greek culture, and how to source the artworks that he needed in order to do that, not always successfully. A tricky problem he faced in 46 BCE reveals some of his slightly fussy concerns. One of his unofficial agents had acquired for him in Greece a small collection of statues that was both too expensive (he could have bought a new lodge, he explains, for the price) and quite unfit for the purposes he had in
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