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Epistulae ad Familiares, I. ix.

favour you have sent recommendations from the ends of the earth. But don't alarm yourself; for those same persons are, and always will be, praised by me also. However, in the matter of Vatinius's defence, I had another motive to spur me on; as I remarked at the trial when I was pleading for him, I was doing just what the Parasite urged the Captain to do in the Eunuchus[1]:

When Phaedria's name she utters, you'll reply Promptly with Pamphila's; and should she cry "Let us bid Phaedria to our revelling!""Let's challenge Pamphila," you'll retort, "to sing." His looks if she praise, praise you hers no less; Such tit-for-tat will cause her deep distress.


So I begged the gentlemen of the jury, since certain noble friends of mine, who had shown me the greatest kindness in the past, were now evincing an undue affection for my special enemy, and before my very eyes were constantly either drawing him aside, as if for solemn consultation, or else playing "hail fellow well met" with him, since they had their Publius, I begged the jury, I say, to allow me, too, another Publius of my own, in dealing with ^ whom I might give my friends' conscience a sly dig or two just to show that I was a little annoyed with them; and I not only said so, but I do so again and again, to the delight of gods and men.

20 So much for Vatinius; now let me tell you about Crassus.[2] Since he and I were by this time on quite good terms (for in the interests of public harmony I had, as it were, expunged by a voluntary amnesty the whole list of his grossly injurious acts), I should have put up with his sudden defence of Gabinius[3]—

  1. ↑ Ter. Eun. iii. 1. 50. Cicero means that he is playing of his Publius (Vatinius) against the optimates' Publius (Clodius), exactly as the parasite, Gnatho, advises the captain, Thraso, to play off Pamphilia against his mistress's lover, Phaedria (see Introd. 54 B.C. § 7).
  2. ↑ For Crassus's quarrels and reconciliations with Cicero see note to v. 8. 1.
  3. ↑ Crassus seems to have defended Gabinius's government of Syria, which had been impunged by the publicani, and by Cicero in his speech On the Consular Provinces.
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