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Epistulae ad Familiares, I. iv.-v.

expectation you have aroused. This rival you will overmatch without difficulty if you do one thing—if you resolve that whatever be the qualities that achieve the glorious deeds on which you have set your heart, it is upon them that you must spend all your strength. I should write more to this effect, were I not assured that you are eager enough on your own account; and if I have touched upon the subject at all, it was not to set your ambitions ablaze, but to show my love for you.

V

To the same

Rome, 53 B.C.

1 What the state of affairs is here I dare not tell I you even in a letter. As for yourself, although, wherever you are, as I wrote to you before, you are in the same boat, yet I congratulate you on being away, partly because you do not see what we see, and partly because your renown is set on a very high and conspicuous pinnacle before the eyes of thousands of both allies and fellow-citizens, and the report of it reaches me not by means of vague and varied gossip, but in the ringing tones of one voice—the voice of all. 2 One thing I am not sure about, whether to congratulate you, or to feel anxious about you, since the expectations your return has excited are quite amazing; not that I am afraid that your great abilities will fall short of men's estimate of them, but—Heaven help us—that when you come you will find nothing to take charge of,

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