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that prove, as you write and I can well believe, too heavy clay for your plough,^[1] then (and that is easy enough) that there should be no prolongation of my tenure of office. On the subject of politics, I look to your letters, as I wrote to you before, for an account of current, and, even more, for a forecast of coming events. I therefore earnestly beg of you to write to me fully on all points with all possible assiduity.

¹ Would you ever have thought it possible that words would fail me, and not only those oratorical words you public speakers use, but the ordinary, homely words I use? And yet they do fail me, and for this reason—I am extraordinarily anxious as to what on earth may be decreed about the provinces. It is surprising how I yearn for Rome; you cannot believe how I yearn for my friends, and particularly for you; but as to the province, I am heartily sick of it, whether it be because I seem, to have attained such a measure of fame, that I should not so much seek any addition to it, as apprehend a reverse of fortune, or because the whole business is unworthy of my powers, seeing that I can, and often do, carry heavier burdens in the service of the state; or because we have hanging over us the horror of a great war, which I seem likely to escape if I quit the province on the appointed day.