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especially when he is a colleague of mine as augur, and even in dealing with the fame and erudition of our College has proved his devotion to me? I have written more fully on these points because your letter conveyed a slight hint that you had a lurking doubt as to my goodwill towards him. I expect you have been hearing something; if you have heard anything, believe me, it is a lie.

My own measures and policy differ to some extent in their very nature from his ideas of provincial administration, with the result that certain folks have perhaps suspected that my disagreement with him is due to the clash of incompatible temperaments, and not to a mere difference of opinion. Now I have never either done or said a single thing with the intention of disparaging his reputation. Indeed, since this trouble caused by our friend Dolabella's indiscretion,^[1] I am putting myself forward as his intercessor in the day of his need.

³ In the same letter occurs "the lethargy of the state." I am delighted to hear of it, and rejoice that my friend's^[2] joints have grown stiff from having nothing to do. The postscript in your own handwriting gave me a twinge of pain. What's this? "Curio is now defending Caesar." Who would ever have thought so, excepting myself? For, on my life, I did think so. O ye everlasting gods! How I miss the laugh you and I would have had over it!

⁴ Now that I have finished my judicial duties, put the states on a sound financial basis, secured for the publicani the arrears (just think of it) of the past five years without the slightest protest on the part of the allies, and have made myself pleasant