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Epistulae ad Familiares, II. xv-xvi.

applaud this decision of mine, for it cannot be altered.

5 What you wrote to me about Ocella is not as intelligible as it should be; and it does not appear in the Gazette.[1] Your exploits are so celebrated that the affair of Matrinius has been heard of even on the other side of Mount Taurus. If I am not delayed at all by the Etesian Winds,[2] I shall see you, I hope, pretty soon.

XVI

M. T. Cicero, imperator, to the same

Cumae, early in May, 49 B.C.[3]

1 I should have been deeply grieved at your letter I had not my own reflection by this time stifled all sense of irritation, and had not I so long despaired of affairs that my mind had grown callous to any fresh grief. Why it should have happened, however, that my former letter should lead you to suspect what you mention in yours, I fail to see. What did that letter contain beyond a complaint of the times, which keep my mind on the rack, but no more so than yours? My experience of your acute intellect is not such that I could ever suppose you do not see all that I see myself. What surprises me is that you, who ought to know my inmost heart, could ever have been induced to regard me as either so short-sighted as to desert a cause exalted to such a height for one that is tottering and all but prostrate, or so inconsistent as to forfeit in a moment all the favour I had accumulated in the eyes of one now

  1. ↑ The Acta diurna, the "Times" of Rome.
  2. ↑ Winds that blow from the N.W. for forty days in the summer in the Levant.
  3. ↑ For the political situation see Chron. Sum. This letter is in answer to Caelius's letter, viii. 16.
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