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Epistulae ad Familiares, II. xvii.

2 As to the delivery of your accounts, it is no invenience to me that you should omit to deliver any, for which you write that Bibulus gives you authority, but I hardly think you can omit to do so according to the Julian law; and though Bibulus, for a definite reason of his own,[1] refuses to observe that law, it should in my opinion be scrupulously observed by you.

3 You write that the garrison ought not to have been withdrawn from Apamea; well, I see that everybody else thinks so too, and I am annoyed that my ill-wishers have made rather disagreeable comments on it. Whether the Parthians have crossed or not is a question I see nobody has any doubt about except yourself;[2] and so, influenced by the positive way people spoke about it, I dismissed all the garrisons, strong and secure as I had made them.

4 My quaestor's accounts it was neither proper for me to send you, nor had they at that time been made up. It is my intention to deposit them at Apamea. As to my booty, with the exception of the city quaestors,[3] in other words the Roman people, not a soul has touched or will touch a farthing of it.

At Laodicea I think I shall accept sureties for all the public money, so that both I and the people may be insured against the risks of marine transport.

You write to me about the 100,000 drachmae; in dealing with that I can make no arrangement in favour of anybody; all the money is handled as booty by the praefecti,[4] while what has been assigned to myself is administered by the quaestor.

  1. ↑ He probably considered that it was no law, as all the enactments of Caesar in 59 had been passed in defiance of his obnuntiatio. Tyrrell. The law in question was passed by Caesar in his consulship; it required that, before their departure from their province, the governor and his quaestor should leave copies of their accounts in two of the principal provincial towns.
  2. ↑ i.e., everybody but Sallustius was sure the Parthians had not crossed the Euphrates.
  3. ↑ The quaestores urbani, who remained in Rome and did not accompany the consuls, directly represented the Roman people.
  4. ↑ Military, and not provincial; "quartermasters."
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