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Epistulae ad Familiares, II. xviii.

you are, and you may rest assured that I grow more interested every day in your high position; and, indeed, you have yourself so enhanced it by your probity and clemency, that it seems incapable of improvement. 2 But, meditating daily as I do on your methods, I am more and more satisfied with that advice of mine I originally offered to our friend Aristo when he came to see me, that you would be incurring serious hostility in many quarters if you branded with official disgrace a young man[1] of great power and high birth, and a disgrace it certainly will be, there is no doubt of it; for you have nobody who stands above him in official rank. Now that young man, not to mention his nobility, takes precedence of those excellent men of unblemished record, your legates, by virtue of the very fact that he is a quaestor, and your own quaestor too. I am quite aware that there is nobody who can harm you by being angry. Still I don't like your having three brothers,[2] men of the highest birth, prompt in action and not lacking in eloquence, all angry with you at once, especially when they have right on their side; and I see that they will be tribunes of the plebs, one after the other, for a period of three years.

3 But, as to the Republic, who knows what sort of weather is in store for it? My forecast is "squally." Why should I want you to face the terrors of the tribunes' wrath, especially when nobody could say a word against it if you promoted a quaestor over the heads of a quaestor's legates? If he proves himself worthy of his ancestors, as I hope and pray he will, the credit in a great measure will be yours; if he makes any mistake, it will be entirely his own affair, and not yours at all. As I am starting for Cilicia, I thought

  1. ↑ Gaius Antonius, brother of Marcus the triumvir, tribune in 49 B.C. and of Lucius, tribune in 44. It does not appear that Gaius himself was ever tribune. Gaius was now quaestor in Asia, and Cicero urges Thermus to leave him in charge of the province.
  2. ↑ The three Antonii mentioned in note a.
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