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making various enactments, deciding actions, delivering judgements, though you might already have guessed that you had been superseded; doing things that were not usually done, they said, even by those who thought that they were being succeeded at an early date.

⁵ Now the talk of these people disturbed me not at all; nay more than that (I hope you will believe me) I considered that if you were busying yourself officially, I was being relieved of some irksome toil, and I rejoiced that a year's government of the province, a long time as it appeared to me, had now been reduced to a government of hardly more than eleven months, if one month's work had been taken off my shoulders before I arrived. One thing, to tell you the truth, does disturb me—that, our forces being so weak to start with, three cohorts, and those at their fullest strength, are absent, and that I do not know where they are. What annoys me most of all, however, is, that I do not know where I shall see you; and I was the less prompt in writing to you, because I have been daily expecting to see you in person; and meanwhile I have not received so much as a letter from you to inform me what you were doing or where I was likely to see you; so I have sent you D. Antonius, the commander of the veterans,^[1] a gallant officer of whom I have reason to think very highly, so that, if it be your pleasure, you may hand the cohorts over to him, in order that I may be able to achieve something appreciable while the season of the year is still in my favour. And in that regard both our friendship and your letter have led me to hope that I shall have the benefit of your counsel, and I do not despair of it even now. But really