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gallant efforts; for you saw to it that the memory of my name seemed to gain more than my fortune lost.

⁹ I earnestly recommend you, however, prompted as I am both by your kindness to me, and my affection for you, with all care and assiduity to fulfil all the glorious aspirations with which you have been fired from your boyhood, and ever maintain undeflected by any man's wrongdoing that greatness of soul which I have always admired, and always loved. Men think highly of you, highly commend your generosity, and highly appreciate the memory of your consulship. You surely see for yourself how much more clearly marked and vivid these impressions will be, when a large contribution of glory accrues to you from your work in your province and in your imperium.

And yet I would not have you perform, what you are bound to perform by means of your army and your imperium, without considering long before you take action the position of affairs at home.^[1] Remember them in your preparations, ponder them, train yourself to meet them, and be assured—it is something you have always hoped for, and therefore having gained your position must doubtless understand—^that you can with the utmost ease maintain the highest and most exalted position in the state. And that you may not regard the exhortation I have ventured to deliver as unprofitable and superfluous, I have been actuated by the consideration that you ought to be warned by our common experiences to consider carefully, for the rest of your days, whom you should trust, and of whom you should beware.

¹⁰ You write that you want to know the political situation; well, the disagreement of the parties is very marked, but they are unequally matched in