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Epistulae ad Familiares, Bk. Ltt.

as regards Vatinius,^[1] however, you clearly indicate your desire to know what induced me to defend and eulogize him. To give you a plainer explanation of this it is necessary that I should go a little further back into the reasons of my policy.

At the beginning,^[2] thanks to the course of events and to your exertions, my dear Lentulus, I imagined that I had been restored not to my friends alone but to the commonwealth, and that while to you I owed an almost incredible affection and every act of extreme and peculiar devotion to yourself, to the Republic, seeing that it had aided you greatly in my restoration, I considered that, by reason of its own deserving, I assuredly owed a regard such as previously I had displayed as owing to it because of the common obligation of all citizens, and not because of any signal service done to myself. That I was of this mind the Senate was told by my own lips in your consulship, and you yourself must have observed it in our conversations and interviews.

⁵ And yet even in those early days there were many things that caused me heart-burnings, when, as you were dealing with the general aspects of my position in the state, I detected signs either of the covert hatred of certain persons, or of their doubtful support of my cause. For neither in the matter of my memorial buildings^[3] were you helped by those

↑ P. Vatinius, a political adventurer, and no less of a scoundrel (as he himself maintained) than P. Clodius, was quaestor in 63 and tribune in 59, when he sold his services to Caesar, then consul with Bibulus, and proposed the Lex Vatinia, giving Caesar Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum for five years. In 56 he witnessed against Cicero's friends, Milo and Sestius, and was vehemently attacked by the orator. In 55 he was praetor, and in 54 was accused of bribery by Licinius Calvus, and defended, as explained here by Cicero. He was consul suffectus for a few days at the end of 47. In 46 he was fairly successful as governor of Illyricum (cf. 10a and 10b). After Caesar's death he was compelled to surrender Dyrrhachium and his army to Brutus.
↑ i.e. "of my restoration."
↑ "Cicero may here refer (1) to his own house or a portion of it, (2) to the neighbouring colonnade of Catulus, destroyed by Clodius, but rebuilt by the Senate's order, (3) or perhaps to some building which Cicero as consul was commissioned by the Senate to erect in commemoration of the suppression of Catiline's conspiracy" (Watson).

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[1] P. Vatinius, a political adventurer, and no less of a scoundrel (as he himself maintained) than P. Clodius, was quaestor in 63 and tribune in 59, when he sold his services to Caesar, then consul with Bibulus, and proposed the Lex Vatinia, giving Caesar Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum for five years. In 56 he witnessed against Cicero's friends, Milo and Sestius, and was vehemently attacked by the orator. In 55 he was praetor, and in 54 was accused of bribery by Licinius Calvus, and defended, as explained here by Cicero. He was consul suffectus for a few days at the end of 47. In 46 he was fairly successful as governor of Illyricum (cf. 10a and 10b). After Caesar's death he was compelled to surrender Dyrrhachium and his army to Brutus.

[2] i.e. "of my restoration."

[3] "Cicero may here refer (1) to his own house or a portion of it, (2) to the neighbouring colonnade of Catulus, destroyed by Clodius, but rebuilt by the Senate's order, (3) or perhaps to some building which Cicero as consul was commissioned by the Senate to erect in commemoration of the suppression of Catiline's conspiracy" (Watson).

[1]

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