To VOCONIUS ROMANUS

DID YOU ever meet with a more abject and mean-spirited
creature than Marcus Regulus since the death of Domitian, during
whose reign his conduct was no less infamous, though more
concealed, than under Nero's? He began to be afraid I was angry
with him, and his apprehensions were perfectly correct; I was
angry. He had not only done his best to increase the peril of the
position in which Rusticus Arulenus1 stood, but had exulted in his
death; insomuch that he actually recited and published a libel upon
his memory, in which he styles him "The Stoics' Ape": adding,
"stigmated2 with the Vitellian scar."3 You recognize Regulus'
eloquent strain! He fell with such fury upon the character of
Herennius Senecio that Metius Carus said to him, one day, "What
business have you with my dead? Did I ever interfere in the affair
of Crassus' or Camerinus'? " Victims, you know, to Regulus, in
Nero's time. For these reasons he imagined I was highly
exasperated, and so at the recitation of his last piece, I got no
invitation. Besides, he had not forgotten, it seems, with what
deadly purpose he had once attacked me in the Court of the
Hundred. Rusticus had desired me to act as counsel for Arionilla,
Titnon's wife: Regulus was engaged against me. In one part of the
case I was strongly insisting upon a particular judgment given by
Metius Modestus, an excellent man, at that time in banishment by
Domitian's order. Now then for Regulus. "Pray," says he, "what is
your opinion of Modestus?" You see what a risk I should have run
had I answered that I had a high opinion of him, how I should have
disgraced myself on the other hand if I had replied that I had a bad
opinion of him. But some guardian power, I am persuaded, must
have stood by me to assist me in this emergency. "I will tell you