always incumbent on me, or in my forensic labour, which I
formerly sustained with a view to official promotion, and
nowadays to maintain my position by securing popularity, or in the
mere business of my family? In all these I missed you and our
conversations before my brother left Rome, and still more do I
miss them since. Finally, neither my work nor rest, neither my
business nor leisure, neither my affairs in the forum or at home,
public or private, can any longer do without your most consolatory
and affectionate counsel and conversation. The modest reserve
which characterizes both of us has often prevented my mentioning
these facts; but on this occasion it was rendered necessary by that
part of your letter in which you expressed a wish to have yourself
and your character "put straight" and "cleared" in my eyes. Yet, in
the midst of all this unfortunate alienation and anger on his part,
there is yet one fortunate circumstance--that your determination of
not going to a province was known to me and your other friends,
and had been at various times asserted by yourself; so that your not
being with him may be attributed to your personal tastes and
judgment, not to the quarrel and rupture between you. So those ties
which have been broken will be restored, and ours which have
been so religiously preserved will retain all their old inviolability.
At Rome I find politics in a shaky condition; everything is
unsatisfactory and foreboding change. For I have no doubt you
have been told that our friends, the equites, are all but alienated
from the senate. Their first grievance was the promulgation of a
bill on the authority of the senate for the trial of such as had taken
bribes for giving a verdict. I happened not to be in the house when
that decree was passed, but when I found that the equestrian order
was indignant at it, and yet refrained from openly saying so, I
remonstrated with the senate, as I thought, in very impressive