personal security he was forced to wish them ill. To complete his unhappiness, the failure of the opposition to Cæsar had caused a bitter quarrel with his brother and nephew. The younger Quintus had always been Cæsarian in sympathy, and had caused his uncle much disquiet by going to Rome to meet Cæsar in the previous year.[1] But now the elder Quintus seems to have joined his son in reproaching Cicero with having misled them into joining the losing side. They had parted from him in anger at Patræ, and were on their way to meet Cæsar as he was following Pompey through Asia, and make their submission to him. Cicero is not only distressed at the loss of his brother's affection, but fearful of their denouncing him to Cæsar.[2] As far as the younger Quintus was concerned, there may have been cause for such fears. But though the elder Quintus was always intemperate in language, there does not seem any reason to suppose that he wished or attempted to injure his brother. If he did, Cicero took a generous revenge: for he was careful to let Cæsar know that he himself was alone to blame for the course they had taken as a family in the civil war; and that Quintus had followed, not led him, in the matter.[3] "Believe rather," he says, "that he always advised our union; and was the companion, not the leader, of my journey." The breach between the brothers was not long in healing; but the subsequent conduct of his nephew, who served under Cæsar in Spain, gave Cicero much distress for the next two years.[4] An interview between them in December, B.C. 45, described in a letter to Atticus, shews how strained the relations between them still were.[5] After Cæsar's death, though young Quintus for a time adhered to Antony, he surprised his uncle by suddenly announcing his conversion to the cause of Brutus and Cassius.[6] And though Cicero doubted the sincerity and the motives of the change, there seems to have been no farther quarrel, till the proscription overwhelmed all three of them in the same destruction.
Cæsar's return to Italy in September, B.C. 47, after successfully settling the difficulties in Alexandria, and the rising
