were, worthy in the highest degree of any rank, and at least easily first of your own ordo. But, since at the same time and in the same cause we have both of us lost our position, the things mentioned above, which are still mine to promise, and those also which I seem to myself to be partially retaining as reliques, so to speak, of my old rank—these I hereby promise you. For Cæsar himself, as I have been able to gather by many circumstances, is not estranged from me, and nearly all his most intimate friends, bound to me as it happens by important services rendered by me in the past, are constant in their attentions and visits to me. Accordingly, if I find any opening for mooting the subject of your fortunes, that is, of your restoration to civil rights, on which everything depends—and I am daily more induced to hope for it from what these men say—I will do so personally and exert myself to the uttermost. It is not necessary to enter into details: I tender you my zeal and goodwill without reserve. But it is of great importance to me that all your friends should—as they may by a letter from you—know this, that everything which is Cicero's is at the service of Trebianus. To the same effect is it that they should believe that there is nothing too difficult for me to undertake with pleasure for you.
CCCCXCI (F XII, 17)
TO Q. CORNIFICIUS (IN THE EAST)
Rome (September)
Cicero's compliments to his colleague[1] Cornificius. I am
exceedingly gratified by your remembrance of me as indicated
by your letter. I beg you to retain it, not because I
have any doubt of your constancy, but because such is the
- ↑ That is, in the college of augurs. There was a vacancy this year by the death of Faustus Cornelius Sulla, and though we don't know it positively, Cornificius may have been nominated to it by Cæsar, in reward for his services in Illyricum in B.C. 48-47.
