with a writer's genius: if it is at once hampered and frustrated by so many disadvantages, what can it produce worth listening to or likely to satisfy? When, indeed, I come to mention Cæsar himself, I tremble in every limb, not from fear of his punishing, but of his criticising me. For I do not know Cæsar thoroughly. What do you think of a courage that talks thus to itself? "He will approve of this: that expression is open to suspicion." "What if I change it to this? But I fear that will be worse." Well, suppose I am praising some one: "Shan't I offend him?" Or when I am criticising some one adversely: "What if it is against his wish?" "He punishes the pen of a man engaged in a campaign: what will he do to that of a man conquered and not yet restored?"
You yourself add to my alarm, because in your Orator you shield yourself under the name of Brutus,[1] and try to make him a party to your apology. When the universal "patron" does this, what ought I to do—an old client of yours, and now everyone's client? Amidst such misgivings therefore created by fear, and on the rack of such blind suspicion, when most of what one writes has to be adapted to what one imagines are the feelings of another, not to one's own judgment, I feel how difficult it is to come off successfully, though you have not found the same difficulty, because your supreme and surpassing genius has armed you for every eventuality. Nevertheless, I told my son to read the book to you, and then to take it away, or only to give it to you on condition that you would promise to correct it, that is, if you would give it a totally new complexion.
About my journey to Asia, though the necessity for my making it was very urgent, I have obeyed your commands. Why should I urge you to exert yourself for me? You are fully aware that the time has come when my case must be decided. There is no occasion, my dear Cicero, for you to wait for my son. He is a young man: he cannot from his warmth of feeling, or his youth, or his timidity, think of all necessary measures. The whole business must rest on you: in you is all my hope. Your acuteness enables you to hit
- ↑ In the Orator (§35) Cicero says that he wrote his Cato at the instigation of Brutus.
