B.C. 45, ÆT. 61 what, after all, is this slavery? In old times, when I was thought to be exercising royal power,[1] I was not treated with such deference as I am now by all Cæsar's most intimate friends, except by this fellow. I regard it as something gained that I no longer endure a fellow more pestilent than his native land,[2] and I think his value has been pretty well appraised in the Hipponactean verses of Licinius Calvus.[3] But observe the cause of his anger with me. I had undertaken Phamea's cause, for his own sake, because he was an intimate friend. Phamea came to me and said that the arbitrator had arranged to take his case on the very day on which the jury were obliged to consider their verdict in regard to P. Sestius.[4] I answered that I could not possibly manage it: but that if he selected any other day he chose, I would not fail to appear for him. He, however, knowing that he had a grandson who was a fashionable flutist and singer,[5] left me, as I thought, in a somewhat angry frame of mind. There's a pair of "Sardians-for-sale"[6] for you, one more worthless than the other. You now know my position and the unfairness of that swaggerer. Send me your "Cato": I am eager to read it: that I haven't read it yet is a reflexion on us both.
- ↑ That is, in his consulship, especially in the Catiline affair.
- ↑ Sardinia, notoriously unhealthy (vol. i., p. 217).
- ↑ C. Licinius Calvus (b. B.C. 84) wrote satiric scazons—verses on the model of Hipponax of Chios (fl. in c. B.C. 540). Addictum means "knocked down at a price"; præconio means the "puffing" or "appraising" of the auctioneer (præco).
- ↑ This is not the trial in which Cicero's extant speech for Sestius was delivered (B.C. 56), but a prosecution for bribery under Pompey's law of B.C. 52. As Phamea died in B.C. 49 (see vol. ii., p. 332), and Cicero was absent in Cilicia from May, B.C. 51, this trial must have been in the autumn of B.C. 52 or the spring of B.C. 51.
- ↑ Reading cantorem for unctorem. As Tigellius was a favourite of Cæsar and other great men, his grandfather expected Cicero to support him.
- ↑ I.e., worthless fellows. The explanation of this proverbial expression is given by Victor (de Vir Ill. 65), who says that the consul C. Sempronius Gracchus (B.C. 177) took such an enormous number of captives in the war against the rebel Sardinians (B.C. 181-177) that they became a drug in the slave market.
