B.C. 47, ÆT. 59
- fended me in your public speeches, when as quæstor you
stood by the consuls in what was at once my cause and that of the constitution, when as quæstor again you refused to submit to the tribune,[1] and that though your colleague was for obeying him. Yet, to forget your recent services (which I shall always remember), what anxiety for me did you shew during the war, what joy at my return, what anxiety, what pain, when my anxieties and sorrows were reported to you! Lastly, the fact that you had meant to come to Brundisium to see me had you not been suddenly sent to Spain—to omit, I say, all this, which in my eyes must be as precious as my own life and safety, what a strong profession of affection does the book which you have sent me convey! First, because you think any utterance of mine to be witty, though others perhaps do not: and, secondly, because those mots, whether witty or the reverse, become extraordinarily attractive as you tell them. In fact, even before they come to me, your readers have all but exhausted their power of laughter. But if in making this compilation there was no more compliment than the inevitable fact of your having thought for so long a time exclusively about me, I should be hard-hearted indeed if I did not love you. Seeing, however, that what you have taken the trouble to write you could never have planned without a very strong affection, I cannot deem that anyone is dearer to himself than I am to you: to which affection would that I could respond in other ways! I will at least do so in affection on my part: with which, after all, I feel certain you will be fully satisfied.
Now I come to your letter, which, though written in full and gratifying terms, there is no reason why I should answer at great length. For, in the first place, I did not send that letter to Calvus,[2] any more than the one you are now reading, with an idea of its getting abroad. For I write in one
- ↑ As quæstor, B.C. 60, Trebonius had opposed the passing of the law allowing Clodius's adoption into a plebeian gens.
- ↑ Trebonius seems to have remonstrated on some laudatory expressions in a letter to Calvus, which he had seen. C. Licinius Calvus, son of the annalist Licinius Macer, was born B.C. 82. He was a poet and orator. In the latter capacity Cicero elsewhere (Brut. § 283) speaks of him as being learned and accurate, but too much enslaved to the model of the Attic style, which he had set himself to imitate. That is the "certain definite style" of which he here speaks.
