B.C. 46, ÆT. 60 ought to expect any alleviation: yet, after all, perhaps you can give me some kind of help, or I you. For allow me to tell you that, since my arrival in the city, I have effected a reconciliation with my old friends, I mean my books: though the truth is that I had not abandoned their society because I had fallen out with them, but because I was half ashamed to look them in the face. For I thought, when I plunged into the maelstrom of civil strife, with allies whom I had the worst possible reason for trusting, that I had not shewn proper respect for their precepts. They pardon me: they recall me to our old intimacy, and you, they say, have been wiser than I for never having left it. Wherefore, since I find them reconciled, I seem bound to hope, if I once see you, that I shall pass through with ease both what is weighing me down now, and what is threatening. Therefore in your company, whether you choose it to be in your Tusculan or Cuman villa, or, which I should like least, at Rome, so long only as we are together, I will certainly contrive that both of us shall think it the most agreeable place possible.
CCCCLV (F XIII, 29)
TO L. MUNATIUS PLANCUS[1] (IN AFRICA)
Rome (?)
I have no doubt of your knowing that, among the connexions
bequeathed to you by your father, there was no one
more closely united to you than myself, not only for the
- ↑ Plancus had been Cæsar's legatus in Gaul, and was with him in Africa. He lived through the period of the Civil Wars, surviving Antony—whom he betrayed—and settling down to enjoy the wealth that his extortions had gained him, as a courtier in the train of Augustus. Velleius Paterculus gives the blackest account of him (ii. 83) as an ingrained traitor (morbo proditor) and profligate. Horace, however, seems to have regarded him with some affection (Od. i. 7). We shall hereafter see something of his shifty policy following the murder of Cæsar.
