CCCCXCVI (F VI, 14)
TO Q. LIGARIUS[1] (IN EXILE)
Rome, 26 November[2]
I assure you that I am employing every effort and all my
care and zeal in securing your recall. For, to say nothing of
the fact that I have always been deeply attached to you, the
signal loyalty and love of your brothers, who have the same
place as yourself in the warmest feelings of my heart, suffer
me to neglect no task or opportunity of displaying my
fidelity and zeal towards you. But what I am doing and
have done for you, I prefer your learning from their letters
rather than from mine. But what my hopes are, or what I
feel confident of, and consider as certain in regard to your
recall, that I wish you to be informed of by myself. For if
there is anyone who is nervous in matters of moment and
danger, and who is always more inclined to fear a reverse
than to hope for success, I am that man, and if it is a
fault, I confess that I am not without it. However, on
the fifth day before the Kalends of the first intercalary
month, I went at the request of your brothers to wait on
Cæsar at his morning reception, and endured all the
humiliation and bore of securing an entrée and an interview
with him. When your brothers had thrown themselves
at his feet, and I had said what the merits of the
case and your position demanded, I went away with a con-*
- ↑ Q. Ligarius, who had as the legatus of Varus in Africa, B.C. 49, excluded the senatorial governor Tubero and his son from landing there, had afterwards fought against Cæsar at Thapsus, and had been exiled. His brothers tried to secure his recall, but the younger Tubero brought a charge of majestas against him, on which Cicero defended him. See Letter CCCCLXXXVII.
- ↑ November = September before Cæsar's rectification of the calendar. Besides the usual intercalary month of twenty-three days inserted at the end of February, two months of sixty-seven days in all were intercalated between the last day of November and the first of December. This year thus consisted of four hundred and forty-five days.
