urther
decreed by the Senate that the ex-Praetors and ex-Consuls who had not yet
served as governors should now go forth and undertake the duties of
government. In compliance with this order, and probably as a specially
intended consequence of it, Cicero was compelled to go to Cilicia. Mr.
Froude has said that "he preferred characteristically to be out of the
way." I have here given what I think to be the more probable cause of
his undertaking the government of Cilicia.

[Sidenote: B.C. 51, aetat. 56.]

In April of this year Cicero before he started wrote the first of a
series of letters which he addressed to Appius Claudius, who was his
predecessor in the province. This Appius was the brother of the Publius
Clodius whom we have known for the last two or three years as Cicero's
pest and persecutor; but he addresses Appius as though they were dear
friends: "Since it has come to pass, in opposition to all my wishes and
to my expectations, that I must take in hand the government of a
province, I have this one consolation in my various troubles--that no
better friend to yourself than I am could follow you, and that I could
take up the government from the hands of none more disposed to make the
business pleasant to me than you will be."[68] And then he goes on: "You
perceive that, in accordance with the decree of the Senate, the province
has to be occupied." His next letter on the subject was written to
Atticus while he was still in Italy, but when he had started on his
journey. "In your farewell to me," he says, "I have seen the nature of
your love to me. I know well what is my own for you. It must, then, be
your peculiar care to see lest by any new arrangement this parting of
ours should be prolonged beyond one year."[69] Then he goes on to tell
the story of a scene that had occurred at Arcanum, a house belonging to
his brother Quintus, at which he had stopped on the road for a family
farewell. Pomponia was there, the wife of Quintus and the sister to
Atticus. There were a few words between the husband and the wife as to
the giving of the invitation for the occasion, in which the lady behaved
with much Christian perversity of temper. "Alas," says Quintus to his
brother, "you see what it is that I have to suffer every day!" Knowing
as we all do how great were the powers of the Roman paterfamilias, and
how little woman's rights had been ventilated in those days, we should
have thought that an ex-Praetor might have managed h