,
and such the servility of the allies--even of those who were about to
escape from him--that these embassies were a matter of course. There had
been a Sicilian embassy to praise Verres. Appius had complained as
though Cicero had impeded this legation by restricting the amount to be
allowed for its expenses. He rebukes Appius for bringing the charge
against him.

The series of letters written this year by Caelius to Cicero is very
interesting as giving us a specimen of continued correspondence other
than Ciceronian. We have among the eight hundred and eighty-five letters
ten or twelve from Brutus, if those attributed to him were really
written by him; ten or twelve from Decimus Brutus, and an equal number
from Plancus; but these were written in the stirring moments of the last
struggle, and are official or military rather than familiar. We have a
few from Quintus, but not of special interest unless we are to consider
that treatise on the duties of a candidate as a letter. But these from
Caelius to his older friend are genuine and natural as those from Cicero
himself. There are seventeen. They are scattered over three or four
years, but most of them refer to the period of Cicero's provincial
government.

The marvel to me is that Caelius should have adopted a style so near akin
to that of his master in literature. Scholars who have studied the words
can probably tell us of deficiencies in language; but the easy, graphic
tone is to my ear Ciceronian. Tiro, who was slave, secretary, freedman,
and then literary executor, may have had the handling of these letters,
and have done something toward producing their literary excellence. The
subjects selected were not always good, and must occasionally have
produced in Cicero's own mind a repetition of the reprimand which he
once expressed as to the gladiatorial shows and law-court adjournments;
but Caelius does communicate much of the political news from Rome. In one
letter, written in October of this year, he declares what the Senate has
decreed as to the recall of Caesar from Gaul, and gives the words of the
enactments made, with the names subscribed to them of the promoters--and
also the names of the Tribunes who had endeavored to oppose them.[90]
The purport of these decrees I have mentioned before. The object was to
recall Caesar, and the effect was to postpone any such recall till it
would mean nothing; but Caelius specially declares that the intention of
recalling Caesar