s in accordance with custom that the General
should send an immediate account of his victorious doings, demand a
"supplication," and have the triumph to be decreed to him or not after
his return home. A supplication was in form a thanksgiving to the gods
for the great favor shown by them to the State, but in fact took the
guise of public praise bestowed upon the man by whose hands the good had
been done. It was usually a reward for military success, but in the
affair of Catiline a supplication had been decreed to Cicero for saving
the city, though the service rendered had been of a civil nature. Cicero
now applied for a supplication, and obtained it. Cato opposed it, and
wrote a letter to Cicero explaining his motives--upon high republican
principles. Cicero might have endured this more easily had not Cato
voted for a supplication in honor of Bibulus, whose military
achievements had, as Cicero thought, been less than his own. One Hirrus
opposed it also, but in silence, having intended to allege that the
numbers slain by Cicero in his battles were not sufficient to justify a
supplication. We learn that, according to strict rule, two thousand dead
men should have been left on the field. Cicero's victims had probably
been much fewer; nevertheless the supplication was granted, and Cicero
presumed that the triumph would follow as a matter of course. Alas,
there came grievous causes to interfere with the triumph!

Of all that went on at Rome Caelius continued to send Cicero accounts.
The Triumvirate was now over. Caelius says that Pompey will not attack
Caesar openly, but that he does all he can to prevent Caesar from being
elected Consul before he shall have given up his province and his
army.[110] For details Caelius refers him to a Commentarium--a word which
has been translated as meaning "newspaper" in this passage--by Melmoth.
I think that there is no authority for this idea, and that the
commentary was simply the compilation of Caelius, as were the
commentaries we so well know the compilation of Caesar. The Acta Diurna
were published by authority, and formed an official gazette. These no
doubt reached Cicero, but were very different in their nature from the
private record of things which he obtained from his friend.

There are passages in Greek, in two letters[111] written about this time
to Atticus, which refer to the matter from which probably arose his
quarrel with his wife, and her divorce. He makes no direct allusi