myself. In this regard pray
do not quote "Who will praise his sire?"[136] For if there is anything
in the world to be preferred to this, let it receive its due meed of
praise, and I mine of blame for not selecting another theme for my
praise. However, what I write is not panegyric but history. My brother
Quintus clears himself to me in a letter, and asserts that he has never
said a disparaging word of you to anyone. But this we must discuss face
to face with the greatest care and earnestness: only _do_ come to see me
again at last! This Cossinius, to whom I intrust my letter, seems to me
a very good fellow, steady, devoted to you, and exactly the sort of man
which your letter to me had described.

15 March.

[Footnote 123: A special title given to the AEdui on their application
for alliance. Caesar, _B. G._ i. 33.]

[Footnote 124: The migration of the Helvetii did not actually begin till
B.C. 58. Caesar tells us in the first book of his _Commentaries_ how he
stopped it.]

[Footnote 125: Consul B.C. 69, superseded in Crete by Pompey B.C. 65.
Triumphed B.C. 62.]

[Footnote 126: Praetor B.C. 63, defended by Cicero in an extant oration.]

[Footnote 127: Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus, consul in B.C. 72.
Cicero puns on the name Lentulus from _lens_ (pulse, [Greek: phake]),
and quotes a Greek proverb for things incongruous. See Athenaeus, 160
(from the _Necuia_ of Sopater):

[Greek: Ithakos Odysseus, to eki te phake myron
paresti; tharsei, thyme].
]

[Footnote 128: B.C. 133, the year before the agrarian law of Tiberius
Gracchus. The law of Gracchus had not touched the public land in
Campania (the old territory of Capua). The object of this clause (which
appears repeatedly in those of B.C. 120 and 111, see Bruns, _Fontes
Iuris_, p. 72) is to confine the allotment of _ager publicus_ to such
land as had become so subsequently, _i.e._, to land made "public"
principally by the confiscations of Sulla.]

[Footnote 129: That is, he proposed to hypothecate the _vectigalia_ from
the new provinces formed by Pompey in the East for five years.]

[Footnote 130: The consulship. The bribery at Afranius's election is
asserted in Letter XXI.]

[Footnote 131: The day of the execution of the Catilinarian
conspirators.]

[Footnote 132: Epicharmus, twice quoted by Polybius, xviii. 40; xxxi.
21. [Greek: naphe kai memnas' apistein, arthra tauta ton phrenon.]]

[Footnote 133: _Pedarii_ were probably those senators who had