o common affection for me. He
also asserts that Clodius is not going to say a word about me. In which
he is not deceiving me, but is himself deceived. Cosconius having died,
I am invited to fill his place.[261] That would indeed be a case of
"invited to a dead man's place." I should have been beneath contempt in
the eyes of the world, and nothing could be conceived less likely to
secure that very "personal safety" of which you speak. For those
commissioners are disliked by the loyalists, and so I should have
retained my own unpopularity with the disloyal, with the addition of
that attaching to others. Caesar wishes me to accept a legateship under
him. This is a more honourable method of avoiding the danger. But I
don't wish to avoid it. What do I want, then? Why, I prefer fighting.
However, I have not made up my mind. Again I say, Oh that you were here!
However, if it is absolutely necessary I will summon you. What else is
there to say? What else? This, I think: I am certain that all is lost.
For why mince matters any longer? But I write this in haste, and, by
Hercules, in rather a nervous state. On some future occasion I will
either write to you at full length, if I find a very trustworthy person
to whom to give a letter, or if I write darkly you will understand all
the same. In these letters I will be Laelius, you Furius; the rest shall
be in riddles. Here I cultivate Caecilius,[262] and pay him assiduous
attention. I hear Bibulus's edicts have been sent to you. Our friend
Pompey is hot with indignation and wrath at them.[263]

[Footnote 255: Terence, _Phorm._ 232.]

[Footnote 256: [Greek: halis dryos], _i.e._, feeding on acorns is a
thing of the past, it is out of date, like the golden age when they fed
on wild fruit _et quae deciderant patula Iovis arbore glandes_ (Ovid,
_Met._ i. 106); and so is dignity, it is a question of _safety_ now.]

[Footnote 257: Ennius on Q. Fabius Maximus Cunctator.]

[Footnote 258: Pompey was in Campania acting as one of the twenty land
commissioners.]

[Footnote 259: The _lex Roscia theatralis_ (B.C. 67), which gave
fourteen rows of seats to the equites.]

[Footnote 260: That is, the law for distribution of corn among poorer
citizens. There were many such. Perhaps the most recent was the _lex
Cassia Terentia_ (B.C. 73). Caesar, who, when in later years he became
supreme, restricted this privilege, may have threatened to do so now.]

[Footnote 261: _I.e._, as one of the twenty lan