iration and affection
go. His edicts and speeches are copied out and read. He has reached the
summit of glory in a novel way. There is now nothing so popular as the
dislike of the popular party. I have my fears as to how this will end.
But if I ever see my way clearly in anything, I will write to you more
explicitly. For yourself, if you love me as much as I am sure you do,
take care to be ready to come in all haste as soon as I call for you.
But I do my best, and shall do so, to make it unnecessary. I said I
would call you Furius in my letters, but it is not necessary to change
your name. I'll call myself Laelius and you Atticus, but I will use
neither my own handwriting nor seal, if the letter happens to be such as
I should not wish to fall into the hands of a stranger. Diodotus is
dead; he has left me perhaps 1,000 sestertia. Bibulus has postponed the
elections to the 18th of October, in an edict expressed in the vein of
Archilochus.[266] I have received the books from Vibius: he is a
miserable poet,[267] but yet he is not without some knowledge nor wholly
useless. I am going to copy the book out and send it back.

[Footnote 264: M. Terentius Varro, "the most learned of the Romans," and
author of very large numbers of books. He was afterwards one of Pompey's
_legati_ in Spain. He survived most of the men of the revolutionary
era.]

[Footnote 265: See Letter XXIV, p. 56.]

[Footnote 266: _I.e._, in biting language. _Archilochum proprio rabies
armavit iambo_ (Hor. _A. P._ 79).]

[Footnote 267: The _Cosmographia_ of Alexander of Ephesus. See Letter
XLVIII, p. 120.]

XLVII (A II, 21)

TO ATTICUS (IN EPIRUS)

ROME (JULY)

[Sidenote: B.C. 59, AET. 47]

Why should I write to you on the Republic in detail? It is utterly
ruined; and is, so far, in a worse state than when you left it, that
then a despotism seemed to be oppressing it which was popular with the
multitude, and though offensive to the loyalists, yet short of actual
mischief; but now all on a sudden they have become so universally hated,
that I tremble to think what will be the end of it. For we have had
experience of those men's resentment and violence, who have ruined
everything in their anger against Cato; yet they were employing such
slow poisons, that it seemed as though our end might be painless. Now,
however, I fear they have been exasperated by the hisses of the crowd,
the talk of the respectable classes, and the murmurs of Italy. For my