election, to the praetorship, for which he was
charged with bribery (_de sodalitiis_), Cicero had already spoken in
strongly hostile terms in the senate. For now undertaking his defence he
has, in fact, no explanation to give to Lentulus (vol. i., p. 319), and
he was long sore at having been forced to do it. Through B.C. 54 and 53
he was busied with his _de Republica_, and was kept more in touch with
Caesar by the fact that his brother Quintus was serving as _legatus_ to
the latter in Britain and Gaul, and that his friend Trebatius
(introduced by himself) was seeking for promotion and profit in Caesar's
camp. But even his brother's service with Caesar did not eventually
contribute to the formation of cordial feeling on his part towards
Caesar, whom he could not help admiring, but never really liked. For
Quintus, though he distinguished himself by his defence of his camp in
the autumn of B.C. 54, lost credit and subjected himself to grave rebuke
by the disaster incurred in B.C. 53, near Aduatuca (_Tongres_), brought
about by disregarding an express order of Caesar's. There is no allusion
to this in the extant correspondence, but a fragment of letter from
Caesar to Cicero (_neque pro cauto ac diligente se castris
continuit_[16]), seems to shew that Caesar had written sharply to Cicero
on his brother's _faux pas_, and after this time, though Cicero met
Caesar at Ravenna in B.C. 52, and consented to support the bill allowing
him to stand for the consulship in his absence,[17] there is apparent in
his references to him a return to the cold or critical tone of former
times. But of course there were other reasons.

[Sidenote: Pompey's third Consulship and the trial of Milo, B.C. 52.]

Pompey's six months' sole consulship of B.C. 52 ("that divine third
consulship"), the rumour of his dictatorship, and the growing
determination of the Optimates to play off Pompey against Caesar (Crassus
having disappeared) and to insist on Caesar resigning his province and
army before the end of his ten years' tenure, and before standing for a
second consulship, caused Cicero's hope of a final dissolution of the
unconstitutional compact to revive again; and made him draw more and
more closely to Pompey as the chief hope of the _boni_. In the beginning
of the year he had found himself in opposition, or quasi-opposition, to
Pompey in regard to the prosecution of Milo for the murder of Clodius.
But though in the previous year he had declared that t