by him when he was eighteen. Of the
Prognostics we have only a few lines preserved by Priscian, and a
passage repeated by the author, also in his De Divinatione. I think that
Cicero was capable of producing a poem quite worthy of preservation; but
in the work of this year the subjects chosen were not alluring.

[Sidenote: B.C. 60, aetat. 47.]

Among his epistles of the year there is one which might of itself have
sufficed to bring down his name to posterity. This is a long letter,
full of advice, to his brother Quintus, who had gone out in the previous
year to govern the province of Asia as Propraetor. We may say that good
advice could never have been more wanted, and that better advice could
not have been given. It has been suggested that it was written as a
companion to that treatise on the duties of a candidate which Quintus
composed for his brother's service when standing for his Consulship. But
I cannot admit the analogy. The composition attributed to Quintus
contained lessons of advice equally suitable to any candidate, sprung
from the people, striving to rise to high honors in the State. This
letter is adapted not only to the special position of Quintus, but to
the peculiarities of his character, and its strength lies in this: that
while the one brother praises the other justly praises him, as I
believe, for many virtues, so as to make the receipt of it acceptable,
it points out faults--faults which will become fatal, if not amended--in
language which is not only strong but unanswerable.

The style of this letter is undoubtedly very different from that of
Cicero's letters generally--so as to suggest to the reader that it must
have been composed expressly for publication whereas the daily
correspondence is written "currente calamo," with no other than the
immediate idea of amusing, instructing, or perhaps comforting the
correspondent. Hence has come the comparison between this and the
treatise De Petitione Consulatus. I think that the gravity of the
occasion, rather than any regard for posterity, produced the change of
style. Cicero found it to be essential to induce his brother to remain
at his post, not to throw up his government in disgust, and so to bear
himself that he should not make himself absolutely odious to his own
staff and to other Romans around him; for Quintus Cicero, though he had
been proud and arrogant and ill tempered, had not made himself notorious
by the ordinary Roman propensity to plunder