you is hot with it, your tongue, at any
rate, may be restrained." Then toward the end of the letter there is a
fraternal exhortation which is surely very fine: "Since chance has
thrown into my way the duties of official life in Rome, and into yours
that of administrating provincial government, if I, in the performance
of my work, have been second to none, do you see that you in yours may
be equally efficient." How grand, from an elder brother to a younger!
"And remember this, that you and I have not to strive after some
excellence still unattained, but have to be on our watch to guard that
which has been already won. If I should find myself in anything divided
from you, I should desire no further advance in life. Unless your deeds
and your words go on all-fours with mine, I should feel that I had
achieved nothing by all the work and all the dangers which you and I
have encountered together." The brother at last was found to be a poor,
envious, ill-conditioned creature--intellectually gifted, and capable of
borrowing something from his brother's nobler nature; but when struggles
came, and political feuds, and the need of looking about to see on which
side safety lay, ready to sacrifice his brother for the sake of safety.
But up to this time Marcus was prepared to believe all good of Quintus;
and having made for himself and for the family a great name, was
desirous of sharing it with his brother, and, as we shall afterward see,
with his brother's son, and with his own. In this he failed. He lived to
know that he had failed as regarded his brother and his nephew. It was
not, however, added to his misery to live to learn how little his son
was to do to maintain the honor of his family.

I find a note scribbled by myself some years ago in a volume in which I
had read this epistle, "Probably the most beautiful letter ever
written." Reading it again subsequently, I added another note, "The
language altogether different from that of his ordinary letters." I do
not dissent now either from the enthusiastic praise or the more careful
criticism. The letter was from the man's heart--true, affectionate, and
full of anxious, brotherly duty--but written in studied language,
befitting, as Cicero thought, the need and the dignity of the occasion.

[Sidenote: B.C. 59, aetat. 48.]

The year following was that of Caesar's first Consulship, which he held
in conjunction with Bibulus, a man who was altogether opposed to him in
thought, in c