e meaning of words between two such correspondents
as Cicero and Atticus, we must read between the lines, and interpret the
words by creating for ourselves something of the spirit in which they
were written and in which they were received. I cannot imagine that, in
describing to Atticus what had occurred at that interview nine years
after it had taken place, Cicero had intended it to be understood that
he had really grovelled in the dust.

Toward the end of March he started from Rome, intending to take refuge
among his friends in Sicily. On the same day Clodius brought in a bill
directed against Cicero by name and caused it to be carried by the
people, "Ut Marco Tullio aqua et igni interdictum sit"--that it should
be illegal to supply Cicero with fire and water. The law when passed
forbade any one to harbor the criminal within four hundred miles of
Rome, and declared the doing so to be a capital offence. It is evident,
from the action of those who obeyed the law, and of those who did not,
that legal results were not feared so much as the ill-will of those who
had driven Cicero to his exile. They who refused him succor did do so
not because to give it him would be illegal, but lest Caesar and Pompey
would be offended. It did not last long, and during the short period of
his exile he found perhaps more of friendship than of enmity; but he
directed his steps in accordance with the bearing of party-spirit. We
are told that he was afraid to go to Athens, because at Athens lived
that Autronius whom he had refused to defend. Autronius had been
convicted of conspiracy and banished, and, having been a Catilinarian
conspirator, had been in truth on Caesar's side. Nor were geographical
facts sufficiently established to tell Cicero what places were and what
were not without the forbidden circle. He sojourned first at Vibo, in
the extreme south of Italy, intending to pass from thence into Sicily.
It was there that he learned that a certain distance had been
prescribed; but it seems that he had already heard that the Proconsular
Governor of the island would not receive him, fearing Caesar. Then he
came north from Vibo to Brundisium, that being the port by which
travellers generally went from Italy to the East. He had determined to
leave his family in Rome, feeling, probably, that it would be easier for
him to find a temporary home for himself than for him and them together.
And there were money difficulties in which Atticus helped him