p hold your hand." Propertius tells Cynthia that
she stands to him in lieu of home and parents, and all the joys of life.
"Whether he be sad with his friends or happy, Cynthia does it all." The
language in each case is perfect; but what other Roman was there of whom
we have evidence that he spoke to his wife like this? Ovid in his
letters from his banishment says much of his love for his wife; but
there is no passion expressed in anything that Ovid wrote.

Clodius, as soon as the enactment against Cicero became law, caused it
be carried into effect with all its possible cruelties. The criminal's
property was confiscated. The house on the Palatine Hill was destroyed,
and the goods were put up to auction, with, as we are told, a great lack
of buyers. His choicest treasures were carried away by the Consuls
themselves. Piso, who had lived near him in Rome, got for himself and
for his father-in-law the rich booty from the town house. The country
villas were also destroyed, and Gabinius, who had a country house close
by Cicero's Tusculan retreat, took even the very shrubs out of the
garden. He tells the story of the greed and enmity of the Consuls in the
speech he made after his return, Pro Domo Sua,[282] pleading for the
restitution of his household property. "My house on the Palatine was
burnt," he says, "not by any accident, but by arson. In the mean time
the Consuls were feasting, and were congratulating themselves among the
conspirators, when one boasted that he had been Catiline's friend, the
other that Cethegus had been his cousin." By this he implies that the
conspiracy which during his Consulship had been so odious to Rome was
now, in these days of the Triumvirate, again in favor among Roman
aristocrats.

He went across from Brundisium to Dyrrachium, and from thence to
Thessalonica, where he was treated with most loving-kindness by
Plancius, who was Quaestor in these parts, and who came down to
Dyrrachium to meet him, clad in mourning for the occasion. This was the
Plancius whom he afterward defended, and indeed he was bound to do so.
Plancius seems to have had but little dread of the law, though he was a
Roman officer employed in the very province to the government of which
the present Consul Piso had already been appointed. Thessalonica was
within four hundred miles, and yet Cicero lived there with Plancius for
some months.

The letters from Cicero during his exile are to me very touching, though
I have been tol