e were no
less than seven taken from the family of the Metelli.
These two brothers, Metellus Nepos and Celer, again
became friends to Cicero; Nepos, who had stopped his
speech and assisted in forcing him into exile, having
assisted as Consul in obtaining his recall from exile.
It is very difficult to follow the twistings and
turnings of Roman friendships at this period.

[217] Velleius Paterculus, lib. ii., ca. xiv. Paterculus
tells us how, when the architect offered to build the
house so as to hide its interior from the gaze of the
world, Drusus desired the man so to construct it that
all the world might see what he was doing.

[218] It may be worth while to give a translation of the
anecdote as told by Aulus Gellius, and to point out that
the authors intention was to show what a clever fellow
Cicero was. Cicero did defend P. Sulla this year; but
whence came the story of the money borrowed from Sulla
we do not know. "It is a trick of rhetoric craftily to
confess charges made, so as not to come within the reach
of the law. So that, if anything base be alleged which
cannot be denied, you may turn it aside with a joke, and
make it a matter of laughter rather than of disgrace, as
it is written that Cicero did when, with a drolling
word, he made little of a charge which he could not
deny. For when he was anxious to buy a house on the
Palatine Hill, and had not the ready money, he quietly
borrowed from P. Sulla--who was then about to stand his
trial, 'sestertium viciens'--twenty million sesterces.
When that became known, before the purchase was made,
and it was objected to him that he had borrowed the
money from a client, then Cicero, instigated by the
unexpected charge, denied the loan, and denied also that
he was going to buy the house. But when he had bought it
and the fib was thrown in his teeth, he laughed
heartily, and asked whether men had so lost their senses
as not to be aware that a prudent father of a family
would deny an intended purchase rather than raise the
price of the article against himself."--Noctes Atticae,
xii., 12. Aulus Gellius though he tells us that the
story was written, does not tell us where he read it.

[219] I must say this, "pace" Mr. Tyrrell, who, in his
note on the letter to Atticus, lib. i., 12, attempts to
show t