of your acts in a worse light
than the facts warrant. If you do not hear these rumors I do not know
what to say. So far as I am concerned, if I ever hear them I defend you
as I know that _I_ am always defended by _you_ against _my_ detractors.
And my defence follows two lines: there are some things which I always
deny _in toto_, as, for instance, the statement in regard to that very
vote; there are other acts of yours which I maintain were dictated by
considerations of affection and kindness, as, for instance, your action
with reference to the management of the games. But it does not escape
you, with all your wisdom, that, if Caesar was a king--which seems to me
at any rate to have been the case--with respect of your duty two
positions may be maintained, either the one which I am in the habit of
taking, that your loyalty and friendship to Caesar are to be praised, or
the one which some people take, that the freedom of one's fatherland is
to be esteemed more than the life of one's friend. I wish that my
discussions springing out of these conversations had been repeated to
you.

"Indeed, who mentions either more gladly or more frequently than I the
two following facts, which are especially to your honor? The fact that
you were the most influential opponent of the Civil War, and that you
were the most earnest advocate of temperance in the moment of victory,
and in this matter I have found no one to disagree with me. Wherefore I
am grateful to our friend Trebatius for giving me an opportunity to
write this letter, and if you are not convinced by it, you will think
me destitute of all sense of duty and kindness; and nothing more
serious to me than that or more foreign to your own nature can happen."

In all the correspondence of Cicero there is not a letter written with
more force and delicacy of feeling, none better suited to accomplish its
purpose than this letter to Matius. It is a work of art; but in that fact
lies its defect, and in that respect it is in contrast to the answer which
it called forth from Matius, The reply of Matius stands on a level with
another better-known non-Ciceronian epistle, the famous letter of
condolence which Servius wrote to Cicero after the death of Cicero's
daughter, Tullia; but it is finer, for, while Servius is stilted and full
of philosophical platitudes, Matius, like Shakespeare's Antony, "only
speaks right on," i