There is one most touching letter written from Thessalonica to his brother, by whom, after thoughts vacillating this way and that, he was unwilling to be visited, thinking that a meeting would bring more of pain than of service. "Mi frater, mi frater, mi frater!" he begins. The words in English would hardly give all the pathos. "Did you think that I did not write because I am angry, or that I did not wish to see you? I angry with you! But I could not endure to be seen by you. You would not have seen your brother; not him whom you had left; not him whom you had known; not him whom, weeping as you went away, you had dismissed, weeping himself as he strove to follow you."[283] Then he heaps blame on his own head, bitterly accusing himself because he had brought his brother to such a pass of sorrow. In this letter he throws great blame upon Hortensius, whom together with Pompey he accuses of betraying him. What truth there may have been in this accusation as to Hortensius we have no means of saying. He couples Pompey in the same charge, and as to Pompey's treatment of him there can be no doubt. Pompey had been untrue to his promises because of his bond with Cæsar. It is probable that Hortensius had failed to put himself forward on Cicero's behalf with that alacrity which the one advocate had expected from the other. Cicero and Hortensius were friends afterward, but so were Cicero and Pompey. Cicero was forgiving by nature, and also by self-training. It did not suit his purposes to retain his enmities. Had there been a possibility of reconciling Antony to the cause of the "optimates" after the Philippics, he would have availed himself of it.
Cicero at one time intended to go to Buthrotum in Epirus, where Atticus possessed a house and property; but he changed his purpose. He remained at Thessalonica till November, and then returned to Dyrrachium, having all through his exile been kept alive by tidings of steps taken for his recall. There seems very soon to have grown up a feeling in Rome that the city had disgraced itself by banishing such a man; and Cæsar had gone to his provinces. We can well imagine that when he had once left Rome, with all his purposes achieved, having so far quieted the tongue of the strong speaker who might have disturbed them, he would take no further steps to perpetuate the orator's banishment. Then Pompey and Clodius soon quarrelled. Pompey, without Cæsar to direct him, found the arrogance of the Patrician Tribune insupportable. We hear of wheels within wheels, and stories within stories, in the drama of Roman history as it was played at this time. Together with Cicero, it had been necessary to Cæsar's projects that Cato also should be got out of Rome; and this had been managed by means of Clodius, who had a bill passed for the honorable employment of Cato on state purposes in Cyprus. Cato had found himself obliged to go. It was as though our Prime-minister had got parliamentary authority for sending a noisy member of the Opposition to Asiatic Turkey for six months There was an attempt, or an alleged attempt, of Clodius to have Pompey murdered; and there was street-fighting, so that Pompey was besieged, or pretended to be besieged, in his own house. "We might as well seek to set a charivari to music as to write the history of this political witches' revel," says Mommsen, speaking of the state of Rome when Cæsar was gone, Cicero banished, and Pompey supposed to be in the ascendant.[284] There was, at any rate, quarrelling between Clodius and Pompey, in the course of which Pompey was induced to consent to Cicero's return. Then Clodius took upon himself, in revenge, to turn against the Triumvirate altogether, and to repudiate even Cæsar himself. But it was all a vain hurly-burly, as to which Cæsar, when he heard the details in Gaul, could only have felt how little was to be gained by maintaining his alliance with Pompey. He had achieved his purpose, which he could not have done without the assistance of Crassus, whose wealth, and of Pompey, whose authority, stood highest in Rome; and now, having had his legions voted to him, and his provinces, and his prolonged term of years, he cared nothing for either of them.