[Footnote 566: _Ego, ut sit rata_, Schutz's reading, which seems the best for the unintelligible _ergo et si irata_ of the MSS. It would mean, "though I regret not having been back for Domitius's election (if it has taken place), I am glad to have been away from the previous wrangling in the senate."]
[Footnote 567: Crassus starts for Syria; he compares him to L. Æmilius Paullus starting for the war with Perses (B.C. 168). Paullus was, like Crassus, sixty years old, and in his second consulship. Paullus set out with good omens, Crassus with a curse, denounced by the tribune C. Ateius Capito (_de Div._ i. § 29; Plutarch, _Crass._ 16).]
[Footnote 568: By his _librarii_. Atticus was again acting as his publisher.]
[Sidenote: B.C. 54. Coss., L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, Ap. Claudius Pulcher.]
During this year politics were comparatively uneventful. Crassus was gone to Syria. Pompey should have gone to Spain, but at the request of the senate he stayed near Rome, and in the autumn his wife Iulia died, thus breaking one strong tie between him and Cæsar. Quintus Cicero went as _legatus_ to Cæsar and accompanied him to Britain. Cicero himself kept up a correspondence with Cæsar, and seems to nurse his friendship with him with an almost feverish eagerness, which, however, lacks spontaneity. He was engaged this year in composing his treatise on the Republic.
TO M. LICINIUS CRASSUS (ON HIS WAY TO SYRIA)
I have no doubt all your friends have written to tell you what zeal I displayed on the ----[569] in the defence, or you might call it the promotion, of your official position. For it was neither half-hearted nor inconspicuous, nor of a sort that could be passed over in silence. In fact, I maintained a controversy against both the consuls and many consulars with a vehemence such as I have never shewn in any cause before, and I took upon myself the standing defence of all your honours, and paid the duty I owed to our friendship--long in arrear, but interrupted by the great complexity of events--to the very utmost. Not, believe me, that the will to shew you attention and honour was ever wanting to me; but certain pestilent persons--vexed at another's fame--did at times alienate you from me, and sometimes changed my feelings towards you. But I have got the opportunity, for which I had rather wished than hoped, of shewing you in the very height of your prosperity that I remember our mutual kindness and am faithful to our friendship. For I have secured not only that your whole family, but that the entire city should know that you have no warmer friend than myself. Accordingly, that most noble of women, your wife, as well as your two most affectionate, virtuous, and popular sons, place full confidence in my counsel, advice, zeal, and public actions; and the senate and Roman people understand that in your absence there is nothing upon which you can so absolutely count and depend as upon my exertions, care, attention, and influence in all matters which affect your interests. What has been done and is being done in the senate I imagine that you are informed in the letters from members of your family. For myself, I am very anxious that you should think and believe that I did not stumble upon the task of supporting your dignity from some sudden whim or by chance, but that from the first moment of my entering on public life I have always looked out to see how I might be most closely united to you. And, indeed, from that hour I never remember either my respect for you, or your very great kindness and liberality to me, to have failed. If certain interruptions of friendship have occurred, based rather on suspicion than fact, let them, as groundless and imaginary, be uprooted from our entire memory and life. For such is your character, and such I desire mine to be, that, fate having brought us face to face with the same condition of public affairs, I would fain hope that our union and friendship will turn out to be for the credit of us both. Wherefore how much consideration should in your judgment be shewn to me, you will yourself decide, and that decision, I hope, will be in accordance with my position in the state. I, for my part, promise and guarantee a special and unequalled zeal in every service which may tend to your honour and reputation. And even if in this I shall have many rivals, I shall yet easily surpass them all in the judgment of the rest of the world as well as that of your sons, for both of whom I have a particular affection; but while equally well-disposed to Marcus, I am more entirely devoted to Publius for this reason, that, though he always did so from boyhood, he is at this particular time treating me with the respect and affection of a second father.