y, or my own loyal conduct to you and the Republic,
ought to have been sufficient to support him. As it is, I see that he
has been ruined and I abandoned by the last people in the world who
ought to have done so. I am accordingly in sorrow and wearing mourning
dress, while actually in command of a province and army and conducting a
war. And seeing that your conduct in this affair has neither been
reasonable nor in accordance with the milder methods of old times, you
must not be surprised if you live to repent it. I did not expect to find
you so fickle towards me and mine. For myself, meanwhile, neither family
sorrow nor ill-treatment by any individual shall withdraw me from the
service of the state.

[Footnote 57: Q. Metellus Celer had been praetor in B.C. 63 and was now
(B.C. 62), as proconsul in Gallia Cisalpina, engaged against the remains
of the Catilinarian conspiracy. Meanwhile his brother (or cousin) Q.
Caecilius Metellus Nepos, a tribune, after trying in vain to bring Cicero
to trial for the execution of the conspirators, at last proposed to
summon Pompey to Rome to prevent danger to the lives of citizens. This
attempt led to riots and contests with Cato, and Nepos finally fled from
Rome to Pompey. By leaving Rome he broke the law as to the tribunes, and
the senate declared his office vacant, and this letter would even seem
to shew that the senate declared him a public enemy. This letter of
remonstrance is peremptory, if not insolent, in tone, and the reader
will observe that the formal sentences, dropped in more familiar
letters, are carefully used.]

XIV (F V, 2)

TO Q. METELLUS (IN CISALPINE GAUL)

ROME

_M. Tullius, son of Marcus, to Q. Metellus Celer, son of Quintus,
proconsul, wishes health._

[Sidenote: B.C. 62, AET. 44]

If you and the army are well I shall be glad. You say in your letter
that you "thought, considering our mutual regard and the reconciliation
effected between us, that you were not likely to be held up to ridicule
by me." To what you refer I do not clearly understand, but I suspect
that you have been informed that, while arguing in the senate that there
were many who were annoyed at my having saved the state, I said that
your relations, whose wishes you had been unable to withstand, had
induced you to pass over in silence what you had made up your mind you
ought to say in the senate in my praise. But while saying so I also
added this--that the duty of supporting the Repub