injurious epithets on Lucullus, Hortensius, C. Piso, and
the consul Messalla; me he only charged with having "discovered"
everything.[90] In regard to the assignation of provinces to the
praetors, the hearing legations, and other business, the senate voted
that nothing should be brought before it till the bill had been brought
before the people. There's the state of things at Rome for you. Yet pray
listen to this one thing more which has surpassed my hopes. Messalla is
a superlatively good consul, courageous, firm, painstaking; he praises,
shows attachment to, and imitates me. That other one (Piso) is the less
mischievous because of one vice--he is lazy, sleepy, unbusiness-like, an
utter _faineant_, but in intention he is so disaffected that he has
begun to loathe Pompey since he made the speech in which some praise was
bestowed on the senate. Accordingly, he has alienated all the loyalists
to a remarkable degree. And his action is not dictated by love for
Clodius more than by a taste for a profligate policy and a profligate
party. But he has nobody among the magistrates like himself, with the
single exception of the tribune Fufius. The tribunes are excellent, and
in Cornutus we have a quasi-Cato. Can I say more?

Now to return to private matters. "Teucris" has fulfilled her
promise.[91] Pray execute the commission you undertook. My brother
Quintus, who purchased the remaining three-fourths of the house in the
Argiletum for 725 sestertia (about L5,800), is now trying to sell his
Tusculan property, in order to purchase, if he can, the town house of
Pacilius. Make it up with Lucceius! I see that he is all agog to stand
for the consulship. I will do my best. Be careful to let me know exactly
how you are, where you are, and how your business goes on.

13 February.

[Footnote 85: The letter giving this description is lost. I think
_frigebat_ is epistolary imperfect--"_he_ is in the cold shade," not,
"_it_ fell flat."]

[Footnote 86: [Greek: panegyris]. Cicero uses the word (an honourable
one in Greek) contemptuously of the rabble brought together at a
market.]

[Footnote 87: Pompey's general commendation of the decrees of the senate
would include those regarding the Catiline conspirators, and he
therefore claimed to have satisfied Cicero.]

[Footnote 88: _Meis omnibus litteris_, the MS. reading. Prof. Tyrrell's
emendation, _orationibus meis, omnibus litteris_, "in my speeches, every
letter of them," seems to me even h