I pray, may
there be added, this quarrel about the augurate! I hope I shall often
have some fine letters to send you on these subjects. But I want to know
the meaning of your dark hint that some even of the _quinqueviri_[206]
are speaking out. What can it be? If there is anything in it, there is
more hope than I had thought. And I would not have you believe that I
ask you these questions "with any view to action,"[207] because my heart
is yearning to take part in practical politics. I was long ago getting
tired of being at the helm, even when it was in my power. And now that I
am forced to quit the ship, and have not cast aside the tiller, but have
had it wrenched out of my hands, my only wish is to watch their
shipwreck from the shore: I desire, in the words of your favourite
Sophocles,

"And safe beneath the roof
To hear with drowsy ear the plash of rain."

As to the wall, see to what is necessary. I will correct the mistake of
Castricius, and yet Quintus had made it in his letter to me 15,000,
while now to your sister he makes it 30,000.[208] Terentia sends you her
regards: my boy Cicero commissions you to give Aristodemus the same
answer for him as you gave for his cousin, your sister's son.[209] I
will not neglect your reminder about your Amaltheia.[210] Take care of
your health.

[Footnote 203: As he was a man _sui iuris_, Clodius's adoption into a
new gens (_adrogatio_) would have to take place before the _comitia
curiata_ (now represented by thirty lictors), which still retained this
formal business. The ceremony required the presence of an augur and a
pontifex to hold it. Cicero supposes Pompey and Caesar as intending to
act in that capacity. Pompey, it seems, did eventually attend.]

[Footnote 204: One of the twenty commissioners under Caesar's agrarian
law. Cicero was offered and declined a place among them. The "only man,"
of course, refers to the intrusion on the mysteries.]

[Footnote 205: To Egypt.]

[Footnote 206: This seems also to refer to the twenty agrarian
commissioners, who, according to Mommsen, were divided into committees
of five, and were, therefore, spoken of indifferently as _quinqueviri_
and _vigintiviri_. But it is somewhat uncertain.]

[Footnote 207: [Greek: kata to praktikon].]

[Footnote 208: Castricius seems to have been a _negotiator_ or banker in
Asia. We don't know what mistake is referred to; probably as to some
money transmitted to Pomponia.]

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