n up in the parricide's-sack two Mysians at Smyrna, you
desired to display a similar example of your severity in the upper part
of your province, and that, therefore, you had wished to inveigle Zeuxis
into your hands by every possible means. For if he had been brought into
court, he ought perhaps not to have been allowed to escape: but there
was no necessity for his being hunted out and inveigled by soft words to
stand a trial, as you say in your letter--especially as he is one whom I
learn daily, both from his fellow citizens and from many others, to be a
man of higher character than you would expect from such an obscure town
as his.[286] But, you will say, it is only Greeks to whom I am
indulgent. What! did not I do everything to appease L. Caecilius? What a
man! how irritable! how violent! In fact, who is there except
Tuscenius,[287] whose case admitted of no cure, have I not softened? See
again, I have now on my hands a shifty, mean fellow, though of
equestrian rank, called Catienus: even he is going to be smoothed down.
I don't blame you for having been somewhat harsh to his father, for I am
quite sure you have acted with good reason: but what need was there of a
letter of the sort which you sent to the man himself? "That the man was
rearing the cross for himself from which you had already pulled him off
once; that you would take care to have him smoked to death, and would be
applauded by the whole province for it." Again, to a man named C.
Fabius--for that letter also T. Catienus is handing round--"that you
were told that the kidnapper Licinius, with his young kite of a son, was
collecting taxes." And then you go on to ask Fabius to burn both father
and son alive if he can; if not, to send them to you, that they may be
burnt to death by legal sentence. That letter sent by you in jest to C.
Fabius, if it really is from you, exhibits to ordinary readers a
violence of language very injurious to you. Now, if you will refer to
the exhortations in all my letters, you will perceive that I have never
found fault with you for anything except harshness and sharpness of
temper, and occasionally, though rarely, for want of caution in the
letters you write. In which particulars, indeed, if my influence had had
greater weight with you than a somewhat excessive quickness of
disposition, or a certain enjoyment in indulging temper, or a faculty
for epigram and a sense of humour, we should certainly have had no cause
for dissatisfact