ion. And don't you suppose that I feel no common
vexation when I am told how Vergilius is esteemed, and your neighbour
C. Octavius?[288] For if you only excel your neighbours farther up
country, in Cilicia and Syria, that is a pretty thing to boast of! And
that is just the sting of the matter, that though the men I have named
are not more blameless than yourself, they yet outdo you in the art of
winning favour, though they know nothing of Xenophon's Cyrus or
Agesilaus; from which kings, in the exercise of their great office, no
one ever heard an irritable word. But in giving you this advice, as I
have from the first, I am well aware how much good I have done.[289]

Now, however, as you are about to quit your province, pray do leave
behind you--as I think you are now doing--as pleasant a memory as
possible. You have a successor of very mild manners; in other respects,
on his arrival, you will be much missed. In sending letters of
requisition, as I have often told you, you have allowed yourself to be
too easily persuaded. Destroy, if you can, all such as are inequitable,
or contrary to usage, or contradictory to others. Statius told me that
they were usually put before you ready written, read by himself, and
that, if they were inequitable, he informed you of the fact: but that
before he entered your service there had been no sifting of letters;
that the result was that there were volumes containing a selection of
letters, which were usually adversely criticised.[290] On this subject I
am not going to give you any advice at this time of day, for it is too
late; and you cannot but be aware that I have often warned you in
various ways and with precision. But I have, on a hint from Theopompus,
intrusted him with this message to you: do see by means of persons
attached to you, which you will find no difficulty in doing, that the
following classes of letters are destroyed--first, those that are
inequitable; next, those that are contradictory; then those expressed in
an eccentric or unusual manner; and lastly, those that contain
reflexions on anyone. I don't believe all I hear about these matters,
and if, in the multiplicity of your engagements, you have let certain
things escape you, now is the time to look into them and weed them out.
I have read a letter said to have been written by your nomenclator Sulla
himself, which I cannot approve: I have read some written in an angry
spirit. But the subject of letters comes in pat: for