high hopes. However, I will keep you
constantly informed on particular events as they occur from day to day.

[Footnote 285: [Greek: all' aiei tina phota megan kai kalon edegmen],
"but I ever expected some big and handsome man" (Hom. _Odyss._ ix. 513).
Statius had been manumitted by Quintus Cicero, and there had been much
talk about it, as we have already heard. See XLIV, p. 109, and XLV, p.
111.]

[Footnote 286: Reading _quam pro civitate sua_ for _prope quam civitatem
suam_. I think _prope_ and _pro_ (_pr_) might easily have been mistaken
for each other, and if the order of _quam_ and _pro_ (mistaken for
_prope_) were once changed, the case of _civitate_ would follow. Prof.
Tyrrell, who writes the town _Blandus_, would read _molliorem_ for
_nobiliorem_, and imagines a pun on the meaning of _Blandus_. But the
name of the town seems certainly _Blaundus_, [Greek: Blaundos], or
[Greek: Mlaundos] (Stephanus, [Greek: Blaudos]); see Head, _Hist. Num._
p. 559: and Cicero, though generally punning on names, would hardly do
so here, where he is making a grave excuse.]

[Footnote 287: Whom he called (Letter XXIX) "a madman and a knave."]

[Footnote 288: C. Vergilius Balbus, propraetor in Sicily (_pro Planc._ Sec.
95; Letter XXIX). C. Octavius (father of Augustus), in Macedonia (see p.
78). L. Marcius Philippus was propraetor of Syria B.C. 61-59. The
governor of Cilicia in the same period is not known; probably some one
left in charge by Pompey.]

[Footnote 289: I have endeavoured to leave the English as ambiguous as
the Latin. Cicero may mean that he has done some good, for at the end of
Letter XXIX he says that Quintus has improved in these points, and had
been better in his second than in his first year. On the other hand, the
context here seems rather to point to the meaning "how _little_ good I
have done!"--impatiently dismissing the subject of temper.]

[Footnote 290: These "requisitionary letters" were granted by a
provincial governor to certain persons requiring supplies, payment of
debts, or legal decisions in their favour in the provinces, or other
privileges, and, if carelessly granted, were open to much abuse. Cicero,
in his own government of Cilicia, boasted that he had signed none such
in six months. The ill-wishers of Quintus had apparently got hold of a
number of these letters signed by him (having been first written out by
the suitors themselves and scarcely glanced at by him), and a selection
of them publ