nks you in no common terms. I add also, what I know will be
exceedingly gratifying to you, that I am myself immensely delighted with
your kindness to Lucceius. For the rest, though I have no doubt that as
you acted before for my sake, so now, for the sake of your own
consistency, you will abide by your liberal intentions, yet I reiterate
my request to you with all earnestness, that what you first gave us
reason to hope, and then actually carried out, you would be so good as
to see extended and brought to a final completion by your means. I
assure you, and I pledge my credit to it, that such a course will be
exceedingly gratifying to both Lucceius and Pompey, and that you will be
making a most excellent investment with them. About politics, and about
the business going on here, and what we are all thinking about, I wrote
to you in full detail a few days ago, and delivered the letter to your
servants. Farewell.

LETTERS IN EXILE

[Sidenote: B.C. 58. Coss., L. Piso, A. Gabinius.]

We have no record in Cicero's correspondence of the final measures
taken by Clodius against him. We find him when the correspondence
for this year opens on his way to exile: all his boasts of staying
and fighting have been thrown to the winds. Clodius, indeed, had
not simply done what Cicero expected at the worst--impeached him.
He had gone more systematically to work. Among other measures
calculated to win popularity, he proposed a modification of the
_lex AElia Fufia_, declaring it illegal for a magistrate to stop
legislative _comitia_ by "watching the sky." Thus freed from one
hindrance, he next proposed and carried a law for the prosecution
of any magistrate who had put a citizen to death without trial
(_qui indemnatos cives necavisset_). Cicero at once recognized his
danger: if the people voted this law, a jury could scarcely fail to
condemn. The triumvirs would do nothing. Pompey, after all his
promises, avoided seeing Cicero as much as possible: Caesar offered
him a _legatio_ again; and though he spoke against giving the law a
retrospective effect, he could not consistently object to the law
itself, and shewed no sign of desiring to shelter Cicero, except on
his consenting to leave Rome. Cicero then adopted the course which
was open to all citizens threatened with a prosecution--that of
going away from Rome--and started appare