AET. 48]

I had felt certain of seeing you at Tarentum or Brundisium, and that was
of importance to me in many respects: among others, as to my being able
to stay in Epirus and consult you about the future. My disappointment in
this is only another item in the long list of my misfortunes.[308] I
mean to go to Asia, to Cyzicus for choice. I commend my family to you. I
am very wretched and can scarcely support my life.

From near Tarentum, 17 April.

[Footnote 308: We suppose that Cicero has heard from Atticus that he is
not going to be at Tarentum or Brundisium, for he writes before arriving
at either.]

LXI (F XIV, 4)

TO TERENTIA, TULLIOLA, AND YOUNG CICERO (AT ROME)

BRUNDISIUM, 29 APRIL

[Sidenote: B.C. 58, AET. 48]

Yes, I do write to you less often than I might, because, though I am
always wretched, yet when I write to you or read a letter from you, I am
in such floods of tears that I cannot endure it. Oh, that I had clung
less to life! I should at least never have known real sorrow, or not
much of it, in my life. Yet if fortune has reserved for me _any_ hope of
recovering at any time any position again, I was not utterly wrong to do
so: if these miseries are to be permanent, I only wish, my dear, to see
you as soon as possible and to die in your arms, since neither gods,
whom you have worshipped with such pure devotion, nor men, whom I have
ever served, have made us any return. I have been thirteen days at
Brundisium in the house of M. Laenius Flaccus, a very excellent man, who
has despised the risk to his fortunes and civil existence in comparison
to keeping me safe, nor has been induced by the penalty of a most
iniquitous law to refuse me the rights and good offices of hospitality
and friendship. May I some time have the opportunity of repaying him!
Feel gratitude I always shall. I set out from Brundisium on the 29th of
April,[309] and intend going through Macedonia to Cyzicus. What a fall!
What a disaster! What can I say? Should I ask you to come--a woman of
weak health and broken spirit? Should I refrain from asking you? Am I to
be without you, then? I think the best course is this: if there is any
hope of my restoration, stay to promote it and push the thing on: but
if, as I fear, it proves hopeless, pray come to me by any means in your
power. Be sure of this, that if I have you I shall not think myself
wholly lost. But what is to become of my darling Tullia? You must see to
that now: I can