again.]

[Footnote 320: The next letter shews that he means Hortensius. The
blunder which he complains of having committed, by the advice of
Hortensius, is that of having left Rome, rather than stay and brave the
impeachment.]

LXIV (A III, 9)

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)

THESSALONICA, 13 JUNE

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

My brother Quintus having quitted Asia before the 1st of May, and
arrived at Athens on the 15th, he would have to make great haste to
prevent proceedings being commenced against him in his absence,
supposing there to be some one who was not content with the misfortunes
we have already sustained. Accordingly, I preferred that he should hurry
on to Rome rather than come to me; and at the same time--for I will tell
you the truth, and it will give you a notion of the extent of my
wretchedness--I could not make up my mind to see him, devotedly attached
to me as he is, and a man of most tender feelings, or to obtrude upon
him my miseries and ruin in all their wretchedness, or to endure their
being seen by him. And I was besides afraid of what certainly would have
happened--that he would not have had the resolution to leave me. I had
ever before my eyes the time when he would either have to dismiss his
lictors,[321] or be violently torn from my arms. The prospect of this
bitter pain I have avoided by the other bitter pain of not seeing my
brother. It is all you, who advised me to continue living, that have
forced me into this distressful position. Accordingly, I am paying the
penalty of my error. However, I am sustained by your letter, from which
I easily perceive how high your own hopes are. This did give me some
consolation, but only, after all, till you passed from the mention of
Pompey to the passage beginning "Now try and win over Hortensius and
men of that sort." In heaven's name, my dear Pomponius, don't you yet
perceive by whose means, by whose treachery, by whose dishonest advice,
I have been ruined? But all this I will discuss with you when we meet. I
will only say this much, which I think you know: it is not my enemies,
but my jealous rivals, that have ruined me. Now, however, if things are
really as you hope, I will keep up my spirits, and will rely upon the
hope on which you bid me rely. But if, as I myself think, this proves
illusory, what I was not allowed to do at the best time shall be done at
a worse.[322] Terentia often expresses her gratitude to you. For myself
one of my miseri