es also consists in fear--the business of my unhappy
brother. If I could only know how it stands, I should know what I ought
to do. Personally, the hope of the advantages and of the letters you
mention keeps me still, as you advise, at Thessalonica. If I get any
news, I shall know what I ought to do about the rest. Yes, if, as you
say in your letter, you left Rome on the 1st of June, you will soon see
us. I have sent you a letter which I wrote to Pompey.

Thessalonica, 15 June.

[Footnote 321: Because, though a provincial governor retained his
lictors till he reached Rome, he was bound to go straight home or
dismiss them.]

[Footnote 322: _I.e._, suicide.]

LXV (Q FR I, 3)

TO HIS BROTHER QUINTUS (ON HIS WAY TO ROME)

THESSALONICA, 15 JUNE

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

Brother! Brother! Brother! did you really fear that I had been induced
by some angry feeling to send slaves to you without a letter? Or even
that I did not wish to see you? I to be angry with you! Is it possible
for me to be angry with you? Why, one would think that it was you that
brought me low! Your enemies, your unpopularity, that miserably ruined
me, and not I that unhappily ruined you! The fact is, the much-praised
consulate of mine has deprived me of you, of children, country, fortune;
from you I should hope it will have taken nothing but myself. Certainly
on your side I have experienced nothing but what was honourable and
gratifying: on mine you have grief for my fall and fear for your own,
regret, mourning, desertion. _I_ not wish to see you? The truth is
rather that I was unwilling to be seen by you. For you would not have
seen your brother--not the brother you had left, not the brother you
knew, not him to whom you had with mutual tears bidden farewell as he
followed you on your departure for your province: not a trace even or
faint image of him, but rather what I may call the likeness of a living
corpse. And oh that you had sooner seen me or heard of me as a corpse!
Oh that I could have left you to survive, not my life merely, but my
undiminished rank! But I call all the gods to witness that the one
argument which recalled me from death was, that all declared that to
some extent your life depended upon mine. In which matter I made an
error and acted culpably. For if I had died, that death itself would
have given clear evidence of my fidelity and love to you. As it is, I
have allowed you to be deprived of my aid, though I am