323] while you have to satisfy your creditors out of the
very vitals of yourself and your son. However, the sum mentioned in your
letter has been paid to M. Antonius, and the same amount to Caepio. For
me the sum at present in my hands is sufficient for what I contemplate
doing. For in either case--whether I am restored or given up in
despair--I shall not want any more money. For yourself, if you are
molested, I think you should apply to Crassus and Calidius. I don't know
how far Hortensius is to be trusted. Myself, with the most elaborate
pretence of affection and the closest daily intimacy, he treated with
the most utter want of principle and the most consummate treachery, and
Q. Arrius helped him in it: acting under whose advice, promises, and
injunctions, I was left helpless to fall into this disaster. But this
you will keep dark for fear they might injure you. Take care also--and
it is on this account that I think you should cultivate Hortensius
himself by means of Pomponius--that the epigram on the _lex
Aurelia_[324] attributed to you when candidate for the aedileship is not
proved by false testimony to be yours. For there is nothing that I am so
afraid of as that, when people understand how much pity for me your
prayers and your acquittal will rouse, they may attack you with all the
greater violence. Messalla I reckon as really attached to you: Pompey I
regard as still pretending only. But may you never have to put these
things to the test! And that prayer I would have offered to the gods had
they not ceased to listen to prayers of mine. However, I do pray that
they may be content with these endless miseries of ours; among which,
after all, there is no discredit for any wrong thing done--sorrow is the
beginning and end, sorrow that punishment is most severe when our
conduct has been most unexceptionable. As to my daughter and yours and
my young Cicero, why should I recommend them to you, my dear brother?
Rather I grieve that their orphan state will cause you no less sorrow
than it does me. Yet as long as you are uncondemned they will not be
fatherless. The rest, by my hopes of restoration and the privilege of
dying in my fatherland, my tears will not allow me to write! Terentia
also I would ask you to protect, and to write me word on every subject.
Be as brave as the nature of the case admits.

Thessalonica, 13 June.

[Footnote 323: See pp. 92, 107.]

[Footnote 324: Quintus was a candidate in B.C. 66 for the ae