dileship of
the following year. The _lex Aurelia_, which divided the juries between
the senators, equites, and _tribuni aerarii_, was passed in Pompey's
first consulship, B.C. 70. As this was the compromise in the matter of
the _iudicia_ favoured by Pompey, Hortensius, and the like, an attack on
it would be likely to give offence.]

LXVI (A III, 10)

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)

THESSALONICA, 17 JUNE

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

The public transactions up to the 25th of May I have learnt from your
letter. I am waiting for the rest, as you advised, at Thessalonica; and
when they arrive I shall be better able to decide where to be. For if
there is any reason, if any action is being taken, if I shall see any
hopes, I shall either wait in the same place or go to your house; but
if, as you say, these hopes have vanished into air, I shall look out for
something else. At present you do not give me any indication except the
disagreement of those friends of yours, which, however, arises between
them on every kind of subject rather than myself. Therefore I don't see
what good it is to me. However, as long as you all will have me hope, I
shall obey you. For as to your scoldings so frequent and so severe, and
your saying that I am faint-hearted, I would ask you what misery is
there so heavy as not to be included in my disfranchisement? Did anyone
ever fall from such a high position, in so good a cause, with such
endowments of genius, wisdom and popularity, with such powerful supports
from all loyalists? Can I forget what I was, and not feel what I am? Of
what honour, of what glory, of what children, of what means, of what a
brother I am deprived? This last, indeed, to draw your attention to a
new kind of disaster--though I valued him, and always had done so, more
than myself--I have avoided seeing, lest I should behold his grief and
mourning, or lest I--whom he had left in the highest prosperity--should
obtrude myself upon him in a state of ruin and humiliation. I pass over
the other particulars that are past bearing: for I am prevented by my
tears. And here, let me ask, am I to be blamed for my grief, or for the
unfortunate mistake of not retaining these advantages (and I could
easily have done so, had not a plot for my destruction been hatched
within my own walls), or at least of not losing them without losing my
life at the same time? My purpose in writing these words is that you
should rather console me, as you do, tha