If you succeed in your attempt I must
come to you: but if, on the other hand--but I needn't write the rest.
From your first, or at most, your second letter, I shall be able to
decide what I must do. Only be sure you tell me everything with the
greatest minuteness, although I ought now to be looking out for some
practical step rather than a letter. Take care of your health, and
assure yourself that nothing is or has ever been dearer to me than you
are. Good-bye, my dear Terentia, whom I seem to see before my eyes, and
so am dissolved in tears. Good-bye!

29 November.

[Footnote 370: Either the _libera legatio_ or the acting _legatio_ in
Gaul, both of which Caesar offered him.]

LXXXIV (A III, 24)

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)

DYRRACHIUM, 10 DECEMBER

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

When, some time ago, I received letters from you all stating that with
your consent the vote for the expenses of the consular provinces had
been taken, though I was nervous as to the result of the measure, I yet
hoped that you saw some good reason for it beyond what I could see: but
when I was informed by word of mouth and by letters that this policy of
yours was strongly censured, I was much disturbed, because the hope
which I had cherished, faint as it was, seemed completely destroyed. For
if the tribunes are angry with us, what hope can there be? And, indeed,
they seem to have reason to be angry, since they, who had undertaken my
cause, have not been consulted on the measure; while by your assenting
to it they have been deprived of all the legitimate influence of their
office: and that though they profess that it was for my sake that they
wished to have the vote for the outfit of the consuls under their
control, not in order to curtail their freedom of action, but in order
to attach them to my cause:[371] that as things stand now, supposing
the consuls to choose to take part against me, they can do so without
let or hindrance, but if they wish to do anything in my favour they are
powerless if the tribunes object. For as to what you say in your letter,
that, if your party had not consented, they would have obtained their
object by a popular vote--that would have been impossible against the
will of the tribunes.[372] So I fear, on the one hand, that I have lost
the favour of the tribunes; and on the other, even supposing that favour
to remain, that the tie has been lost by which the consuls were to be
attached. Added to this is anothe