n
the plans of your enemies and of traitors. In the second place, I derive
a ready consolation from the memory of my own dangers, of which I see a
reflexion in your fortunes. For though your position is attacked in a
less important particular than that which brought mine to the ground,
yet the analogy is so strong, that I trust you will pardon me if I am
not frightened at what you did not yourself consider ought to cause
alarm. But shew yourself the man I have known you to be, to use a Greek
expression, "since your nails were soft."[468] The injurious conduct of
men will, believe me, only make your greatness more conspicuous. Expect
from me the greatest zeal and devotion in everything: I will not falsify
your expectation.

[Footnote 466: The famous C. Asinius Pollio.]

[Footnote 467: The postponement of the Egyptian commission.]

[Footnote 468: [Greek: ex apalon onychon], _i.e._, "from your earliest
youth." Others explain it to mean "from the bottom of your heart," or
"thoroughly," from the idea that the nerves ended in the nails. [Greek:
ex auton ton onychon], "thoroughly," occurs in late Greek, and similar
usages in the Anthology.]

CIV (Q FR II, 4 AND PART OF 6)

TO HIS BROTHER QUINTUS (IN SARDINIA)

ROME, MARCH

[Sidenote: B.C. 56, AET. 50]

Our friend Sestius was acquitted on the 11th of March, and, what was of
great importance to the Republic--that there should be no appearance of
difference of opinion in a case of that sort--was acquitted unanimously.
As to what I had often gathered from your letters, that you were anxious
about--that I should not leave any loophole for abuse to an unfriendly
critic on the score of my being ungrateful, if I did not treat with the
utmost indulgence his occasional wrong-headedness--let me tell you that
in this trial I established my character for being the most grateful of
men. For in conducting the defence I satisfied in the fullest manner
possible a man of difficult temper, and, what he above all things
desired, I cut up Vatinius (by whom he was being openly attacked) just
as I pleased, with the applause of gods and men. And, farther, when our
friend Paullus[469] was brought forward as a witness against Sestius, he
affirmed that he would lay an information against Vatinius[470] if
Licinius Macer hesitated to do so, and Macer, rising from Sestius's
benches, declared that he would not fail. Need I say more? That impudent
swaggering fellow Vatinius was overwhelmed