er my respect for you,
or your very great kindness and liberality to me, to have failed. If
certain interruptions of friendship have occurred, based rather on
suspicion than fact, let them, as groundless and imaginary, be uprooted
from our entire memory and life. For such is your character, and such I
desire mine to be, that, fate having brought us face to face with the
same condition of public affairs, I would fain hope that our union and
friendship will turn out to be for the credit of us both. Wherefore how
much consideration should in your judgment be shewn to me, you will
yourself decide, and that decision, I hope, will be in accordance with
my position in the state. I, for my part, promise and guarantee a
special and unequalled zeal in every service which may tend to your
honour and reputation. And even if in this I shall have many rivals, I
shall yet easily surpass them all in the judgment of the rest of the
world as well as that of your sons, for both of whom I have a particular
affection; but while equally well-disposed to Marcus, I am more entirely
devoted to Publius for this reason, that, though he always did so from
boyhood, he is at this particular time treating me with the respect and
affection of a second father.

I would have you believe that this letter will have the force of a
treaty, not of a mere epistle; and that I will most sacredly observe and
most carefully perform what I hereby promise and undertake. The defence
of your political position which I have taken up in your absence I will
abide by, not only for the sake of our friendship, but also for the sake
of my own character for consistency. Therefore I thought it sufficient
at this time to tell you this--that if there was anything which I
understood to be your wish or for your advantage or for your honour, I
should do it without waiting to be asked; but that if I received a hint
from yourself or your family on any point, I should take care to
convince you that no letter of your own or any request from any of your
family has been in vain. Wherefore I would wish you to write to me on
all matters, great, small, or indifferent, as to a most cordial friend;
and to bid your family so to make use of my activity, advice, authority,
and influence in all business matters--public or private, forensic or
domestic, whether your own or those of your friends, guests, or
clients--that, as far as such a thing is possible, the loss of your
presence may be lessene