d by my labour.

[Footnote 569: The date has been lost.]

CXXXI (Q FR II, 9)

TO HIS BROTHER QUINTUS (IN THE COUNTRY)

ROME (FEBRUARY)

[Sidenote: B.C. 54, AET. 52]

Your note by its strong language has drawn out this letter. For as to
what actually occurred on the day of your start, it supplied me with
absolutely no subject for writing. But as when we are together we are
never at a loss for something to say, so ought our letters at times to
digress into loose chat. Well then, to begin, the liberty of the
Tenedians has received short shrift,[570] no one speaking for them
except myself, Bibulus, Calidius, and Favonius. A complimentary
reference to you was made by the legates from Magnesia and Sipylum, they
saying that you were the man who alone had resisted the demand of L.
Sestius Pansa.[571] On the remaining days of this business in the
senate, if anything occurs which you ought to know, or even if there is
nothing, I will write you something every day. On the 12th I will not
fail you or Pomponius. The poems of Lucretius are as you say--with many
flashes of genius, yet very technical.[572] But when you return, ... if
you succeed in reading the _Empedoclea_ of Sallustius, I shall regard
you as a hero, yet scarcely human.

[Footnote 570: Lit. "has been beheaded with the axe of Tenes," mythical
founder and legislator of Tenedos, whose laws were of Draconian
severity. A _legatio_ from Tenedos, heard as usual in February, had
asked that Tenedos might be made a _libera civitas_.]

[Footnote 571: Some _publicanus_ who had made a charge on the Magnesians
which they considered excessive.]

[Footnote 572: Lucretius seems to have been now dead, according to
Donatus 15 October (B.C. 55), though the date is uncertain. I have
translated the reading _multae tamen artis_, which has been changed by
some to _multae etiam artis_. But the contrast in the criticism seems to
be between the fine poetical passages in the _de Rerum Natura_ and the
mass of technical exposition of philosophy which must have repelled the
"general reader" at all times. It suggests at once to Cicero to mention
another poem on a similar subject, the _Empedoclea_ of Sallustius, of
which and its writer we know nothing. It was not the historian.]

CXXXII (Q FR II, 10)

TO HIS BROTHER QUINTUS (IN THE COUNTRY)

ROME (FEBRUARY)

[Sidenote: B.C. 54, AET. 52]

I am glad you like my letter: however, I should not even now have had
anything t