CXLI (Q FR II, 14 [15 b])

TO HIS BROTHER QUINTUS (IN GAUL)

ROME (JULY)

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

Well! this time I'll use a good pen, well-mixed ink, and superfine
paper. For you say you could hardly read my previous letter, for which,
my dear brother, he reason was none of those which you suppose. For I
was not busy, nor agitated, nor out of temper with some one: but it is
always my way to take the first pen that turns up and use it as if it
were a good one. But now attend, best and dearest of brothers, to my
answer to what you wrote in this same short letter in such a very
business-like way. On this subject you beg that I should write back to
you with brotherly candour, without concealment, or reserve, or
consideration for your feelings--I mean whether you are to hasten home,
as we had talked of, or to stay where you are, if there is any excuse
for doing so, in order to extricate yourself from your embarrassments.
If, my dear Quintus, it were some small matter on which you were asking
my opinion, though I should have left it to you to do what you chose, I
should yet have shewn you what mine was. But on this subject your
question amounts to this--what sort of year I expect the next to be?
Either quite undisturbed as far as we are concerned, or at any rate one
that will find us in the highest state of preparation for defence. This
is shewn by the daily throng at my house, my reception in the forum, the
cheers which greet me in the theatre. My friends feel no anxiety,
because they know the strength of my position in my hold upon the
favour both of Caesar and Pompey. These things give me entire
confidence. But if some furious outbreak of that madman occurs,
everything is ready for crushing him. This is my feeling, my deliberate
opinion: I write to you with entire confidence. I bid you have no
doubts, and I do so with no intention of pleasing you, but with
brotherly frankness. Therefore, while I should wish you to come at the
time you arranged, for the sake of the pleasure we should have in each
other's society, yet I prefer the course you yourself think the better
one. I, too, think these objects of great importance--ample means for
yourself and extrication from your load of debt. Make up your mind to
this, that, free from embarrassments, we should be the happiest people
alive if we keep well. For men of our habits the deficiency is small,
and such as can be supplied with the greatest ease, granted only that