0,000
sestertia (about L480,000) for that monument, which you used to speak of
in such high terms, in order to enlarge the forum and extend it right up
to the Hall of Liberty. The claims of private owners could not be
satisfied for less. We will make it a most glorious affair. For in the
Campus Martius we are about to erect voting places for the _comitia
tributa_, of marble and covered, and to surround them with a lofty
colonnade a mile in circumference: at the same time the _Villa Publica_
will also be connected with these erections.[606] You will say: "What
good will this monument do me?" But why should I trouble myself about
that? I have told you all the news at Rome: for I don't suppose you want
to know about the lustrum, of which there is now no hope,[607] or about
the trials which are being held under the (Cincian) law.[608]

Now allow yourself to be scolded, if you deserve it. For you say in the
letter from Buthrotum, delivered to me by C. Decimus, that you think you
will have to go to Asia. There did not, by Hercules, seem to me to be
anything that made it matter in the least whether you did the business
by agents or in person; or anything to make you go so often and so far
from your friends. But I could have wished that I had urged this on you
before you had taken any step. For I certainly should have had some
influence on you. As things are, I will suppress the rest of my
scolding. May it only have some effect in hastening your return! The
reason of my not writing oftener to you is the uncertainty I am in as to
where you are or are going to be. However, I thought I ought to give
this letter to a chance messenger, because he seemed to be likely to see
you. Since you think you really will go to Asia, pray tell me by what
time we may expect you back, and what you have done about Eutychides.

[Footnote 600: That is, as an interlocutor in the dialogue "On the
Republic," which Cicero was engaged in writing.]

[Footnote 601: A law re-enacting the _lex Didia_, and enacting under
penalties that no law was to be brought forward without due publication
beforehand.]

[Footnote 602: A law which enabled the magistrates and tribunes to stop
legislation by _obnuntiatio_.]

[Footnote 603: Procilius had been condemned _de vi_ (p. 280). The
rumours, I suppose, were as to the jury having been corrupted.]

[Footnote 604: The consul L. Domitius Ahenobarbus and C. Lucceius
Hirrus, the latter a warm partisan of Pompey, who was