of any kind, there is, if I mistake not, a wound on thy head which
may help thee to a revival of the circumstance.

"Next, to arouse thy interest. In punishment of the attempt upon
thy life--for dear repose of conscience, may all the gods forbid
it should ever prove to have been an accident!--the family were
seized and summarily disposed of, and their property confiscated.
And inasmuch, O my Midas! as the action had the approval of our
Caesar, who was as just as he was wise--be there flowers upon his
altars forever!--there should be no shame in referring to the
sums which were realized to us respectively from that source,
for which it is not possible I can ever cease to be grateful
to thee, certainly not while I continue, as at present, in the
uninterrupted enjoyment of the part which fell to me.

"In vindication of thy wisdom--a quality for which, as I am now
advised, the son of Gordius, to whom I have boldly likened thee,
was never distinguished among men or gods--I recall further that
thou didst make disposition of the family of Hur, both of us at the
time supposing the plan hit upon to be the most effective possible
for the purposes in view, which were silence and delivery over to
inevitable but natural death. Thou wilt remember what thou didst
with the mother and sister of the malefactor; yet, if now I yield
to a desire to learn whether they be living or dead, I know, from
knowing the amiability of thy nature, O my Gratus, that thou wilt
pardon me as one scarcely less amiable than thyself.

"As more immediately essential to the present business, however,
I take the liberty of inviting to thy remembrance that the actual
criminal was sent to the galleys a slave for life--so the precept
ran; and it may serve to make the event which I am about to relate
the more astonishing by saying here that I saw and read the receipt
for his body delivered in course to the tribune commanding a galley.

"Thou mayst begin now to give me more especial heed, O my most
excellent Phrygian!

"Referring to the limit of life at the oar, the outlaw thus justly
disposed of should be dead, or, better speaking, some one of the
three thousand Oceanides should have taken him to husband at least
five years ago. And if thou wilt excuse a momentary weakness, O most
virtuous and tender of men! inasmuch as I loved him in childhood,
and also because he was very handsome--I used in much admiration to
call him my Ganymede--he ought in right to have