"If he"--that is, Clodius--"should
indict me in court, all Italy would come to my defence, so that I should
be acquitted with honor. Should he attack me with open violence, I
should have, I think, not only my own party but the world at large to
stand by me. All men promise me their friends, their clients, their
freedmen, their slaves, and even their money. Our old body of
aristocrats"--Cato, Bibulus, and the makers of fish-ponds
generally--"are wonderfully warm in my cause. If any of these have
heretofore been remiss, now they join our party from sheer hatred of
these kings"--the Triumvirs. "Pompey promises everything, and so does
Caesar, whom I only trust so far as I can see them." Even the Triumvirs
promise him that he will be safe; but his belief in Pompey's honesty is
all but gone. "The coming Tribunes are my friends. The Consuls of next
year promise well." He was wofully mistaken. "We have excellent Praetors,
citizens alive to their duty. Domitius, Nigidius, Memmius, and Lentulus
are specially trustworthy. The others are good men. You may therefore
pluck up your courage and be confident." From this we perceive that he
had already formed the idea that he might perhaps be required to fight
for his position as a Roman citizen; and it seems also that he
understood the cause of the coming conflict. The intention was that he
should be driven out of Rome by personal enmity. Nothing is said in any
of these letters of the excuse to be used, though he knew well what that
excuse was to be. He was to be charged by the Patrician Tribune with
having put Roman citizens to death in opposition to the law. But there
arises at this time no question whether he had or had not been justified
in what he, as Consul, had done to Lentulus and the others. Would
Clodius be able to rouse a mob against him? and, if so, would Caesar
assist Clodius? or would Pompey who still loomed to his eyes as the
larger of the two men? He had ever been the friend of Pompey, and Pompey
had promised him all manner of assistance; but he knew already that
Pompey would turn upon him. That Rome should turn upon him--Rome which
he had preserved from the torches of Catiline's conspirators--that he
could not bring himself to believe!

We must not pass over this long letter to Quintus without observing that
through it all the evil condition of the younger brother's mind becomes
apparent. The severity of his administration had given offence. His
punishments had been cr