Cicero himself,
however, was the head tutor--an office for which, as he modestly writes,
his Greek studies fully qualified him. Quintus Cicero behaved ill to his
brother after the battle of Pharsalia, making what seem to have been very
unjust accusations against him in order to pay court to Caesar; but they
soon became friends again.

Twenty-nine of the elder Cicero's letters to his brother remain, written
in terms of remarkable kindness and affection, which go far to vindicate
the Roman character from a charge which has sometimes been brought against
it of coldness in these family relationships. Few modern brothers,
probably, would write to each other in such terms as these:

"Afraid lest your letters bother me? I wish you would bother me, and
re-bother me, and talk to me and at me; for what can give me more
pleasure? I swear that no muse-stricken rhymester ever reads his own last
poem with more delight than I do what you write to me about matters
public or private, town or country. Here now is a letter from you full of
pleasant matter, but with this dash of the disagreeable in it, that you
have been afraid--nay, are even now afraid--of being troublesome to me.
I could quarrel with you about it, if that were not a sin. But if I have
reason to suspect anything of that sort again, I can only say that I shall
always be afraid lest, when we are together, I may be troublesome to you".

Or take, again, the pathetic apology which he makes for having avoided an
interview with Quintus in those first days of his exile when he was so
thoroughly unmanned:

"My brother, my brother, my brother! Did you really fear that I was angry,
because I sent off the slaves without any letter to you? And did you even
think that I was unwilling to see you? I angry with you? Could I possibly
be angry with you?... When I miss you, it is not a brother only that I
miss. To me you have always been the pleasantest of companions, a son in
dutiful affection, a father in counsel. What pleasure ever had I without
you, or you without me?"

Quintus had accompanied Caesar on his expedition into Britain as one
of his lieutenants, and seems to have written home to his brother some
notices of the country; to which the latter, towards the end of his reply,
makes this allusion:

"How delighted I was to get your letter from Britain! I had been afraid of
the voyage across, afraid of the rock-bound coast of the island. The other
dangers of such a campaign I do