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because you are in my judgment a man of such wisdom that I should be sorry to prefer my own opinion to yours—still the long duration of our friendship, and your extraordinary kindness to me, which I have recognized ever since you were a boy, have prompted me to write and tell you what I thought conducive to your personal welfare, and considered not incompatible with your dignity.

That you were the man who anticipated with remarkable foresight the beginnings of these calamities, who administered the consulship with such magnificence and efficiency—of that I have a very vivid recollection; but at the same time I observed this too, that you disapproved of the plan of campaign in the civil war, and of Pompey's troops and the composition of his army, and that you always utterly distrusted it; and I think it is within your recollection that I, too, held that opinion.^[1] You, therefore, took no great part in the campaign, and I always made a point of taking no part at all. For we were not fighting with the weapons which might have given us strength, such as judgment, the weight of personality, or the soundness of our cause, in all of which we were superior, but with the brute force of our muscles, in which we were no match for our adversaries. We were consequently defeated, or, if worth knows no defeat, we were at any rate crushed and humiliated. And here it is impossible for any man not to commend most cordially your decision, as soon as you saw there was no hope of victory, to cast out of your heart every desire to continue the struggle, proving thereby that a wise man and honest citizen, while he hesitates to be responsible for the inception of a civil