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you often assure me that such is your intention, you will still, I hope, pardon my being so impatient. The fact is, that the style of your works is such that, though I had always expected great things, you have surpassed my expectations, and have so fascinated me or fired my imagination as to make me desire that my achievements should be put on record at the earliest possible moment by none other than you yourself. And it is not only the prospect of celebrity in ages to come that impels me to grasp what I may call the hope of immortality, but also that desire I have mentioned to enjoy to the full while yet alive, whether it be the pronouncement of your weighty testimony, or the expression of your friendly feeling, or the charm of your genius.

² But even as I write these words I can quite appreciate the pressure upon you of the heavy burden of various works you have undertaken and, indeed, already begun. But seeing that you had now almost completed your History of the Italian and Civil Wars—and you had also told me that you were breaking the ground for other enterprises—I would not do myself the disservice of failing to suggest that you should ask yourself the question, whether you would prefer to weave my part in it into the general context of your History, or else, as many of the Greek annalists have done—Callisthenes in his Phocian War, Timaeus in his War of Pyrrhus, Polybius in his Numantine War, all of whom respectively detached the wars I have mentioned from the continuity of their histories—you, too, in like manner, would disconnect a civil conspiracy from wars waged by public enemies and aliens. I can quite see that it makes but little difference to my reputation, but