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Epistulae ad Familiares, V. xx.

credit for the modicum of intelligence I possess—I say of my generosity, in that you prefer to attribute the deliverance of my legate and my prefect [Q. Lepta] from a very grave disaster (and that, too, although they should not have been made liable at all) to the good services of my secretary rather than to mine—of my assiduity, in that you believe that I had neither any knowledge of my duty, nor had given any thought to it, important as it was, or even to my personal danger, serious as it was; that it was my secretary who inserted whatever he pleased in the accounts without having so much as read it over to me—of my intelligence, in that you imagine I had never even thought about a matter which I had actually thought out with no little penetration; for not only was it my own idea to set Volusius free, but it was also I who invented the scheme for saving Valerius's sureties and T. Marius himself from being so heavily mulcted—a scheme not only universally approved, but universally applauded; indeed, if you want to know the truth, my secretary was the only man, so far as I gathered, who was not particularly pleased about it.

⁵ But I thought it a point of honour, as long as the people kept what belonged to it, to look after the interests of so many—well, you may call them either friends or fellow-citizens.

Now as to Lucceius, it was arranged at the instance of Pompey, that that money should be lodged in a temple;^[1] that, as I have acknowledged, was done by

↑ Two sums of money were thus "lodged in safety" disputed money, where it lay fallow, paying no interest; the first sum, the subject of dispute between Lucceius and the state, was so lodged by Cicero for Pompey, the second by Rufus for P. Sestius, who was on state duty in Asia, and keeping an eye on the pecuniary interests of the optimates. "This latter sum Sestius took for his own expenses, and the former sum he took over in trust for Pompey. Rufus, however, in handing over the money to Sestius, acted under Cicero’s orders, as Cicero readily acknowledges; but he did not enter in his accounts the fact that he had given those orders to Rufus, considering it unnecessary to do so as the matter was so well authenticated. This passage, especially § 9, is very interesting as showing that Pompey and the other optimates had already been making preparations in the East for the conflict with Caesar." Tyrrell.

413

[1] Two sums of money were thus "lodged in safety" disputed money, where it lay fallow, paying no interest; the first sum, the subject of dispute between Lucceius and the state, was so lodged by Cicero for Pompey, the second by Rufus for P. Sestius, who was on state duty in Asia, and keeping an eye on the pecuniary interests of the optimates. "This latter sum Sestius took for his own expenses, and the former sum he took over in trust for Pompey. Rufus, however, in handing over the money to Sestius, acted under Cicero’s orders, as Cicero readily acknowledges; but he did not enter in his accounts the fact that he had given those orders to Rufus, considering it unnecessary to do so as the matter was so well authenticated. This passage, especially § 9, is very interesting as showing that Pompey and the other optimates had already been making preparations in the East for the conflict with Caesar." Tyrrell.

[1]