Page:Loeb Classical Library L205N (1958).djvu/469

kindly feeling and wisdom is, I am sure, a comfort to you; had we but followed his authority and counsel we should have submitted to the autocracy of a civilian rather than to the victory of an armed soldier.^[1]

⁷ But perhaps I have dealt with these matters at unnecessary length; I shall take less space to set forth what is more important. I have nobody in the world to whom I owe more than I do to you; those to whom I was indebted, you yourself know how heavily, have been snatched away from me by the calamity of this war. What my own position is at the present moment I am fully aware. But since there is never a man so hopelessly prostrate but that he is capable of some considerable accomplishment and performance if he devotes himself wholly and solely to the work he has in hand, I should be glad if you would regard whatever counsel or practical assistance I can give you, certainly all my enthusiasm, as a debt I owe to yourself and your children.

¹ I beg of you not to imagine that my writing to you less frequently than I used to do is due to my having forgotten you, but either to my illness (though I think I am now recovering from it a little) or to my being away from Rome, so that it is impossible for me to know who are going out to you. I should like you, therefore, to regard it as an established fact that I remember you with the warmest affection,