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Epistulae ad Familiares, V. v.-vi.

must have every confidence in the future too, for the reasons I have noted.

As regards myself, I would have you rest assured that anything I can do for yourself or your children will most readily be done for the asking. That is the least I could do, considering our long-standing friendship, the way I always treat my friends, and your own many kindnesses to me.

VI

Cicero to the same

Rome, September (end), 46 B.C.

1 I am afraid you think me wanting in my duty towards you—and considering the many mutual services and the similarity in our pursuits that bind us together, it ought not to be so—anyhow I am afraid you feel that I have not done my duty by you in the matter of correspondence. Well, I should have written to you long ago and many times, had I not been daily expecting better news, and preferred that congratulation rather than encouragement should be the theme of my letter. As it is, I shall soon, I hope, be congratulating you, so I hold that subject over for another letter.

2 But in the present letter I think that your spirits—though I am told and hope that they have by no means given way—need fortifying again and again by the counsel of one who, if not the wisest of men, is at any rate your best friend, and not in the words I should use to console you as one utterly cast down and now bereft of all hope of restoration, but as one of whose reinstatement in his

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