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it would stupidly[1] do me harm, especially as I am still paying the penalty of my writings. And in that respect my fate has no parallel; for while a clerical error is removed by erasure, and fatuity is penalized by publicity, my mistake is corrected by banishment, though the charge against me amounts to no more than my having spoken ill of an adversary when I was actually in arms against him.
2 There is not a man among us, I imagine, who did not pray to the Goddess of Victory to be on his side, not a man who, even when sacrificing with some other object, even at that very moment, I say, did not utter a prayer for the earliest possible defeat of Caesar. If this never enters his mind, his bliss is unalloyed; if he knows it, and is convinced of it, why is he angry with a man who has only written something against his aims, when he has pardoned all those who have so often made supplication to the gods against his welfare?
3 But to go back to where I began, the reason of my timidity was this; I have written about you, I swear it, sparingly and cautiously, not only pulling myself up, but almost turning tail. Now this kind of composition,[2] as everybody knows, ought to be not only free, but enthusiastic and elevated. Invective is supposed to be unrestrained, but there you must be careful to avoid the pitfall of scurrility; self-praise is always fettered, for one fears the vice of self-assertiveness is not far behind it. The only theme in which you have a free hand is praise of another, any disparagement of whom will inevitably be attributed either to your incompetence or your jealousy. And yet I am inclined to think that what has happened will be more acceptable to