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a great and important consideration), but that the whole business is on your shoulders, why, then you will carry it through; unless of course my misery makes me too tactless, or my friendship too presumptuous, in laying this burden upon you. But an excuse may be found for either in your own lifelong custom. For you have so accustomed yourself to take trouble for your friends that your intimates no longer merely hope for it from you, but demand it of you. As far as concerns the book which my son will give you, I entreat you not to permit its publication, or else to correct it in such a way as to prevent its doing me any harm.

¹ Largus, who is devoted to you, informed me in the course of conversation that the first of January had been fixed as the limit of your stay.^[1] All that had happened having convinced me that whatever Balbus and Oppius had arranged in Caesar's absence was usually confirmed by him, I earnestly pleaded with them to grant me the favour of allowing you to remain in Sicily as long as we desired it. Now although it had always been their habit either readily to promise anything of such a nature as would not run counter to the feelings of their party, or else, even if they refused, to give a reason for their refusal, on this occasion they thought it best to give no immediate answer to my petition. However they came back to me on that same day and granted