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¹ Although at such a crisis in your life it was incumbent upon me in view of our friendship to write you something that would either cheer or help you, still I have not hitherto done so because it seemed to me that I could not either mitigate or alleviate your sorrow by anything I could say. But as soon as I began to feel really hopeful that we should very soon find you reinstated in your civil rights, I could not refrain from sending you a clear statement of my sentiments and wishes.

² In the first place then let me tell you what is obvious and clear to me, and that is that Caesar will not be too hard upon you; circumstances, lapse of time, public opinion, and, I am inclined to think, his own disposition, are making him daily more lenient; and while that is what I feel about the others, I am also told that it is so in your case by his most intimate friends, to whom I have not ceased to make supplication in common with your brothers, ever since the news first came from Africa.^[2] And I assure you, that through their unparalleled valour and loyalty and affection for you, and their constant and unceasing anxiety for your welfare, such progress is being made that there is no concession, I believe, which Caesar himself is not prepared to make.

³ But if it takes more time than we could wish, it is because, owing to the pressing engagements of one to whom all sorts of petitions are addressed, it