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Epistulae ad Familiares, VI. xvi.-xvii.

our fathers; but that I think is for those to do who have not followed up their fathers' friendship by any good offices of their own. I shall therefore be content with our own personal friendship, and that is what I rely upon when I beg of you to look after my interests in my absence, if you believe, as you do, that no kindness of yours will ever cease to live in my memory.

XVII

Cicero to Bithynicus

Place and date uncertain

1 I greet you. While I have every other reason for desiring the establishment some day or other of a Republic, I would have you believe that I have an additional reason which increases my longing for it, and that is the promise you make in your letter; for you write that in that event you will spend your days in my company.

2 It is a great pleasure to me that you should wish to do so, and your wish is in exact accord with our intimate friendship, and the opinions of me expressed from time to time by that prince of men, your father. For let me assure you that while those who have been, or still are, according to the vicissitudes of the times, in a position to help you are more closely bound to you by the magnitude of their services, there is no man more closely so bound by the ties of friendship than myself. And that is why I am so delighted at your not only remembering our intimacy, but even wishing to increase it.

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