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188 a half he had been away in his Spanish governorship, and his return marks the beginning of the Revolution. In the same letter we get a lively sketch of the situation just before Cæsar's arrival, and of the hopes and fears which Cicero entertained at the moment.

"You chide me gently about my intimacy with Pompey. Now I would not have you think that I am leagued with him in order to get protection for myself; but the position of affairs is such, that if any difference arose between him and me, it would inevitably produce serious disturbances in the State. Against this mischief I have provided, not by swerving from my own honourable policy, but by inducing him to amend his ways and renounce some of his popularity-hunting vagaries. . . What now if Cæsar likewise, who has a marvellous fair wind in his sails just now, can be brought round by me to a better mind? Shall I have done any great harm to the State? Why, if no one were envious of me, if all supported me as they ought to do, even then a treatment which should restore the unsound members of the commonwealth would be preferable to heroic surgery. But now, when the Knights, whom I once posted with you as their chief and standard-bearer on the slopes of the Capitol, when the Knights, I say, have deserted the Senate, and when our chief men think that they are in the seventh heaven if they have bearded mullets in their fish-ponds who will come to feed out of their hands, do you not think that I gain a point, if I bring it about