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270 provinces under Gracchus' law, it has been resolved that he shall not be susperseded. I tell my story briefly, for I take no pleasure in the present state of things."

Cicero had himself given his voice in favour of a Thanksgiving of fifteen days for Cæsar's victories, and for the other measures in his interest, which he recounted to Lentulus. The controversy whether the consuls of 55 B.C. were to succeed Cæsar in his Gallic provinces was, if the combatants had known it, a mere beating of the air. The consulships for 55 had been settled on Pompey and Crassus, and their future provinces determined for them at the conference of Luca, and Gaul had been entailed for years to come on Cæsar. But all this was as yet a secret; and Cicero argued the question in June, 56, as if the Senate really had the disposal of the provinces. He urged that the provinces named should be Syria and Macedonia, in order that his enemies, Gabinius and Piso, might be recalled from their posts, and he protested against any scheme which should cut short Cæsar's career of conquest.

Cicero's speech has been preserved to us under the title De Provinciis Consularibus. The orator cannot avoid some reference to Cæsar's Acts in his consulship, but he touches the painful subject as lightly as possible, taking refuge in a somewhat weak argumentum ad hominem. Those who wished to set them aside were the same men who now acknowledged as valid the laws of Clodius' tribunate.