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54 B.C.] pressed him to recommend to his care any friends who wished for an opening in his province, and these he always treated with such marked favour as to make them feel that Cicero's request was all-powerful with him. He would not hear a word of thanks: "As for Mescinius Rufus, whom you mentioned to me, I will make him King of Gaul if you please, or else you may hand him over to Lepta, and send me some one else to make much of." When Clodius wrote to Cæsar with some calumnies against Cicero, Cæsar showed his contempt by not answering the letter, and he took care that this should come to Cicero's ears. In the embarrassments which resulted from Cicero's building operations, Cæsar freely accommodated him with loans of money. To Cicero likewise in conjunction with his own confidential agent Oppius he entrusted the spending of great sums on the erection of public buildings and the adornment of the city. We find that they put up a town-hall on the Campus Martius and marble polling-places on the same spot. The Forum was also enlarged at a cost of £600,000. Cicero was much pleased at the compliment conveyed by this honourable commission. It was entrusted, as he writes to Atticus, "to Cæsar's friends, Oppius and myself—yes, you may fret and fume—I say, to Cæsar's friends."