Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/348

306 spring, but dissensions at home kept them quiet in the year 50 B.C., and Cicero was able to leave his province to his quæstor in August without anxiety on this account.

After the departure of the Parthians in the autumn of 51 B.C. Cicero employed his troops in putting down some of the wild hill-tribes who infested the frontier region of Mount Amanus. In his private letters Cicero does not take his military exploits very seriously. "I am thinking," he writes to Pætus, "of having a bit of a fleet on my coasts; they say that is the very best mode of resisting Parthian cavalry." To Atticus he notes how at Issus he has occupied the site of Alexander's camp"—a general of a different kidney from you and me"; and his crowning success is described in words which show that he estimated it at its true rate. "On the morning of the Saturnalia the Pindenissitæ surrendered to me, fifty-seven days after our first attack. 'Who, the mischief,' you say 'are these Pindenissitæ of yours? Who are they? I never heard the name before.' Well, is that my fault? Can I make Cilicia into an Ætolia or Macedonia?" Cicero's campaign was in truth a mere border