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 he will himself of his own accord, without any harsh measures on our part, be caught in the toils of Fate, let alone the fact that we cannot treat as a criminal a man whom no one impeaches and, as you say, the soldiers love. Besides, in cases of high treason, it is inevitable that even those who are proved guilty should seem to be victims of oppression. For you know yourself what your grandfather Hadrian said: Wretched indeed is the lot of princes, who only by being slain can persuade the world that they have been conspired against! I have preferred to father the remark on him rather than Domitian, who is said to have made it first, for in the mouths of tyrants even fine sayings do not carry as much weight as they ought.

Let Cassius then go his own way, more especially as he is an excellent general, strict and brave and indispensable to the State. For as to what you say that the interests of my children should be safe-guarded by his death, frankly, may my children perish, if Avidius deserves to be loved more than they, and if it be better for the State that Cassius should survive than the children of Marcus.

169–172 A.D.

To Albinus, of the family of the Ceionii, an African indeed but with not much of the African in him, the son-in-law of Plautillus, I have given the command of two cavalry cohorts. He is a man who has 311