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much more difficult to endure. For what is done on a precedent, they consider as even legally justifiable: but they add and contribute something, or rather a great deal, of their own to it. Wherefore you must remember that those who have not followed your authority and advice have fallen by their own folly, when they might have been saved by prudence like yours. You will say: "What consolation is that to me in the midst of such gloom and what I may call the ruins of the Republic?" Certainly it is a sorrow scarce admitting of consolation: so complete is the loss and the hopelessness of recovery. But, after all, both in Cæsar's judgment and the people's estimate your righteousness, wisdom, and lofty character shine out like some torch when all the rest have gone out. This ought to go a long way towards alleviating your unhappiness. As to absence from your family, that should be the less distressing to you from the fact that you are at the same time absent from many severe annoyances. All of these I would have now mentioned in detail, had I not scrupled to enlighten you on certain particulars, from not seeing which you appear to me to be in a happier position than we who see them. I think that any consolation from me is properly confined to your being informed by a very affectionate friend of those facts by which your uneasiness could be relieved. Other sources of consolation, not unknown to me nor the least significant—indeed, as I think, by far the greatest—are centred in yourself: and by daily testing them I so completely recognize their soundness that they seem to me to be positively life-giving.

Again, I recall the fact that from the earliest dawn of manhood you have been most absolutely devoted to all kinds of philosophical study, and have with the utmost zeal and care learnt all the maxims of the wisest men which concern a right conduct of life. These indeed are useful as well as delightful, even in the highest state of prosperity: but in such times as these we have nothing else to give us peace of mind. I will not be in any way presumptuous, nor exhort a man so richly endowed with professional knowledge and natural ability, to return to those arts to which, from the earliest period of your life, you have devoted your industry.