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 DXXXIII (F VI, 18)

TO QUINTUS LEPTA



Immediately on the receipt of the letter from your servant Seleucus I sent a note to Balbus asking him what the provision of the law was. He answered that auctioneers in actual business were excluded from being municipal counsellors, retired auctioneers were not excluded. Wherefore certain friends of yours and mine need not be alarmed, for it would have been intolerable, while those who were now acting as haruspices were put on the roll of the senate at Rome, all who had ever been auctioneers should be excluded from becoming counsellors in the municipal towns.

There is no news from Spain. However, it is ascertained to be true that Pompey has a great army: for Cæsar has himself sent me a copy of a despatch from Paciæcus, in which the number was reckoned as eleven legions. Messalla has also written to Quintus Salassus to say that his brother Publius Curtius has been put to death by Pompey's order in the presence of the army, for having, as he alleged, made a compact with certain Spaniards, that if Pompey entered a particular town to get corn, they should arrest him and take him to Cæsar. As to your business in regard to your being a guarantee for Pompey, when your fellow guarantor Galba *