Page:The Letters of Cicero Shuckburg III.pdf/363

 DCLXIII (A XIII, 49)

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)



First, health to Attica, whom I imagine to be in the country, so I wish her much health, as also to Pilia. If there is anything fresh about Tigellius, let me know it. He is—as Fadius Gallus has written me word—bringing up a most unfair accusation against me, on the ground that I left Phamea in the lurch after having undertaken to plead his cause. This cause, indeed, I had undertaken against the sons of Gnæus Octavius, much against my will—but I did also wish well to Phamea. For, if I remember rightly, when I was standing for the consulship he sent me a promise through you to do anything he could; and I was no less mindful of that courtesy than if I had availed myself of it. He called on me and told me that the arbitrator had arranged to take his case on the very day on which the jury were bound by the Pompeian law to consider their verdict on our friend Sestius. For you are aware that the days in those suits have been fixed by law. I replied that he was not ignorant of my obligations to Sestius: if he selected any other day he chose, I would not fail to appear for him. So on that occasion he left me in a rage. I think I told you about it. I didn't trouble myself, of course, nor did I think that the wholly groundless anger of a man not in the least connected with me required any attention from me. But the last time I was in Rome I told Gallus what I had heard, without however mentioning the younger Balbus. Gallus made it his business to go into the matter, as he writes me word. He says that the allegation of Tigellius is that I suspect him because I have it on my conscience that I left Phamea in the lurch. Wherefore all I ask you to do is to get anything you can from our friend the younger Balbus, but not to trouble yourself about me. It is a sop to one's dignity to have some one to hate without restraint and not to be a slave to everybody (as the man was