From a letter of yours, which Atticus read to me, I learnt what you were doing and where you were; but when we were likely to see you, I could gain no idea at all from the letter. However, I am beginning to hope that your arrival is not far off. I wish it could be any consolation to me! But the fact is, I am overwhelmed by so many and such grave anxieties, that no one but the most utter fool ought to expect any alleviation; yet, after all, perhaps you can give me some kind of help, or I you. For allow me to tell you that, since my arrival in the city, I have effected a reconciliation with my old friends—I mean my books; though the truth is that I had not abandoned their society because I had fallen out with them, but because I was half ashamed to look them in the face. For I thought, when I plunged into the maelstrom of civil strife, with allies whom I had the worst possible reason for trusting, that I had not shown proper respect for their precepts. They pardon me; they recall me to our old intimacy, and you, they say, have been wiser than I for never having left it. Wherefore, since I find them reconciled, I seem bound to hope, if I once see you, that I shall pass through with ease both what is weighing me down now, and what is threatening. Therefore, in your company, whether you choose it to be in your Tusculan or Cuman villa, or, which I should like least, at Rome, so long only as we are together, I will certainly contrive that both of us shall think it the most agreeable place possible.[47] [Sidenote: Cicero’s character.] Cicero’s letters give us a more complete insight into his private character than could be gained from his other writings. He was a faithful and affectionate friend, a genial companion, a good husband and father, and a devoted patriot. In his political career he exhibited a lack of that insight which enables the great statesman to foresee inevitable changes, and therefore he strove to preserve the old system of government at a time when its usefulness had passed away. He could not sympathize thoroughly with Pompey and his party, still less with the revolutionary policy of Cæsar. The result was indecision and apparent fickleness, but his indecision was not so much that of weakness as of the inability to choose between what he must have regarded as two evils. When he saw his duty clearly before him, as in the year of his consulship, he did not flinch, and again, when Antony was arrayed in arms against the state, he stood forth boldly as the defender of the republic. He showed his courage and firmness also when, in 50 B. C., after Pompey’s flight from Italy, he exposed himself to Cæsar’s displeasure by refusing to come to Rome except as an avowed partizan of Pompey.[48] In all the relations of life he was honorable and conscientious, and in the field of literature he stands among the great men of the world.