"Do you, then, as well, entertain a strong hope that you will be restored; for you have not been expelled on account of wrong doing, and the very ones who drove you forth will, as I take it, seek for you, while all will miss you. [-28-] But if you continue in your present state,--as give yourself no care about it, even so. For if you lean to my way of thinking you will be quite satisfied to pick out a little estate on the coast and there carry on at the same time farming and some historical writing, like Xenophon, like Thucydides. This form of learning is most lasting and most adaptable to every man, every government, and exile brings a leisure in some respects more productive. If, then, you wish to become really immortal, like those historians, imitate them. Necessities you have in sufficiency and you lack no measure of esteem. And, if there is any virtue in it, you have been consul. Nothing more belongs to those who have held office a second, a third, or a fourth time, except an array of idle letters which benefit no man, living or dead. Hence you would not choose to be Corvinus or Marius, the seven times consul, rather than Cicero. Nor, again, are you anxious for any position of command, seeing that you withdrew from one bestowed upon you because you scorned the gains to be had from it and scorned a brief authority that was subject to the scrutiny of all who chose to practice sycophancy, matters I have mentioned not because any one of them is requisite for happiness, but because, since it was best, you have been engaged in politics enough to learn from it the difference in lives and to choose the one but reject the other, to pursue the one but avoid the other. "Our life is but short and you ought not to live all of it for others, but by this time to grant a little to yourself. Consider how much quiet is better than disturbance and a placid life than tumults, freedom than slavery, and safety than dangers, that you may feel a desire to live as I am urging you to do. In this way you will be happy, and your name because of it shall be great,--yes, always, whether you are alive or dead.