Cicero says to his brother: “Let all the province be sensible how dearly you prize the welfare, the children, the fame and the fortunes of all who are under your command. Let it be notorious that you will be equally the enemy of the man who gives a present as of him who receives it; for no one will give when it is clearly perceived that those who pretend to have the greatest interest with you are accustomed to obtain nothing from you. It is not that I would have you treat your dependants in a too severe and suspicious manner. If you have got any person who has been thoroughly admitted to your intimacy, consider how far you ought to trust him—not but that there may be many worthy men amongst the provincials, this it is lawful to hope but dangerous to determine; for every man’s nature is concealed with many folds of disguise and covered with various veils. His nature, his brows, his eyes and his countenance are deceitful; and his speech is most commonly a lie. Where can you find one who will sincerely love you, a mere stranger to them, and not merely pretend to do so for his own advantage? It would seem to me strange, as these men seldom pay any regard to private men, while they invariably attach themselves to the prætors. If amongst such men you should find one (for the thing is not impossible) who loves you more than he does his own interests, enrol him as a friend; but if you do not perceive this, there is no class of acquaintance more to be avoided; because they know all the arts of getting money, they do nothing but for money, and they are indifferent about the opinion of any man with whom they are not to continue to live. For the Greeks in general are deceitful and treacherous, and trained up by perpetual subjection in the art of sycophancy. All of them should be liberally treated, and the best of them received into friendship; but too close intimacies with them are not very safe, for though they dare not oppose your wishes, yet they are jealous not only of our countrymen, but even of their own. Though they dare not fly in the face of a Roman magistrate, yet at the bottom they hate not only us but their own countrymen.” Those who have been invested with the official authority which a civilian exercises during his career in India can most easily tell how much there is in the warnings of Cicero which comes home to their feelings. Accustomed to receive every outward token of respect and affection, they are hardly willing to ask themselves the question why it was that such regard to themselves as public officers was paid by the men who seldom show much regard to any private men. Have they never felt, when circumstances caused them to be transferred from one district to another, how indifferent their former admirers soon became towards the man with whom they were no longer to continue to live?