Our friend Caelius Rufus was elected curule aedile while he was in correspondence with Cicero, and his letters give us a good idea of the condition of the mind of an ambitious young man who is bent on making the most of himself. He is in a continual state of fidget about his games; he has set his heart on getting panthers to exhibit and hunt, and urges Cicero in letter after letter to procure them for him in Cilicia. "It will be a disgrace to you," he writes in one of them, "that Patiscus has sent ten panthers to Curio, and that you should not send me ten times as many."[483] The provincial governor, he urges, can do what he pleases; let Cicero send for some men of Cibyra, let him write to Pamphylia, where they are most abundant, and he will get what he wants, or rather what Caelius wants. Even after a letter full of the most important accounts of public business, including copies of senatus consulta (ad Fam. viii. 8), he harks back at the end to the inevitable panthers. Cicero tells Atticus that he rebuked Caelius for pressing him thus hard to do what his conscience could not approve, and that it was not right, in his opinion, for a provincial governor to set the people of Cibyra hunting for panthers for Roman games.[484] From the same passage it would seem that Caelius had also been urging him to take other steps in his province of which he disapproved, no doubt with the same object of raising money for the ludi. This letter to Caelius is not extant, but we may believe that Cicero had the courage to reprove his old pupil, and that the constant worrying for panthers was more than even his amiability could stand. But others were less sensitive; and it is a well known fact in natural history that the Roman games had a powerful effect, from this time forwards, in diminishing the numbers of wild animals in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, and in bringing about the extinction of species. In our own day the same work is carried on by the big-game sportsman, somewhat farther afield; the pleasure of slaughter being now confined to the few rich and adventurous, who shoot for their own delectation, and not to make a London holiday.