May the country only be on my side: it has had from me, if not more than its due, at least more than it ever demanded. I would rather have a bad passage with another pilot than be a successful pilot to such ungrateful passengers. But this will do better when we meet. For the present take an answer to your questions. I think of returning to Antium from Formiæ on the 3rd of May. From Antium I intend to start for Tusculum on the 7th of May. But as soon as I have returned from Formiæ (I intend to be there till the 29th of April) I will at once inform you. Terentia sends compliments, and "Cicero the little greets Titus the Athenian."[225] [Footnote 214: Q. Cæcilius Bassus, probably quæstor at Ostia. Antium would be in his district.] [Footnote 215: βοῶπις, _sc._ Clodia. She is to talk to her brother about Cicero. She is "Iuno" perhaps as an enemy--as Bacon called the Duchess of Burgundy Henry VII.'s Iuno--or perhaps for a less decent reason, as _coniux sororque_ of Publius.] [Footnote 216: Pompey, who was proud of having taken Jerusalem. _Traductor ad plebem_, said of the magistrate presiding at the _comitia_ for adoption.] [Footnote 217: Cicero himself. Clodius may have called him this from his biting repartees. Prof. Tyrrell, "Tear 'em."] [Footnote 218: The nobility, whom Cicero has before attacked as idle and caring for nothing but their fish-ponds (_piscinarii_, cp. p. 59).] [Footnote 219: The _lex Ælia_ (about B.C. 150) was a law regulating the powers of magistrates to dissolve _comitia_ on religious grounds, such as bad omens, _servata de cœlo, etc._ Cicero (who could have had very little belief in the augural science) regards them as safeguards of the state, because as the Optimates generally secured the places in the augural college, it gave them a hold on elections and legislation. Bibulus tried in vain to use these powers to thwart Cæsar this year. The _lex Cæcilia Didia_ (.B.C. 98) enforced the _trinundinatio_, or three weeks' notice of elections and laws, and forbade the proposal of a _lex satura_, _i.e._, a law containing a number of miscellaneous enactments. Perhaps its violation refers to the _acta_ of Pompey in the East, which he wanted to have confirmed _en bloc_. The senate had made difficulties: but one of the fruits of the triumvirate was a measure for doing it. The _lex Iunia et Licinia_ (B.C. 62) confirmed the _Cæcilia Didia_, and secured that the people knew what the proposed laws were.] [Footnote 220: As Pompey did in Asia, _e.g._, to Deiotarus of Galatia, and about ten others. It is curious that Cicero speaks of the _pauci_ just as his opponent Cæsar and Augustus after him. Each side looks on the other as a coterie (Cæsar, _B. C._ i. 22; Monum. Ancyr. i. § 1)] [Footnote 221: Theophrastus, successor of Aristotle at the Lyceum, Athens (p. 70).] [Footnote 222: The purple-bordered toga of the augur. Vatinius did not get the augurship. He had some disfiguring swelling or wen.] [Footnote 223: Himself.]