Pulchellus[252] and removes me just when my brother is returning;[253] the former offers better security and does not prevent my returning when I please. I am retaining the latter, but do not think I shall use it. However, nobody knows about it. I don't like running away; I am itching to fight. There is great warmth of feeling for me. But I don't say anything positive: you will please not to mention it. I am, in fact, very anxious about the manumission of Statius[254] and some other things, but I have become hardened by this time. I could wish, or rather ardently desire, that you were here: then I should not want advice or consolation. But anyhow, be ready to fly hither directly I call for you. [Footnote 249: See Letter XIX, p. 35.] [Footnote 250: _I.e._, Cæsar's _agrarian law_, by which some of the Campanian _ager publicus_ was to be divided.] [Footnote 251: M. Iuventius Laterensis. See Letter L, p. 123.] [Footnote 252: Pulchellus, _i.e._, P. Clodius Pulcher. The diminutive is used to express contempt. Cicero, since his return to Rome, is beginning to realize his danger.] [Footnote 253: A _libera legatio_ was really a colourable method of a senator travelling with the right of exacting certain payments for his expenses from the Italian or provincial towns. Sometimes it was simply a _legatio libera_, a sinecure without any pretence of purpose, sometimes it was _voti causa_, enabling a man to fulfil some vow he was supposed to have made. It was naturally open to much abuse, and Cicero as consul had passed a law for limiting it in time. Clodius would become tribune on 10 December, and this _libera legatio_ would protect Cicero as long as it lasted, but it would not, he thinks, last long enough to outstay the tribuneship: if he went as _legatus_ to Cæsar in Gaul, he would be safe, and might choose his own time for resigning and returning to Rome.] [Footnote 254: Statius, a slave of Quintus, was unpopular in the province. See p. 125.] XLV (A II, 19) TO ATTICUS (IN EPIRUS) ROME (JULY) [Sidenote: B.C. 59, ÆT. 47]