[Footnote 264: M. Terentius Varro, "the most learned of the Romans," and author of very large numbers of books. He was afterwards one of Pompey's _legati_ in Spain. He survived most of the men of the revolutionary era.] [Footnote 265: See Letter XXIV, p. 56.] [Footnote 266: _I.e._, in biting language. _Archilochum proprio rabies armavit iambo_ (Hor. _A. P._ 79).] [Footnote 267: The _Cosmographia_ of Alexander of Ephesus. See Letter XLVIII, p. 120.] XLVII (A II, 21) TO ATTICUS (IN EPIRUS) ROME (JULY) [Sidenote: B.C. 59, ÆT. 47] Why should I write to you on the Republic in detail? It is utterly ruined; and is, so far, in a worse state than when you left it, that then a despotism seemed to be oppressing it which was popular with the multitude, and though offensive to the loyalists, yet short of actual mischief; but now all on a sudden they have become so universally hated, that I tremble to think what will be the end of it. For we have had experience of those men's resentment and violence, who have ruined everything in their anger against Cato; yet they were employing such slow poisons, that it seemed as though our end might be painless. Now, however, I fear they have been exasperated by the hisses of the crowd, the talk of the respectable classes, and the murmurs of Italy. For my part, I was in hopes, as I often used actually to say to you, that the wheel of the state chariot had made its revolution with scarcely any noise and leaving scarcely any visible rut; and it would have been so, if people could only have waited till the storm had blown over. But after sighing in secret for a long time they all began, first to groan, and at last to talk and shout. Accordingly, that friend of ours, unaccustomed to being unpopular, always used to an atmosphere of praise, and revelling in glory, now disfigured in body and broken in spirit, does not know which way to turn; sees that to go on is dangerous, to return a betrayal of vacillation; has the loyalists his enemies, the disloyal themselves not his friends. Yet see how soft-hearted I am. I could not refrain from tears when, on the 25th of July, I saw him making a speech on the edicts of Bibulus. The man who in old times had been used to bear himself in that place with the utmost confidence and dignity, surrounded by the warmest affection of the people, amidst universal favour--how humble, how cast down he was then! How ill-content with himself, to say nothing of how unpleasing to his audience! Oh, what a spectacle! No one could have liked it but Crassus--no one else in the world! Not I, for considering his headlong descent from the stars, he seemed to me to have lost his footing rather than to have been deliberately following a path; and, as Apelles, if he had seen his Venus, or Protogenes his Ialysus daubed with mud, would, I presume, have felt great sorrow, so neither could I behold without great sorrow a man, portrayed and embellished with all the colours of my art, suddenly disfigured.