rearing the cross for himself from which you had already pulled him off once; that you would take care to have him smoked to death, and would be applauded by the whole province for it." Again, to a man named C. Fabius--for that letter also T. Catienus is handing round--"that you were told that the kidnapper Licinius, with his young kite of a son, was collecting taxes." And then you go on to ask Fabius to burn both father and son alive if he can; if not, to send them to you, that they may be burnt to death by legal sentence. That letter sent by you in jest to C. Fabius, if it really is from you, exhibits to ordinary readers a violence of language very injurious to you. Now, if you will refer to the exhortations in all my letters, you will perceive that I have never found fault with you for anything except harshness and sharpness of temper, and occasionally, though rarely, for want of caution in the letters you write. In which particulars, indeed, if my influence had had greater weight with you than a somewhat excessive quickness of disposition, or a certain enjoyment in indulging temper, or a faculty for epigram and a sense of humour, we should certainly have had no cause for dissatisfaction. And don't you suppose that I feel no common vexation when I am told how Vergilius is esteemed, and your neighbour C. Octavius?[288] For if you only excel your neighbours farther up country, in Cilicia and Syria, that is a pretty thing to boast of! And that is just the sting of the matter, that though the men I have named are not more blameless than yourself, they yet outdo you in the art of winning favour, though they know nothing of Xenophon's Cyrus or Agesilaus; from which kings, in the exercise of their great office, no one ever heard an irritable word. But in giving you this advice, as I have from the first, I am well aware how much good I have done.[289]