[Footnote 286: Reading _quam pro civitate sua_ for _prope quam civitatem suam_. I think _prope_ and _pro_ (_pr_) might easily have been mistaken for each other, and if the order of _quam_ and _pro_ (mistaken for _prope_) were once changed, the case of _civitate_ would follow. Prof. Tyrrell, who writes the town _Blandus_, would read _molliorem_ for _nobiliorem_, and imagines a pun on the meaning of _Blandus_. But the name of the town seems certainly _Blaundus_, Βλαῦνδος, or Μλαῦνδος (Stephanus, Βλαῦδος); see Head, _Hist. Num._ p. 559: and Cicero, though generally punning on names, would hardly do so here, where he is making a grave excuse.] [Footnote 287: Whom he called (Letter XXIX) "a madman and a knave."] [Footnote 288: C. Vergilius Balbus, proprætor in Sicily (_pro Planc._ § 95; Letter XXIX). C. Octavius (father of Augustus), in Macedonia (see p. 78). L. Marcius Philippus was proprætor of Syria B.C. 61-59. The governor of Cilicia in the same period is not known; probably some one left in charge by Pompey.] [Footnote 289: I have endeavoured to leave the English as ambiguous as the Latin. Cicero may mean that he has done some good, for at the end of Letter XXIX he says that Quintus has improved in these points, and had been better in his second than in his first year. On the other hand, the context here seems rather to point to the meaning "how _little_ good I have done!"--impatiently dismissing the subject of temper.] [Footnote 290: These "requisitionary letters" were granted by a provincial governor to certain persons requiring supplies, payment of debts, or legal decisions in their favour in the provinces, or other privileges, and, if carelessly granted, were open to much abuse. Cicero, in his own government of Cilicia, boasted that he had signed none such in six months. The ill-wishers of Quintus had apparently got hold of a number of these letters signed by him (having been first written out by the suitors themselves and scarcely glanced at by him), and a selection of them published to prove his injustice or carelessness.] [Footnote 291: The governor of a province would stand in such a matter in the place of the prætor in Rome, _i.e._, he would decide on questions of law, not of fact, as, whether a debt was due or not. However, Quintus perhaps only erred in the form of his injunction. He might forbid the deceased's estate being touched till the question of Fundanius's debt was decided; but in his letter he assumed (as he had no right to do) that the claim was good. Substantially it seems to me that Quintus was right, and certainly in his appeal to him Cicero does not follow his own injunction to disregard personal feelings.]