Of QUINTUS CICERO, the next most important correspondent in this volume, we get a fairly clear picture. Four years younger than his famous brother (b. B.C. 102), he followed him at the due distance up the ladder of official promotion to the prætorship, to which he was elected in the year of his elder's consulship. There, however, Quintus stopped. He never seems to have stood for the consulship. He had no oratorical genius to give him reputation in the forum, nor were his literary productions of any value, either for style or originality. His abilities for administration, as shewn in his three years' government of Asia, appear to have been respectable, but were marred by faults of temper, which too often betrayed him into extreme violence of language. In military command he shewed courage and energy in defending his camp in the rising of the Gauls in the winter of B.C. 54-53; but he spoilt the reputation thus gained by the mistake committed in the autumn of B.C. 53, which cost the loss of a considerable number of troops, and all but allowed the roving Germans to storm his camp. He remained another year in Gaul, but did nothing to retrieve this mistake. In military affairs fortune rarely forgives. In politics he seems to have contented himself generally with saying ditto to his brother. And this continued to be the case up to Pharsalia. After that, finding himself on the losing side, he turned somewhat fiercely upon the brother, whom he regarded as having misled him; and for a time there was a miserable breach between them, which, however, did not last very long. When the end came it found the brothers united in heart as in misfortune. His private happiness was marred by an uncongenial marriage. Pomponia--sister of Atticus--seems to have been as high-tempered as her husband, and less placable. The constant quarrels between them exercised the patience both of Cicero and Atticus, and crops up all through the correspondence. One effect of them was the loss of all control over their son, who, being called upon to smooth over the differences between father and mother, naturally took up at an early age a line of his own, and shewed a disposition to act independently of his elders. [Sidenote: Terentia.]