from Arpinum, he says, "I agree altogether with you. If Octavian gets power into his hands he will insist upon the tyrant's decrees much more thoroughly than he did when the Senate sat in the temple of Tellus. Everything then will be done in opposition to Brutus. But if he be conquered, then see how intolerable would be the dominion of Antony."[209] In the same letter he speaks of the De Officiis, which he has just written. In his next and last epistle to his old friend he congratulates himself on having been able at last to quarrel with Dolabella. Dolabella had turned upon him in the end, bought by Antony's money. He then returns to the subject of Octavian, and his doubts as to his loyalty. He has been asked to pledge himself to Octavian, but has declined till he shall see how the young man will behave when Casea becomes candidate for the Tribunate. If he show himself to be Casea's enemy, Casea having been one of the conspirators, Cicero will know that he is not to be trusted. Then he falls into a despairing mood, and declares that there is no hope. "Even Hippocrates was unwilling to bestow medicine on those to whom it could avail nothing." But he will go to Rome, into the very jaws of the danger. "It is less base for such as I am to fall publicly than privately." With these words, almost the last written by him to Atticus, this correspondence is brought to an end: the most affectionate, the most trusting, and the most open ever published to the world as having come from one man to another. No letters more useful to the elucidation of character were ever written; but when read for that purpose they should be read with care, and should hardly be quoted till they have been understood. [Sidenote: B.C. 44, aetat. 63.]