The next letter to Appius is full of flattery, and asking for favors, but it begins with a sharp reproof. "Now at last I have received an epistle worthy of Appius Claudius. The sight of Rome has restored you to your good-humor. Those I got from you in your journey were such that I could not read them without displeasure."[101] In February Cicero wrote a letter to Atticus which is, I think, more expressive in describing the mind of the man than any other which we have from him. In it is commenced the telling of a story respecting Brutus--the Brutus we all know so well--and one Scaptius, of whom no one would have heard but for this story, which, as it deeply affects the character of Cicero, must occupy a page or two in our narrative; but I must first refer to his own account of his own government as again given here. Nothing was ever so wonderful to the inhabitants of a province as that they should not have been put to a shilling of expense since he had entered it. Not a penny had been taken on his own behalf or on that of the Republic by any belonging to him, except on one day by one Tullius, and by him indeed under cover of the law. This dirty fellow was a follower with whom Titinius had furnished him. When he was passing from Tarsus back into the centre of his province wondering crowds came out to him, the people not understanding how it had been that no letters had been sent to them exacting money, and that none of his staff had been quartered on them. In former years during the winter months they had groaned under exactions. Municipalities with money at their command had paid large sums to save themselves from the quartering of soldiers on them. The island of Cyprus, which on a former occasion had been made to pay nearly L50,000 on this head,[102] had been asked for nothing by him. He had refused to have any honors paid to him in return for this conduct. He had prohibited the erection of statues, shrines, and bronze chariots in his name--compliments to Roman generals which had become common. The harvest that year was bad; but so fully convinced were the people of his honest dealing, that they who had saved up corn--the regraters--brought it freely into market at his coming. As some scourge from hell must have been the presence of such governors as Appius and his predecessors among a people timid but industrious like these Asiatic Greeks. Like an unknown, unexpected blessing, direct from heaven, must have been the coming of a Cicero.