the beginning of our voyage,[1] he grieved me so deeply that I was quite prostrate after it, and even now he is said to be working not so much for himself as against me. So I am hard pressed by every kind of misery, and can hardly bear up against it, or rather cannot do so at all. Of these miseries there is one which outweighs all the others—that I shall leave that poor girl deprived of patrimony and every kind of property. Wherefore pray see to that, according to your promise: for I have no one else to whom to commend her, since I have discovered that the same treatment is prepared for her mother as for me. But, in case you don't find me here when you come, still consider that she has been commended to you with due solemnity, and soften her uncle in regard to her as much as you can. I am writing this to you on my birthday: on which day would that I had never been born,[2] or that nothing had afterwards been born of the same mother! Tears prevent my writing more.
CCCCXXII (F XIV, 16)
TO TERENTIA (AT ROME)
Brundisium, 4 January
If you are well, I am glad. I am well. Though my circumstances
are such that I have no motive for expecting a letter
from you or anything to tell you myself, yet somehow or
another I do look for letters from you all, and do write to
you when I have anyone to convey it. Volumnia ought to
have been more attentive to you than she has been, and
even what she has done she might have done with greater
zeal and caution. However, there are other things for us to
- [Footnote: been inclined to treat Quintus's correspondence with some freedom, for
he advised the young Quintus in his father's absence to open letters addressed to him. See vol. ii., p. 170.]
