hunt him up and see whether he was among the præfecti[1] or the attachés—always provided that he was engaged in that war at all.
DCXVI (A XIII, 6, § 4)
TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)
Tusculum (4 June)
The Tuditanus you mention—great-grandfather of Hortensius—I
was quite unacquainted with, and I had imagined
it to have been the son, who at that time could not have
been a legatus.[2] I hold it to be certain that Spurius Mummius
was at Corinth. For the Spurius of our time, lately
dead, frequently used to recite to me his letters written in
witty verse sent to his friends from Corinth. But I feel
sure he was legatus to his brother, not one of the ten.
And, besides, I have been taught that it was not the custom
of our ancestors to nominate on a commission men who
were related to the imperators, as we—in our ignorance of
the best principles of government, or rather from carelessness
of them—sent Marcus Lucullus and Lucius Muræna
and others closely connected with him as commissioners to
Lucius Lucullus.[3] But it is exceedingly natural that he
should have been among the first of his brother's legates.
What an amount of trouble you have taken—in busying
yourself with such matters as these, in clearing up my difficulties,
and in being much less earnest in your own business
than in mine!
- ↑ The præfecti accompanying a consul or proconsul in a province were officers of the cavalry, engineers, etc., as we have seen in vol. ii., p. 170. For the confusion between the elder and younger Tuditanus, see p. 269.
- ↑ Because not yet a senator.
- ↑ In the Mithridatic war, to organize the province of Pontus and Bithynia (B.C. 68).
