every respect and in full possession of their rights. Their homes and houses, their property and fortunes—which have already been preserved by the immortal gods, as well as by the most eminent citizens of our Republic with the warmest approval of the Roman people—I commend to your honour, justice, and liberality. If circumstances had granted me the power, proportionate to my old influence, of defending the Volaterrani in the same way as I was accustomed to protect my friends, there is no service, no struggle in fact calculated to be of use to them, that I would have omitted. But since I feel sure that with you I have no less influence than I ever had with all the world, I beg you in the name of close ties and of the mutual and equal goodwill existing between us, to serve the people of Volaterræ in such a way as to make them think that you have been set over that business by a special interposition of providence, as the one man with whom I, their undeviating supporter, was able to exert the greatest influence.
DCLXX (F XIII, 5)
TO Q. VALERIUS ORCA (IN ETRURIA)
Rome (Autumn)
Cicero greets Q. Valerius, legatus pro prætore. I am not
sorry that my friendship for you is known as widely as
possible. Not, however, that I wish on that plea—as you
may well believe—to prevent your carrying out the business
you have undertaken with good faith and activity, to the
satisfaction of Cæsar, who has intrusted to you a matter of
great importance and difficulty. For though I am besieged
with petitions from men who are assured of your kindness
to me, I am always careful not to embarrass you in the performance
of your duty by any self-seeking on my part.
I have been very intimate with Gaius Curtius from our earliest days. I was grieved at the most undeserved calamity which befell him and the others in the Sullan epoch: and
