Pray defend me at Rome if there is any occasion for it. Cæsar is still treating me unfairly. He still doesn't bring any motion before the senate about the supplication in my honour, or about my Dalmatian campaign: as though my operations in Dalmatia did not in truth most thoroughly deserve a triumph! For if I have to wait until I finish the whole war, there are thirty ancient cities in Dalmatia; those which the Dalmatians have themselves annexed are more than sixty. If no supplication is to be decreed in my honour unless I storm all these, then I am on a very different footing from all other commanders.[1]
DCXCIV (F VII, 31)
TO MANIUS CURIUS (AT PATRÆ)
Rome (February)
I had no difficulty in gathering from your letter, what I have
always been anxious for, that I am very highly valued by
you, and that you are fully aware how dear you are to me.
As, then, we are both convinced of that, it remains for us to
enter upon a rivalry of good offices. In that contest I shall
be equally content to surpass you or to be surpassed by you.
I am not displeased to find that there was no need for my
letter being handed to Acilius. I gather from your letter
that you had no great occasion for the services of Sulpicius,
because your affairs had been so much reduced in magnitude,
that they had "neither head nor feet." I could wish
that they had "feet," that you might come back to Rome
some day. For you see that the old fountain of humour
has run dry, so that by this time our poet Pomponius might
say with good reason:
- ↑ Vatinius, after being consul for a few days in B.C. 47, was sent to Illyricum at the end of that year, and was still there in B.C. 44, when he handed over his troops to M. Brutus, whether voluntarily or under compulsion is not certain. Anyhow he got his triumph at the end of B.C. 43.
