consul. Nothing more belongs to those who have held office a second, a
third, or a fourth time, except an array of idle letters which benefit
no man, living or dead. Hence you would not choose to be Corvinus or
Marius, the seven times consul, rather than Cicero. Nor, again, are you
anxious for any position of command, seeing that you withdrew from one
bestowed upon you because you scorned the gains to be had from it and
scorned a brief authority that was subject to the scrutiny of all who
chose to practice sycophancy, matters I have mentioned not because any
one of them is requisite for happiness, but because, since it was best,
you have been engaged in politics enough to learn from it the difference
in lives and to choose the one but reject the other, to pursue the one
but avoid the other.

"Our life is but short and you ought not to live all of it for others,
but by this time to grant a little to yourself. Consider how much quiet
is better than disturbance and a placid life than tumults, freedom than
slavery, and safety than dangers, that you may feel a desire to live as
I am urging you to do. In this way you will be happy, and your name
because of it shall be great,--yes, always, whether you are alive or
dead.

[-29-] "If, however, you are eager for a return and hold in esteem a
brilliant political career,--I do not wish to say anything unpleasant,
but I fear, as I cast my eyes on the case and call to mind your freedom
of speech, and behold the power and numbers of your adversaries, that
you may meet defeat once again. If then you should encounter exile, you
can merely change your mind, but if you should incur some fatal
punishment you will be unable to repent. Is it not assuredly a dreadful,
a disgraceful thing to have one's head cut off and set up in the Forum,
if it so happen, for any one, man or woman, to insult? Do not hate me as