Then he reckons up all the good things which would accrue to him: "Closest friendship with Pompey--with Caesar also, should he wish it; the making up of all quarrels with his enemies; popularity with the people; ease for his old age, which was coming on him.

But that conclusion moves me to which I came in my third book."[238] Then he repeats the lines given in the note below, which he had written, probably this very year, in a poem composed in honor of his own Consulship.

The lines are not in themselves grand, but the spirit of them is magnificent: "Stick to the good cause which in your early youth you chose for yourself, and be true to the party you have made your own." "Should I doubt when the muse herself has so written," he says, alluding to the name of Calliope, given to this third book of his.

Then he adds a line of Homer, very excellent for the occasion:[239] "No augury for the future can be better for you than that which bids you serve your country." "But," he says, "we will talk of all that when you come to me for the holidays.

Your bath shall be ready for you: your sister and mother shall be of the party." And so the doubts are settled.
Now came on the question of the Tribuneship of Clodius, in reference to which I will quote a passage out of Middleton, because the phrase which he uses exactly explains the purposes of Caesar and Pompey.
[Sidenote: B.C.60, aetat.