"There is one thing," he says, "which I will never cease to din into your ears, because I could not endure to think that, amid the praises which are lavished on you, there should be any matter in which you should be found wanting.
All who come to us here"-- all who come to Rome from Asia, that is--"when they tell us of your honesty and goodness of heart, tell us also that you fail in temper.

It is a vice which, in the daily affairs of private life, betokens a weak and unmanly spirit; but there can be nothing so poor as the exhibition of the littleness of nature in those who have risen to the dignity of command." He will not, he goes on to say, trouble his brother with repeating all that the wise men have said on the subject of anger; he is sure that Quintus is well acquainted with all that.

But is it not a pity, when all men say that nothing could be pleasanter than Quintus Cicero when in a good-humor, the same Quintus should allow himself to be so provoked that his want of kindly manners should be regretted by all around him?
"I cannot assert," he goes on to say, "that when nature has produced a certain condition of mind, and that years as they run on have strengthened it, a man can change all that and pluck out from his very self the habits that have grown within him; yet I must tell you that if you cannot eschew this evil altogether--if you cannot protect yourself against the feeling of anger, yet you should prepare yourself to be ready for it when it comes, so that, when your very soul within you is hot with it, your tongue, at any rate, may be restrained." Then toward the end of the letter there is a fraternal exhortation which is surely very fine: "Since chance has thrown into my way the duties of official life in Rome, and into yours that of administrating provincial government, if I, in the performance of my work, have been second to none, do you see that you in yours may be equally efficient." How grand, from an elder brother to a younger! "And remember this, that you and I have not to strive after some excellence still unattained, but have to be on our watch to guard that which has been already won.

If I should find myself in anything divided from you, I should desire no further advance in life.

Unless your deeds and your words go on all-fours with mine, I should feel that I had achieved nothing by all the work and all the dangers which you and I have encountered together." The brother at last was found to be a poor, envious, ill-conditioned creature--intellectually gifted, and capable of borrowing something from his brother's nobler nature; but when struggles came, and political feuds, and the need of looking about to see on which side safety lay, ready to sacrifice his brother for the sake of safety.
But up to this time Marcus was prepared to believe all good of Quintus; and having made for himself and for the family a great name, was desirous of sharing it with his brother, and, as we shall afterward see, with his brother's son, and with his own.