in some respects more productive.  If, then, you wish to become really immortal, like those historians, imitate them.  Necessities you have in sufficiency and you lack no measure of esteem.  And, if there is any virtue in it, you have been 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 one foreboding evil to you:  I but give you warning; be on your guard.  Do not let the fact that you have certain friends among the influential men deceive you.  You will get no help against those hostilely disposed from the men who seem to love you; this you probably know by experience.  Those who have a passion for domination regard everything else as nothing in comparison with obtaining what they desire:  they often give up their dearest friends and closest kin in exchange for their bitterest foes.”

[-30-] On hearing this Cicero grew just a little easier in mind.  His exile did not, in fact, last long.  He was recalled by Pompey himself, who was most responsible for his expulsion.  The reason was this.