If you do not hear these rumors I do not know what to say.  So far as I am concerned, if I ever hear them I defend you as I know that I am always defended by you against my detractors.  And my defence follows two lines:  there are some things which I always deny in toto, as, for instance, the statement in regard to that very vote; there are other acts of yours which I maintain were dictated by considerations of affection and kindness, as, for instance, your action with reference to the management of the games.  But it does not escape you, with all your wisdom, that, if Caesar was a king—­which seems to me at any rate to have been the case—­with respect of your duty two positions may be maintained, either the one which I am in the habit of taking, that your loyalty and friendship to Caesar are to be praised, or the one which some people take, that the freedom of one’s fatherland is to be esteemed more than the life of one’s friend.  I wish that my discussions springing out of these conversations had been repeated to you.

“Indeed, who mentions either more gladly or more frequently than I the two following facts, which are especially to your honor?  The fact that you were the most influential opponent of the Civil War, and that you were the most earnest advocate of temperance in the moment of victory, and in this matter I have found no one to disagree with me.  Wherefore I am grateful to our friend Trebatius for giving me an opportunity to write this letter, and if you are not convinced by it, you will think me destitute of all sense of duty and kindness; and nothing more serious to me than that or more foreign to your own nature can happen.”

In all the correspondence of Cicero there is not a letter written with more force and delicacy of feeling, none better suited to accomplish its purpose than this letter to Matius.  It is a work of art; but in that fact lies its defect, and in that respect it is in contrast to the answer which it called forth from Matius, The reply of Matius stands on a level with another better-known non-Ciceronian epistle, the famous letter of condolence which Servius wrote to Cicero after the death of Cicero’s daughter, Tullia; but it is finer, for, while Servius is stilted and full of philosophical platitudes, Matius, like Shakespeare’s Antony, “only speaks right on,” in telling Cicero of his grief at Caesar’s death, of his indignation at the intolerant attitude of the assassins, and his determination to treasure the memory of Caesar at any cost.  This is his letter: 

   “Matius to Cicero, greeting[146]