Letter 66

I commend to you Lucius Oppius, a man of equestrian rank and the highest integrity, most closely connected with me. His affairs in your province require your attention and protection. Whatever services you render him will be most welcome to me, and you will find him worthy of your friendship.

DIV (Fam. XIII, 66) TO P. SERVILIUS VATIA ISAURICUS (IN ASIA) ROME: I SHOULD not have undertaken to recommend Aulus Caecina to you, who is a client of your family in a very special sense, as I was fully aware how loyal to your friends and how indulgent to men in exile you were ever wont to be, had not both the memory of his father, with whom I was exceedingly intimate, and his own misfortune affected me as that of a man most closely united to me by mutual interests and good services of every kind was bound to do. I ask with all my might as a favour from you — with an earnestness indeed and heartfelt anxiety beyond which I cannot go in asking anything — that you would allow a letter from me to add a finishing stroke to what, without anyone's recommendation, you would have spontaneously done for a man of such high and noble character, labouring under so heavy a calamity. Let it induce you to be even more zealous in assisting him in whatever ways you may have the power of doing so. If you had been at Rome , we should — as I think — have even secured Aulus Caecina 's recall by your assistance. Of this, after all, I still have a strong hope, relying on the forgiving nature of your colleague. For the present, as in reliance on your sense of justice he has concluded your province to be his safest harbour of refuge, I beg and beseech you again and again to assist him in collecting the remnants of his old business, and to protect and watch over him in all other matters. You can do nothing that will oblige me more.

LXVI. Scr. Romae a.u.c. 708. M. CICERO P. SERVILIO SAL. A Caecinam, maxime proprium clientem familiae vestrae, non commendarem tibi, quum scirem, qua fide in tuos, qua clementia in calamitosos soleres esse, nisi me et patris eius, quo sum familiarissime usus, memoria et huius fortuna ita moveret, ut hominis omnibus mecum studiis officiisque coniunctissimi movere debebat: nunc a te hoc omni contentione peto, sic, ut maiore cura, maiore animi labore petere non possim, ut ad ea, quae tua sponte sine cuiusquam commendatione faceres in hominem tantum et talem calamitosum, aliquem afferant cumulum meae litterae, quo studiosius eum, quibuscumque rebus possis, iuves. Quod si Romae fuisses, etiam salutem A. Caecinae essemus, ut opinio mea fert, per te consecuti, de qua tamen magnam spem habemus, freti clementia collegae tui: nunc, quoniam tuam iustitiam secutus tutissimum sibi portum provinciam istam duxit esse, etiam atque etiam te rogo atque oro, ut eum et in reliquiis veteris negotiationis colligendis iuves et ceteris rebus tegas atque tueare: hoc mihi gratius facere nihil potes.