Omnia illa prima, quae etiam tu tuis litteris in caelum ferebas, ἐπίτηκτα fuerunt. Quam non est facilis virtus! Quam vero difficilis eius diuturna simulatio! Cum enim hoc rectum et gloriosum putarem, ex annuo sumptu, qui mihi decretus esset, me C. Caelio quaestori relinquere annuum, referre in aerarium ad HS CIↃ, ingemuit nostra cohors omne illud putans distribui sibi oportere, ut ego amicior invenirer Phrygum et Cilicum aerariis quam nostro. Sed me non moverunt; nam et mea laus apud me plurimum valuit, nec tamen quicquam honorifice in quemquam fieri potuit, quod praetermiserim. Sed haec fuerit, ut ait Thucydides, ἐκβολὴ λόγου non inutilis.
Tu autem de nostro statu cogitabis, primum quo artificio tueamur benevolentiam Caesaris, deinde de ipso triumpho; quem video, nisi rei publicae tempora impedient, εὐπόριστον. Iudico autem cum ex litteris amicorum tum ex supplicatione. Quam qui non decrevit, plus decrevit, quam si omnes decresset triumphos. Ei porro adsensus est unus familiaris meus, Favonius, alter iratus, Hirrus. Cato autem et scribendo adfuit et ad me de sententia sua iucundissimas litteras misit. Sed tamen gratulans mihi Caesar de supplicatione triumphat de sententia Catonis nec scribit, quid ille sententiae dixerit, sed tantum, supplicationem eum mihi non decrevisse.
there is one thing I want to tell you. All that show of virtue at first, which even you praised sky high in your letters, was only superficial. Truly righteousness is hard: hard even to pretend to it for long. For, when I thought it a fine show of rectitude to leave my quaestor C. Caelius a year's cash out of what was decreed me for my budget and to pay back into the treasury £8,800,[6] my staff, thinking all the money should have been distributed among them, lamented that I should turn out to be more friendly to the treasuries of Phrygia and Cilicia than to our own. I was unmoved: for I set my good name before everything. Yet there is no possible honour that I have omitted to bestow on any of these knaves. This, in Thucydides' phrase, is a digression—but not pointless.
[6] 1,000,000 sesterces.
Thuc. i, 97
But as to my position. You will consider first by what trick I can retain Caesar's good will: and then the matter of my triumph, which, barring political obstacles, seems to me easy to get: I infer as much from letters from friends and from that business of the public thanksgiving in my honour. For the man who voted against it,[7] voted for more than if he had voted for all the triumphs in the world; moreover his adherents were one a friend of mine, Favonius, and another an enemy, Hirrus. Cato both took part in drafting the decree, and sent me a most agreeable letter about his vote. But Caesar, in writing to congratulate me over the thanksgiving, exults over Cato's vote, says nothing about the latter's speech on the occasion, and merely remarks that he opposed the proclamation of a thanksgiving.
[7] Cato.