[300] Nares Lucanæ (Monte Nero), near the River Silarus, and on the via Popilia (south-western branch of the Appia). Cicero has therefore come north again from Vibo, having given up the idea of Rhegium and Sicily, and making for Beneventum, and so by the via Appia for Brundisium.
[301] A friend of Cicero's, of whose death at Brundisium we afterwards hear (Fam. xiv. 4, § 6).
[302] The bill originally named 500 miles as the distance from Italy. Before passing it had to be put up in public three weeks (trinundinæ), and meanwhile might be amended, and was amended to 400.
[303] P. Autronius Pætus, one of Catiline's confederates, who would injure Cicero if he could. Cicero would not be able to reach Epirus without coming within his reach; for he had been condemned for ambitus, and was in exile there or in Achaia. Illas partes=Epirus.
[304] To Malta. The proprætor of Sicily, C. Vergilius, opposed his going to Malta, which was in the province of Sicily, though it had a primus of its own (Planc. 40; Plut. Cic. 32).
[305] Because of entertaining the condemned man, a special proviso in this law (Dio, xxxviii. 17).
[306] In Epirus, believing that Atticus will understand that his going to Brundisium means that he will go to Epirus: and as Atticus lives there, he naturally asks him to come to meet him. Epirus was, for certain purposes at least, in the province of Macedonia, and it depended on the governor, L. Appuleius Saturninus, what reception he would meet. His friend Plancius was quæstor.
[307] One of Clodius's concessions to the consuls, to keep them quiet, was to get Macedonia assigned by a lex to L. Calpurnius Piso. As Atticus lived in what was practically part of the province, and had much business there, it was important to him to be on the spot, and try to influence the choice of a governor. That being over, he would not have so much to detain him in Rome.
[308] We suppose that Cicero has heard from Atticus that he is not going to be at Tarentum or Brundisium, for he writes before arriving at either.
[309] Reading prid. Kal. instead of a. d. II. Kal., which Tyrrell calls audacius in Schutz. But absolute nonsense is not to be kept even for a MS.