[616] To Ptolemy Auletes, who had agreed to pay large sums to certain persons for supporting his interests in the senate.
[617] In the "Banqueters" (σύνδειπνοι) of Sophocles, Achilles is excluded from a banquet in Tenedos. Some social mishap seems to have occurred to Quintus in camp.
[618] Sending coals to Newcastle.
[619] ῥαθυμότερα.
[620] That is, to get them seats at the games. See Letter [XXVI], p. [63].
[621] The porticus is a kind of cloister round the peristylium or atrium.
[622] Calventius is said to stand for L. Calpurnius Piso Cæsoninus, the consul of B.C. 58, against whom Cicero's speech was spoken in B.C. 55 in the senate. He calls him Calventius from his maternal grandfather, and Marius because—as he had said, in the speech, § 20—he had himself gone into exile rather than come to open fight with him; just as Q. Metellus had done in B.C. 100, when, declining to take the oath to the agrarian law of Saturninus, rather than fight Marius, who had taken the oath, he went into exile. This seems rather a roundabout explanation; but no better has been proposed, and, of course, Quintus, who had lately read the speech, would be able better to understand the allusion.
[623] I.e., with money.
[624] This tragedy of Quintus's never reached Cicero. It was lost in transit. Perhaps no great loss.
[625] Milo was ædile and had just given some splendid games.