Cicero

He discovered that much of the public property had been embezzled, and by restoring it he made the cities well-to-do, and men who made restitution he maintained in their civil rights without further penalties. He engaged in war, too, and routed the robbers who made their homes on Mount Amanus;[*](Cf. Cicero, ad fam. ii. 10, 2 f. ) and for this he was actually saluted by his soldiers as Imperator.

When Caelius the orator asked Cicero to send him panthers from Cilicia for a certain spectacle at Rome, Cicero, pluming himself upon his exploits, wrote to him that there were no panthers in Cilicia; for they had fled to Caria in indignation because they alone were warred upon, while everything else enjoyed peace.[*](Ad fam. ii. 11, 2.) On his voyage back from his province he first touched at Rhodes, and then gladly spent some time at Athens in fond remembrance of his old pursuits in that place.

Then, after associating with men who were foremost for their learning, and after greeting his old-time friends and intimates, and after receiving from Greece the tokens of admiration that were his due, he returned to Rome,[*](January 4, 49 B.C. Cf. ad fam. xvi. 11, 2 f. ) where a violent inflammation, as it were, was already forcing matters on towards the civil war.