He then uses for the first time, as far as I am aware, a line from the Iliad,[252] which is repeated by him again and again, in part or in whole, to signify the restraint which is placed on him by his own high character among his fellow-citizens.

"I would go to Egypt on this pleasant excursion, but that I fear what the men of Troy, and the Trojan women, with their wide-sweeping robes, would say of me." And what, he asks, would the men of our party, "the optimates," say?
and what would Cato say, whose opinion is more to me than that of them all?
And how would history tell the story in future ages?
But he would like to go to Egypt, and he will wait and see.

Then, after various questions to Atticus, comes that great one as to the augurship, of which so much has been made by Cicero's enemies, "quo quidem uno ego ab istis capi possim." A few lines above he had been speaking of another lure, that of the mission to Egypt.

He discusses that with his friend, and then goes on in his half-joking phrase, "but this would have been the real thing to catch me." Nothing caught him.

He was steadfast all through, accepting no offer of place from the conspirators by which his integrity or his honor could be soiled.