"My house on the Palatine was burnt," he says, "not by any accident, but by arson.

In the mean time the Consuls were feasting, and were congratulating themselves among the conspirators, when one boasted that he had been Catiline's friend, the other that Cethegus had been his cousin." By this he implies that the conspiracy which during his Consulship had been so odious to Rome was now, in these days of the Triumvirate, again in favor among Roman aristocrats.
He went across from Brundisium to Dyrrachium, and from thence to Thessalonica, where he was treated with most loving-kindness by Plancius, who was Quaestor in these parts, and who came down to Dyrrachium to meet him, clad in mourning for the occasion.

This was the Plancius whom he afterward defended, and indeed he was bound to do so.
Plancius seems to have had but little dread of the law, though he was a Roman officer employed in the very province to the government of which the present Consul Piso had already been appointed.

Thessalonica was within four hundred miles, and yet Cicero lived there with Plancius for some months.
The letters from Cicero during his exile are to me very touching, though I have been told so often that in having written them he lacked the fortitude of a Roman.

Perhaps I am more capable of appreciating natural humanity than Roman fortitude.