Marcus Tullius Cicero
The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 / The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order

PREFACE

The object of this book is to give the English-speaking public, in a convenient form, as faithful and readable a copy as the translator was capable of making of a document unique in the literature of antiquity. Whether we regard the correspondence of Cicero from the point of view of the biographer and observer of character, the historian, or the lover of belles lettres, it is equally worthy of study. It seems needless to dwell on the immense historical importance of letters written by prominent actors in one of the decisive periods of the world's history, when the great Republic, that had spread its victorious arms, and its law and discipline, over the greater part of the known world, was in the throes of its change from the old order to the new. If we would understand—as who would not?—the motives and aims of the men who acted in that great drama, there is nowhere that we can go with better hope of doing so than to these letters. To the student of character also the personality of Cicero must always have a great fascination. Statesman, orator, man of letters, father, husband, brother, and friend—in all these capacities he comes before us with singular vividness. In every one of them he will doubtless rouse different feelings in different minds. But though he will still, as he did in his lifetime, excite vehement disapproval as well as strong admiration, he will never, I think, appear to anyone dull or uninteresting. In the greater part of his letters he is not posing or assuming a character; he lets us only too frankly into his weaknesses and his vanities, as well as his generous admirations and warm affections. Whether he is weeping, or angry, or exulting, or eager for compliments, or vain of his abilities and achievements, he is not a phantasm or a farceur, but a human being with fiercely-beating pulse and hot blood.

The difficulty of the task which I have been bold enough to undertake is well known to scholars, and may explain, though perhaps not excuse, the defects of my work. One who undertakes to express the thoughts of antiquity in modern idiom goes to his task with his eyes open, and has no right at every stumbling-block or pitfall to bemoan his unhappy fate. So also with the particular difficulties presented by the great founder of Latin style—his constant use of superlatives, his doubling and trebling of nearly synonymous terms, the endless shades of meaning in such common words as officium, fides, studium, humanitas, dignitas, and the like—all these the translator has to take in the day's work. Finally, there are the hard nuts to crack—often very hard—presented by corruption of the text. Such problems, though, relatively with other ancient works, not perhaps excessively numerous, are yet sufficiently numerous and sufficiently difficult. But besides these, which are the natural incidents of such work, there is the special difficulty that the letters are frequently answers to others which we do not possess, and which alone can fully explain the meaning of sentences which must remain enigmatical to us; or they refer to matters by a word or phrase of almost telegraphic abruptness, with which the recipient was well acquainted, but as to which we are reduced to guessing. When, however, all such insoluble difficulties are allowed for, which after all in absolute bulk are very small, there should (if the present version is at all worthy) be enough that is perfectly plain to everyone, and generally of the highest interest.

I had no intention of writing a commentary on the language of Cicero or his correspondents, and my translation must, as a rule, be taken for the only expression of my judgment formed after reading and weighing the arguments of commentators. I meant only to add notes on persons and things enabling the reader to use the letters for biographical, social, and historical study. I should have liked to dedicate it by the words Boswellianus Boswellianis. But I found that the difficulties of the text compelled me to add a word here and there as to the solution of them which I preferred, or had myself to suggest. Such notes are very rare, and rather meant as danger signals than critical discussions. I have followed in the main the chronological arrangement of the letters adopted by Messrs. Tyrrell and Purser, to whose great work my obligations are extremely numerous. If, as is the case, I have not always been able to accept their conclusions, it is none the less true that their brilliant labours have infinitely lightened my task, and perhaps made it even possible.

I ought to mention that I have adopted the English mode of dating, writing, for instance, July and August, though Cicero repudiated the former and, of course, never heard of the latter. I have also refrained generally from attempting to represent his Greek by French, partly because I fear I should have done it ill, and partly because it is not in him as in an English writer who lards his sentences with French. It is almost confined to the letters to Atticus, to whom Greek was a second mother-tongue, and often, I think, is a quotation from him. It does not really represent Cicero's ordinary style.

One excuse for my boldness in venturing upon the work is the fact that no complete translation exists in English. Mr. Jeans has published a brilliant translation of a selection of some of the best of the letters. But still it is not the whole. The last century versions of Melmoth and Herbenden have many excellences; but they are not complete either (the letters to Brutus, for instance, having been discovered since), and need, at any rate, a somewhat searching revision. Besides, with many graces of style, they may perhaps prove less attractive now than they did a century ago. At any rate it is done, and I must bear with what equanimity nature has given me the strictures of critics, who doubtless will find, if so minded, many blemishes to set off against, and perhaps outweigh, any merit my translation may have. I must bear that as well as I may. But no critic can take from me the days and nights spent in close communion with Rome's greatest intellect, or the endless pleasure of solving the perpetually recurring problem of how best to transfer a great writer's thoughts and feelings from one language to another:

"Cæsar in hoc potuit iuris habere nihil."

INTRODUCTION

Ground covered by the Correspondence.

The correspondence of Cicero, as preserved for us by his freedman Tiro, does not open till the thirty-ninth year of the orator's life, and is so strictly contemporary, dealing so exclusively with the affairs of the moment, that little light is thrown by it on his previous life. It does not become continuous till the year after his consulship (b.c. 62). There are no letters in the year of the consulship itself or the year of his canvass for the consulship (b.c. 64 and 63). It begins in b.c. 68, and between that date and b.c. 65 there are only eleven letters. We have, therefore, nothing exactly contemporaneous to help us to form a judgment on the great event which coloured so much of his after life, the suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy and the execution of the conspirators, in the last month of his consulship. But setting aside the first eleven letters, we have from that time forward a correspondence illustrating, as no other document in antiquity does, the hopes and fears, the doubts and difficulties, of a keen politician living through the most momentous period of Roman history, the period of the fall of the Republic, beginning with Pompey's return from the East in b.c. 62, and ending with the appearance of the young Octavian on the scene and the formation of the Triumvirate in b.c. 43, of whose victims Cicero was one of the first and most illustrious. It is by his conduct and speeches during this period that Cicero's claim to be a statesman and a patriot must be judged, and by his writings in the same period that his place in literature must chiefly be assigned. Before b.c. 63 his biography, if we had it, would be that of the advocate and the official, no doubt with certain general views on political questions as they occurred, but not yet committed definitely to a party, or inclined to regard politics as the absorbing interest of his life. In his early youth his hero had been his fellow townsman Marius, in whose honour he composed a poem about the time of taking the toga virilis. But it was as the successful general, and before the days of the civil war. And though he served in the army of Sulla in the Marsic war (b.c. 90-88), he always regarded his cruelties with horror, however much he may have afterwards approved of certain points of his legislation. It was not till the consulship that he became definitely a party man¹ and an Optimate, and even then his feelings were much distracted by a strong belief—strangely ill-founded—that Pompey would be as successful as a statesman as he had been fortunate as a general. For him he had also a warm personal attachment, which never seems to have wholly died out, in spite of much petulance of language. This partly accounts for the surrender of b.c. 56, and his acquiescence in the policy of the triumvirs, an acquiescence never hearty indeed, as far as Cæsar and Crassus were concerned, but in which he consoled himself with the belief that nothing very unconstitutional could be done while Pompey was practically directing affairs at Rome.

The various nature of the Correspondence.

It is through this period of political change and excitement that the correspondence will take us, with some important gaps indeed, but on the whole fullest when it is most wanted to shew the feelings and motives guiding the active politicians of the day, or at any rate the effect which events had upon one eager and acute intellect and sensitive heart. One charm of the correspondence is variety. There is almost every sort of letter. Those to Atticus are unstudied, spontaneous, and reflect the varying moods of the writer. At times of special excitement they follow each other day by day, and sometimes more than once in the same day; and the writer seems to conceal nothing, however much it might expose him to ridicule, and to the charge of fickleness, weakness, or even cowardice. Those addressed to other friends are sometimes familiar and playful, sometimes angry and indignant. Some of them are careful and elaborate state papers, others mere formal introductions and recommendations. Business, literature, and philosophy all have their share in them; and, what is so rare in ancient literature, the family relations of the writer, his dealings with wife, son, and daughter, brother and nephew, and sons-in-law, are all depicted for us, often with the utmost frankness. After reading them we seem to know Cicero the man, as well as Cicero the statesman and orator. The eleven letters which precede the consulship are happily, from this point of view, addressed to Atticus. For it was to Atticus that he wrote with the least concealment, and with the confidence that any detail, however small, which concerned himself would be interesting to his correspondent. It is well, therefore, that, though we thus come into his life when it was more than half over, we should at once hear his genuine sentiments on whatever subjects he may be speaking. Besides his own, we have about ninety letters to Cicero from some of the chief men of the day—Pompey, Cæsar, Cato, Brutus, Antony, and many others. They are of very various excellence. The best of them are by much less known men. Neither Pompey nor Cæsar were good letter-writers, or, if the latter was so, he was too busy to use his powers.

Cicero's position previous to the beginning of the Correspondence in b.c. 68.

The letters begin, then, in b.c. 68, when Cicero was in his thirty-seventh year. He was already a man of established reputation both as a pleader and a writer. Rhetorical treatises (b.c. 86), translations from Xenophon and Plato (b.c. 84), and from the poems of Aratus (b.c. 81), had given evidence of a varied literary interest and a promise of future eminence, while his success as an advocate had led to the first step in the official cursus honorum by his becoming a quæstor in b.c. 75. The lot assigned Lilybæum as his sphere of work, and though the duties of a quæstor in Sicily were not such as to bring a man's name much before the Roman public, Cicero plumes himself, as was not unusual with him, on the integrity and energy which he displayed in his administration. He has indeed the honesty to tell against himself the story of the acquaintance who, meeting him at Puteoli on his return journey, asked Quæstor, b.c. 75. him what day he had left Rome and what was the news there. When he answered rather crossly that he had just come from Sicily, another acquaintance put in with "Why, of course. Didn't you know he has just been quæstor at Syracuse!" At any rate he had done sufficiently well in Lilybæum to give him his next step, the ædileship to which he was elected b.c. 70, and to induce the Sicilians to apply to him, when in that year they desired the prosecution of the extortionate Verres. His energy and success in this business raised him, without question, to the first rank of advocates, and pledged him to a righteous policy in regard to the government of the provinces.

Cicero's Boyhood and Education.

Still Cicero was a novus homo, and the jealous exclusiveness of the great families at Rome might yet prevent his attainment of the highest office of all. When the correspondence opens he is a candidate for the prætorship, which he obtained without difficulty, at the head of the poll. But his birth might still be a bar to the consulship. His father, M. Tullius, lived at Arpinum, an ancient city of the Volscians and afterwards of the Samnites, which had long enjoyed a partial, and from b.c. 188 a complete, Roman franchise, and was included in the Cornelian tribe. Cicero's mother's name was Helvia, of whom we know nothing but the one anecdote told by Quintus (Fam. xvi. 26), who says that she used to seal the wine jars when they were emptied, so that none might be drained without her knowing it—a testimony to her economy and careful housewifery. His father had weak health and resided almost entirely in his villa at Arpinum, which he had considerably enlarged, much devoted to study and literature (de Leg. ii. 1). But though he apparently possessed considerable property, giving him equestrian rank, and though Cicero says that his family was very ancient, yet neither he nor any of his ancestors had held Roman magistracies. Marcus and his brother Quintus were the first of their family to do so, and both had to depend on character and ability to secure their elections. But though the father did nothing for his sons by holding curule office himself, he did the best for their education that was possible. Cicero calls him optimus et prudentissimus, and speaks with gratitude of what he had done for his sons in this respect. They were sent early to Rome to the house of C. Aculeo, a learned jurisconsult, married to a sister of Helvia; and attended—with their cousins, the sons of Aculeo—the best schools in the city.² The young Marcus shewed extraordinary ability from the first, and that avidity for reading and study which never forsook him. As a young man he diligently attended the chambers of renowned jurisconsults, especially those of the elder and younger Scævola, Crassus, and Antonius, and soon found that his calling in life was oratory. It was not till he was twenty-eight years old, however—when he had already written much and pleaded many cases—that he went on a visit of between two and three years to Greece, Asia, and Rhodes, to study in the various schools of rhetoric and philosophy, and to view their famous cities (b.c. 79-77). It was after his return from this tour that his age (he was now thirty-one) made the seeking of office at Rome possible. From that time his election to the several offices—quæstorship, ædileship, prætorship, consulship—followed without any repulse, each in the first year of his age at which he was legally capable of being elected.

He had doubtless made the acquaintance of Titus Pomponius, afterwards called Atticus, early in life. But it seems that it was their intimacy at Athens (b.c. 79), where Atticus, who was three years his senior, had been residing for several years, that began the very close and warm friendship which lasted with nothing but the slightest and most passing of clouds till his death. His brother Quintus was married to Pomponia, a sister of Atticus; but the marriage turned out unfortunately, and was a strain upon the friendship of Cicero and Atticus rather than an additional bond. This source of uneasiness meets us in the very first letter of the correspondence, and crops up again and again till the final rupture of the ill-assorted union by divorce in b.c. 44. Nothing, however, had apparently interrupted the correspondence of the two friends, which had been going on for a long time before the first letter which has been preserved.

Cicero the successful Advocate.

The eleven letters, then, which date before the consulship, shew us Cicero in full career of success as an advocate and rising official, not as yet apparently much interested in party politics, but with his mind, in the intervals of forensic business, engaged on the adornment of the new villa at Tusculum, the first of the numerous country residences which his growing wealth or his heightened ideas of the dignity of his position prompted him to purchase. Atticus is commissioned to search in Athens and elsewhere for objects of art suitable for the residence of a wealthy Roman, who at the same time was a scholar and man of letters. He is beginning to feel the charm of at any rate a temporary retreat from the constant bustle and occupations of the city. Though Cicero loved Rome, and could hardly conceive of life unconnected with its business and excitements,³ and eagerly looked for news of the city in his absence, yet there was another side to his character. His interest in literature and philosophy was quite as genuine as his interest in the forum and senate-house. When the season came for temporarily withdrawing from the latter, he returned to the former with eager passion. But Tusculum was too near Rome to secure him the quiet and solitude necessary for study and composition. Thus, though he says (vol. i., p. 4), "I am so delighted with my Tusculan villa that I never feel really happy till I get there," he often found it necessary, when engaged in any serious literary work, to seek the more complete retirement of Formiæ, Cumæ, or Pompeii, near all of which he acquired properties, besides an inheritance at Arpinum.⁴ But the important achievements in literature were still in the future. The few letters of b.c. 68-67 are full of directions to Atticus for the collection of books or works of art suitable to his house, and of matters of private interest. They are also short and sometimes abrupt. The famous allusion to his father's death in the second letter of this collection, contained in a singleDeath of Cicero's Father. line—pater nobis decessit a.d. 111 Kal. Decembris—followed by directions to Atticus as to articles of vertu for his villa, has much exercised the minds of admirers, who do not like to think Cicero capable of such a cold-hearted sentence. It is certainly very unlike his usual manner.⁵ He is more apt to exaggerate than understate his emotions; and in the first letter extant he speaks with real feeling of the death of a cousin. Elsewhere—as we have seen—he refers to his father with respect and gratitude. How then are we to account for such a cold announcement? Several expedients have been hit upon. First, to change decessit to discessit, and to refer the sentence to the father's quitting Rome, and not life; in which case it is not easy to see why the information is given at all. Second, to suppose it to be a mere answer to a request for the information on the part of Atticus; in which case the date must refer to some previous year, or the letter must be placed considerably later, to allow of time for Atticus to hear of the death and to write his question. In favour of the first is the fact that Asconius (§ 82) says that Cicero lost his father when he was a candidate for the consulship (b.c. 64). Some doubt has been thrown upon the genuineness of the passage in Asconius; and, if that is not trustworthy, we have nothing else to help us. On the whole I think we must leave the announcement as it stands in all its baldness. Cicero's father had long been an invalid, and Atticus may have been well aware that the end was expected. He would also be acquainted with the son's feelings towards his father, and Cicero may have held it unnecessary to enlarge upon them. It is possible, too, that he had already written to tell Atticus of the death and of his own feelings, but had omitted the date, which he here supplies. Whatever may be the true explanation—impossible now to recover—everything we know of Cicero forbids us to reckon insensibility among his faults, or reserve in expressing his feelings among his characteristics.

The Prætorship, b.c. 66.

In the next year (b.c. 67) we find Cicero elected to the prætorship, after at least two interruptions to the comitia, which, though not aimed at himself, gave him a foretaste of the political troubles to come a few years later. He is, however, at present simply annoyed at the inconvenience, not yet apprehensive of any harm to the constitution. The double postponement, indeed, had the effect of gratifying his vanity: for his own name was returned three times first of the list of eight. His prætorship (b.c. 66) passed without any startling event. The two somewhat meagre letters which remain belonging to this year tell us hardly anything. Still he began more or less to define his political position by advocating the lex Manilia, for putting the Mithridatic war into the hands of Pompey; and one of his most elaborate forensic speeches—that for Cluentius—was delivered in the course of the year: in which also his brother Quintus was elected to the ædileship.

b.c. 65-64. Preparations for the Consulship.

So far Cicero had risen steadily and without serious difficulty up the official ladder. But the stress was now to come. The old families seem not to have been so ready to oppose the rise of the novus homo to the prætorship. It was the consulship on which they tried to keep a tight hand. Accordingly, immediately after the year of his prætorship, we find him anxiously looking out for support and inquiring who are likely to be his competitors. The interesting point in regard to this is his connexion with Catiline. In his speech in the senate delivered in the following year (in toga candida, b.c. 64) he denounced Catiline in the most violent language, accusing him of every conceivable crime; yet in b.c. 65 he not only contemplated being elected with him without any expression of disgust, but even considered whether he should not undertake his defence on some charge that was being brought against him—perhaps for his conduct during the Sullan proscriptions. To whitewash Catiline is a hopeless task; and it throws a lurid light upon the political and moral sentiments of the time to find Cicero even contemplating such a conjunction.

After this, for two years, there is a break in the correspondence. Atticus had probably returned to Rome, and if there were letters to others (as no doubt there were) they have been lost. A certain light is thrown on the proceedings of the year of candidature (b.c. 64) by the essay "On the duties of a candidate," ascribed to his brother Quintus, who was himself to be a candidate for the prætorship in the next year (b.c. 63). We may see from this essay that Pompey was still regarded as the greatest and most influential man at Rome; that Catiline's character was so atrocious in the eyes of most, that his opposition was not to be feared; that Cicero's "newness" was a really formidable bar to his election, and that his chief support was to be looked for from the individuals and companies for whom he had acted as counsel, and who hoped to secure his services in the future. The support of the nobles was not a certainty. There had been a taint of popularity in some of Cicero's utterances, and the writer urges him to convince the consulars that he was at one with the Optimates, while at the same time aiming at the conciliation of the equestrian order. This was, in fact, to be Cicero's political position in the future. The party of the Optimates—in spite of his disgust at the indifference and frivolity of many of them—was to be his party: his favourite constitutional object was to be to keep the equites and the senate on good terms: and his greatest embarrassment was how to reconcile this position with his personal loyalty to Pompey, and his views as to the reforms necessary in the government of the provinces.

The Consulship, b.c. 63.

For the momentous year of the consulship we have no letters. His brother Quintus was in Rome as candidate and then prætor-designate; Atticus was also in Rome; and the business, as well as the dignity of a consul, were against anything like ordinary correspondence. Of the earlier part of the consulship we have little record. The speeches against Rullus were delivered at the beginning of the year, and commit Cicero pretty definitely to a policy as to the ager publicus—which was, to his disgust, entirely reversed by the triumvirs in b.c. 59—but they do not shew any sense of coming trouble. Cicero, however, throughout his consulship took a very definite line against the populares. Not only did he defend Rabirius Postumus, when accused by Cæsar of the assassination of Saturninus, and address the people against offering violence to L. Roscius on account of the unpopular lex theatralis,⁶ but he even resisted the restoration to their civil rights of the sons of the men proscribed by Sulla, avowedly on the ground of the necessity of maintaining the established order, though he knew and confessed the justice of the proposal.⁷

The Conspiracy of Catiline.

Any movement, therefore, on the side of the popular party had now his opposition with which to reckon. He professes to have known very early in his year of office that some more than usually dangerous movement was in contemplation. We cannot well decide from the violent denunciation of Catiline contained—to judge from extant fragments—in the speech in toga candida, how far Cicero was really acquainted with any definite designs of his. Roman orators indulged in a violence of language so alien from modern ideas and habits, that it is difficult to draw definite conclusions. But it appears from Sallust that Catiline had in a secret meeting before the elections of b.c. 64, professed an intention of going all lengths in a revolutionary programme and, if that was the case, Cicero would be sure to have had some secret information on the subject. But his hands were partly tied by the fact that the comitia had given him a colleague—C. Antonius—deeply implicated in Catiline's policy, whatever it was. Pompey, whom he regarded as the champion of law and order, was in the East: and Catiline's candidature—and it was supposed his policy also—had had the almost open support of the richest man in Rome, M. Licinius Crassus, and of the most influential man of the populares, C. Iulius Cæsar. In the house of one or the other of them, indeed, the meeting at which Catiline first unfolded his purposes was believed to have been held. Still Catiline had not been guilty of any overt act which enabled Cicero to attack him. He had, indeed, been informed, on very questionable authority, that Catiline had made a plot to assassinate him while holding the elections, and he made a considerable parade of taking precautions for his safety—letting it be seen that he wore a cuirass under his toga, and causing his house to be guarded by the younger members of his party. The elections, according to Plutarch, had at least been once postponed from the ordinary time in July, though this has been denied.⁸ At any rate it was not till they had taken place and Catiline had been once more rejected, that any definite step is alleged to have been taken by him, such as Cicero could lay hold of to attack him. On the 20th of October, in the senate, Cicero made a speech warning the Fathers of the impending danger, and on the 21st called upon Catiline for an explanation in their presence. But, after all, even the famous meeting of the 5th of November, in the house of M. Porcius Læca, betrayed to Cicero by Fulvia, the mistress of Q. Curius, would not have sufficed as grounds for the denunciation of the first extant speech against Catiline (7th of November), if it had not been for something else. For some months past there had been rumours of risings in various parts of Italy; but by the beginning of November it was known that C. Manlius (or Mallius) had collected a band of desperadoes near Fæsulæ, and, having established there a camp on the 27th of October, meant to advance on Rome. Manlius had been a centurion in Sulla's army, and had received an allotment of confiscated land in Etruria; but, like others, had failed to prosper. The movement was one born of discontent with embarrassments which were mostly brought about by extravagance or incompetence. But the rapidity with which Manlius was able to gather a formidable force round him seems to shew that there were genuine grievances also affecting the agricultural classes in Etruria generally. At any rate there was now no doubt that a formidable disturbance was brewing; the senate voted that there was a tumultus, authorized the raising of troops, and named commanders in the several districts affected. It was complicity in this rising that Cicero now sought to establish against Catiline and his partisans in Rome. The report of the meeting in the house of Læca gave him the pretext for his first step—a fiery denunciation of Catiline in the senate on the 7th of November. Catiline left Rome, joined the camp of Manlius, and assumed the ensigns of imperium. That he was allowed thus to leave the city is a proof that Cicero had as yet no information enabling him to act at once. It was the right of every citizen to avoid standing a trial by going into exile. Catiline was now under notice of prosecution for vis, and when leaving Rome he professed to be going to Marseilles, which had the ius exilii. But when it was known that he had stopped short at Fæsulæ, the senate at once declared both him and Manlius hostes, and authorized the consuls to proceed against them. The expedition was intrusted to Antonius, in spite of his known sympathy with Catiline, while Cicero was retained with special powers to protect the city. The result is too well known to be more than glanced at here. Catiline's partisans were detected by letters confided to certain envoys of the Allobroges, which were held to convict them of the guilt of treason, as instigating Catiline to march on Rome, and the senate of the Allobroges to assist the invasion by sending cavalry to Fæsulæ.

Execution of the conspirators, December, b.c. 63. Its legal grounds and consequences.

The decree of the senate, videant consules, etc., had come to be considered as reviving the full imperium of the consul, and investing him with the power of life and death over all citizens. Cicero acted on this (questionable) constitutional doctrine. He endeavoured, indeed, to shelter himself under the authority of a senatorial vote. But the senate never had the power to try or condemn a citizen. It could only record its advice to the consul. The whole legal responsibility for the condemnation and death of the conspirators, arrested in consequence of these letters, rested on the consul. To our moral judgment as to Cicero's conduct it is of primary importance to determine whether or not these men were guilty: to his legal and constitutional position it matters not at all. Nor was that point ever raised against him. The whole question turns on whether the doctrine was true that the senatus consultum ultimum gave the consul the right of inflicting death upon citizens without trial, i.e., without appeal to the people, on the analogy of the dictator seditionis sedandæ causa, thus practically defeating that most ancient and cherished safeguard of Roman liberty, the ius provocationis. The precedents were few, and scarcely such as would appeal to popular approval. The murder of Tiberius Gracchus had been ex post facto approved by the senate in b.c. 133-2. In the case of Gaius Gracchus, in b.c. 121, the senate had voted uti consul Opimius rempublicam defenderet, and in virtue of that the consul had authorized the killing of Gaius and his friends: thus for the first time exercising imperium sine provocatione. Opimius had been impeached after his year of office, but acquitted, which the senate might claim as a confirmation of the right, in spite of the lex of Gaius Gracchus, which confirmed the right of provocatio in all cases. In b.c. 100 the tribune Saturninus and the prætor Glaucia were arrested in consequence of a similar decree, which this time joined the other magistrates to the consuls as authorized to protect the Republic: their death, however, was an act of violence on the part of a mob. Its legality had been impugned by Cæsar's condemnation of Rabirius, as duovir capitalis, but to a certain extent confirmed by the failure to secure his conviction on the trial of his appeal to the people. In b.c. 88 and 83 this decree of the senate was again passed, in the first case in favour of Sulla against the tribune Sulpicius, who was in consequence put to death; and in the second case in favour of the consuls (partisans of Marius) against the followers of Sulla. Again in b.c. 77 the decree was passed in consequence of the insurrection of the proconsul Lepidus, who, however, escaped to Sardinia and died there.

In every case but one this decree had been passed against the popular party. The only legal sanction given to the exercise of the imperium sine provocatione was the acquittal of the consul Opimius in b.c. 120. But the jury which tried that case probably consisted entirely of senators, who would not stultify their own proceedings by condemning him. To rely upon such precedents required either great boldness (never a characteristic of Cicero), or the most profound conviction of the essential righteousness of the measure, and the clearest assurance that the safety of the state—the supreme law—justified the breach of every constitutional principle. Cicero was not left long in doubt as to whether there would be any to question his proceeding. On the last day of the year, when about to address the people, as was customary, on laying down his consulship, the tribune Q. Cæcilius Metellus Nepos forbade him to speak, on the express ground that he "had put citizens to death uncondemned"—quod cives indemnatos necavisset. Cicero consoled himself with taking the required oath as to having observed the laws, with an additional declaration that he had "saved the state." Nevertheless, he must have felt deeply annoyed and alarmed at the action of Metellus, for he had been a legatus of Pompey, and was supposed to represent his views, and it was upon the approbation and support of Pompey, now on the eve of his return from the East, that Cicero particularly reckoned.

Letters after b.c. 63.

The letters in our collection now recommence. The first of the year (b.c. 62) is one addressed to Pompey, expressing some discontent at the qualified manner in which he had written on recent events, and affirming his own conviction that he had acted in the best interests of the state and with universal approval. But indeed the whole correspondence to the end of Cicero's exile is permeated with this subject directly or indirectly. His quarrel with Metellus Nepos brought upon him a remonstrance from the latter's brother (or cousin), Metellus Celer (Letters XIII, XIV), and when the correspondence for b.c. 61 opens, we find him already on the eve of the quarrel with Publius Clodius which was to bring upon him the exile of b.c. 58.

Publius Clodius Pulcher.

P. Clodius Pulcher was an extreme instance of a character not uncommon among the nobility in the last age of the Republic. Of high birth, and possessed of no small amount of ability and energy, he belonged by origin and connexion to the Optimates; but he regarded politics as a game to be played for his personal aggrandizement, and public office as a means of replenishing a purse drained by boundless extravagance and self-indulgence. His record had been bad. He had accompanied his brother-in-law Lucullus, or had joined his staff, in the war with Mithridates, and had helped to excite a mutiny in his army in revenge for some fancied slight. He had then gone to Cilicia, where another brother-in-law, Q. Marcus Rex, was proprætor, and while commanding a fleet under him had fallen into the hands of pirates, and when freed from them had gone—apparently in a private capacity—to Antioch, where he again excited a mutiny of Syrian troops engaged in a war against the Arabians (b.c. 70-65). On his return to Rome he attempted to make himself conspicuous by prosecuting Catiline, but accepted a bribe to withdraw. In b.c. 64, on the staff of the governor of Gallia Narbonensis, he is accused of having enriched himself with plunder. For a time after that he was still acting as a member of the party of the Optimates; seems to have supported Cicero during the Catiline conspiracy; and in b.c. 62 stood for the quæstorship and was elected. His violation of the mysteries was alleged to have been committed in December of that year, and before he could go to the province allotted to him as quæstor in Sicily he had to stand a trial for sacrilege. Such an offence—penetrating in disguise into the house of the Pontifex Maximus, when his wife was engaged in the secret rites of the Bona Dea—would place him under a curse, and not only prevent his entering upon his quæstorship, but would disfranchise and politically ruin him. Clodius would seem not to have been a person of sufficient character or importance to make this trial a political event. But not only had he powerful backers, but his opponents also, by proposing an innovation in the manner of selecting the jurors for trying him, had managed to give a spurious political importance to the case. One of the most brilliant of the early letters (XV, p. 37) gives us a graphic picture of the trial. Clodius was acquitted and went to his province, but returned in b.c. 60, apparently prepared for a change of parties. Cicero and he had quarrelled over the trial. He had said sarcastic things about the sacred consulship, and Cicero had retaliated by bitter speeches in the senate, and by giving evidence at the trial of having seen Clodius in Rome three hours before he professed to have been at Interamna, on the day of the alleged sacrilege. It is perhaps possible that his alibi may have been true in substance, for he may have been well out of Rome on his way to Interamna after seeing Cicero. But, however that may be, he nourished a grudge against Cicero, which he presently had an opportunity of satisfying. The year of his return to Rome from Sicily (b.c. 60) was the same as that of Cæsar's return from Spain. Pompey—who had returned the year[Pg xxviii] before—was at enmity with the senate on account of the difficulties raised to the confirmation of his acta and the allotments for his veterans. Cæsar had a grievance because of the difficulties put in the way of his triumph. The two coalesced, taking in the millionaire Crassus, to form a triumvirate or coalition of three, with a view to getting measures they desired passed, and offices for themselves or their partisans. This was a great blow to Cicero, who clung feverously to Pompey as a political leader, but could not follow him in a coalition with Cæsar: for he knew that the object of it was a series of measures of which he heartily disapproved. His hope of seeing Pompey coming to act as acknowledged leader of the Optimates was dashed to the ground. He could not make up his mind wholly to abandon him, or, on the other hand, to cut himself adrift from the party of Optimates, to whose policy he had so deeply committed himself. Clodius was troubled by no such scruples. Perhaps Cæsar had given him substantial reasons for his change of policy. At any rate, from this time forward he acts as an extreme popularis—much too extreme, as it turned out, for Pompey's taste. As a patrician his next step in the official ladder would naturally have been the ædileship. But that peaceful office did not suit his present purpose. The tribuneship would give him the right to bring forward measures in the comitia tributa, such as he desired to pass, and would in particular give him the opportunity of attacking Cicero. The difficulty was that to become tribune he must cease to be a patrician. He could only do that by being adopted into a plebeian gens. He had a plebeian ready to do it in b.c. 59. But for a man who was sui iuris to be adopted required a formal meeting of the old comitia curiata, and such a meeting required the presence of an augur, as well as some kind of sanction of the pontifices. Cæsar was Pontifex Maximus, and Pompey was a member of the college of augurs. Their influence would be sufficient to secure or prevent this being done. Their consent was, it appears, for a time withheld. But Cæsar was going to Gaul at the end of his consulship, and desired to have as few powerful enemies at Rome during his absence as possible. Still he had a personal feeling for Cicero, and when it was known that one of Clodius's objects in seeking to become a plebeian and a tribune was to attack him, Cæsar offered him two chances of honourable retreat—first as one of the commissioners to administer his land law, and again as one of his legati in Gaul. But Cicero would not accept the first, because he was vehemently opposed to the law itself: nor the second, because he had no taste for provincial business, even supposing the proconsul to be to his liking; and because he could not believe that P. Clodius would venture to attack him, or would succeed if he did. Cæsar's consulship of b.c. 59 roused his worst fears for the Republic; and, though he thought little of the statesmanship or good sense of Cæsar's hostile colleague Bibulus, he was thoroughly disgusted with the policy of the triumvirs, with the contemptuous treatment of the senate, with the high-handed disregard of the auspices—by means of which Bibulus tried to invalidate the laws and other acta of Cæsar—and with the armed forces which Pompey brought into the campus, nominally to keep order, but really to overawe the comitia, and secure the passing of Cæsar's laws. Nor was it in his nature to conceal his feelings. Speaking early in the year in defence of his former colleague, C. Antonius, accused of maiestas for his conduct in Macedonia, he expressed in no doubtful terms his view of the political situation. Within a few hours the words were reported to the triumvirs, and all formalities were promptly gone through for the adoption of Clodius. Cæsar himself presided at the comitia curiata, Pompey attended as augur, and the thing was done in a few minutes. Even then Cicero does not appear to have been alarmed, or to have been fully aware of what the object of Publius was. While on his usual spring visit to his seaside villas in April (b.c. 59), he expressed surprise at hearing from the young Curio that Clodius was a candidate for the tribuneship (vol. i., p. 99). His surprise no doubt was more or less assumed: he must have understood that Clodius's object in the adoption was the tribunate, and must have had many uneasy reflexions as to the use which he would make of the office when he got it. Indeed there was not very much doubt about it, for Publius openly avowed his intentions. We have accordingly numerous references, in the letters to Atticus, to Cicero's doubts about the course he ought to adopt. Should he accept Cæsar's offer of a legation in Gaul, or a free and votive legation? Should he stay in Rome and fight it out? The latter course was the one on which he was still resolved in July, when Clodius had been, or was on the point of being, elected tribune (p. 110). He afterwards wavered (p. 113), but was encouraged by the belief that all the "orders" were favourable to him, and were becoming alienated from the triumvirs (pp. 117, 119), especially after the affair of Vettius (pp. 122-124), and by the friendly disposition of many of the colleagues of Clodius in the tribuneship. With such feelings of confidence and courage the letters of b.c. 59 come to an end.

The Exile, April, b.c. 58—August, b.c. 57.

The correspondence only opens again in April of b.c. 58, when the worst has happened. Clodius entered upon his tribuneship on the 10th of December, b.c. 59, and lost little time in proposing a law to the comitia for the trial of any magistrate guilty of putting citizens to death without trial (qui cives indemnatos necavisset). The wording of the law thus left it open to plead that it applied only to such act as occurred after its enactment, for the pluperfect necavisset in the dependent clause answers to the future perfect in a direct one. And this was the interpretation that Cæsar, while approving the law itself, desired to put upon it.⁹ He again offered Cicero a legation in Gaul, but would do nothing for him if he stayed in Rome; while Pompey, who had been profuse in promises of protection, either avoided seeing Cicero, or treated his abject entreaties with cold disdain.¹⁰ Every citizen, by a humane custom at Rome, had the right of avoiding a prosecution by quitting the city and residing in some town which had the ius exilii. It is this course that we find Cicero already entered upon when the correspondence of the year begins. In the letters of this year of exile he continually reproaches himself with not having stayed and even supported the law, in full confidence that it could not be applied to himself. He attributes his having taken the less courageous course to the advice of his friends, who were actuated by jealousy and a desire to get rid of him. Even Atticus he thinks was timid, at the best, in advising his retirement. It is the only occasion in all the correspondence in which the least cloud seems to have rested on the perfect friendship of the two men. Atticus does not appear to have shewn any annoyance at the querulous remarks of his friend. He steadily continued to write, giving information and advice, and made no difficulty in supplying his friend with money. During Cicero's absence Atticus became still more wealthy than before by inheriting the estates of his cross-grained uncle Cæcilius. But he was always careful as to the investment of his money and he would not, perhaps, have been so ready to trust Cicero, had he not felt confidence in the ultimate recovery of his civil status. Still his confidence was peculiarly welcome at a time which would have been otherwise one of great pressure. For Clodius had followed up Cicero's retirement with the usual lex in regard to persons leaving Rome to avoid a trial—a prohibition "of fire and water" within a fixed distance from Italy, which involved the confiscation of all his property in Italy. His villas were dismantled, his town house pulled down, and a vote of the people obtained by Clodius for the consecration of its site as a templum dedicated to Liberty, and a scheme was formed and the work actually commenced for occupying part of it by an extension of an existing porticus or colonnade (the porticus Catuli) to contain a statue of Liberty. That this consecration was regular is shewn by the pleas by which it was afterwards sought to reverse it.¹¹ When Cicero was recalled the question came before the pontifices, who decided that the consecration was not valid unless it had been done by the "order of the people." It could not be denied on the face of it that there had been such an order. Cicero was obliged to resort to the plea that Clodius's adoption had been irregular and invalid, that therefore he was not legally a tribune, and could not take an order of the people. Finally, the senate seems to have decided that its restoration to Cicero was part of the general restitutio in integrum voted by the comitia centuriata; and a sum of money was assigned to him for the rebuilding of the house. Clodius refused to recognize the validity of this decree of the senate, and attempted by violence to interrupt the workmen engaged on the house. We have a lively picture of this in Letter XCI (vol. i., pp. 194-196).

Letters of the Exile (Letters LV-LXXXVIII).

The letters from Cicero as an exile are painful reading for those who entertain a regard for his character. It was not unnatural, indeed, that he should feel it grievously. He had so completely convinced himself of the extraordinary value of his services to the state, of the importance of his position in Roman politics, and of the view that the Optimates would take of the necessity of retaining him, that to see himself treated like a fraudulent or unsuccessful provincial governor, of no importance to anyone but himself, was a bitter blow to his self-esteem. The actual loss was immense. His only means were now the amount of money he had been able to take with him, or was able to borrow. All was gone except such property as his wife retained in her own right. He was a dependent upon her, instead of being her support and the master of his own household. The services of freedmen—readily rendered when he was prosperous—would now be a matter of favour and personal attachment, which was not always sufficient to retain them. The "life and light" of the city, in which no man ever took a more eager interest and delight, were closed to him. He was cut off from his family, and from familiar intercourse with friends, on both of which he was much dependent for personal happiness. Lastly, wherever he lived, he lived, as it were, on sufferance, no longer an object of respect as a statesman, or the source of help to others by his eloquence. But, disagreeable as all this was to a man of Cicero's sensitive vanity, there was something still worse. Even in towns which were the legal distance from Italy he could not safely stay, if they were within the jurisdiction of one of his personal enemies, or contained other exiles, who owed him an ill turn. He was protected by no law, and more than one instance of such a man's falling a victim to an enemy's dagger is recorded. Cicero's first idea was to go to Malta: but Malta was for some purposes in the jurisdiction of the governor of[Pg xxxiii] Sicily, and the governor of Sicily (C. Vergilius¹²) objected to his passing through Sicily or staying at Malta. We have no reason for supposing Vergilius personally hostile to Cicero, but he may have thought that Cicero's services to the Sicilians in the case of Verres would have called out some expression of feeling on their part in his favour, which would have been awkward for a Roman governor. Cicero therefore crossed to Epirus, and travelled down the Egnatian road to Thessalonica. This was the official capital of the province of Macedonia, and the quæstor in Macedonia, Gnæus Plancius, met Cicero at Dyrrachium, invited him to fix his residence there with him, and accompanied him on his journey. Here he stayed till November in a state of anxiety and distress, faithfully reflected in his letters, waiting to hear how far the elections for b.c. 57 would result in putting his friends in office, and watching for any political changes that would favour his recall: but prepared to go still farther to Cyzicus, if the incoming governor, L. Calpurnius Piso, who, as consul in b.c. 58 with Gabinius, had shewn decided animus against him, should still retain that feeling in Macedonia. Events, however, in Rome during the summer and autumn of b.c. 58 gave him better hopes. Clodius, by his violent proceedings, as well as by his legislation, had alienated Pompey, and caused him to favour Cicero's recall. Of the new consuls Lentulus was his friend, and Q. Cæcilius Metellus Nepos (who as tribune in b.c. 63-62 had prevented his speech when laying down his consulship) consented to waive all opposition. A majority of the new tribunes were also favourable to him, especially P. Sestius and T. Annius Milo; and in spite of constant ups and downs in his feelings of confidence, he had on the whole concluded that his recall was certain to take place. Towards the end of November he therefore travelled back to Dyrrachium, a libera civitas in which he had many friends, and where he thought he might be safe, and from which he could cross to Italy as soon as he heard of the law for his recall having been passed. Here, however, he was kept waiting through many months of anxiety. Clodius had managed to make his recall as difficult as possible. He had, while tribune, obtained an order from the people forbidding the consuls to bring the subject before the senate, and Piso and Gabinius had during their year of office pleaded that law as a bar to introducing the question.

The Recall, August, b.c. 57.

The new consuls were not, or did not consider themselves, so bound, and Lentulus having brought the subject forward, the senate early passed a resolution that Cicero's recall was to take precedence of all other business. In accordance with the resolution of the senate, a law was proposed by the consul Lentulus in the comitia centuriata, and probably one by Milo to the tributa. But Clodius, though no longer armed with the tribuneship, was not yet beaten. He obtained the aid of some gladiators belonging to his brother Appius, and more than once interrupted and dispersed an assembly of the comitia. In the riots thus occasioned blood was shed on both sides, and Cicero's brother Quintus on one occasion nearly lost his life. This was the beginning of the series of violent contests between Clodius and Milo, only ended by the murder of the former on the Appian road in b.c. 52. But Clodius was a candidate for the ædileship in this year (b.c. 57), and could be barred from that office legally by a prosecution for vis, of which Milo gave notice against him. It was, perhaps, a desire to avoid this, as much as fear of Milo's counter exhibition of violence, that at length caused him to relax in his opposition, or at any rate to abstain from violently interrupting the comitia. Accordingly, on the 4th of August, the law proposed by both consuls, and supported by Pompey, was passed unanimously by the centuries. Cicero, we must presume, had received trustworthy information that this was to be the case (shewing that some understanding had been come to with Clodius, or there would have been no certainty of his not violently dispersing the comitia again), for on that same day he set sail from Dyrrachium and landed at Brundisium on the 5th. His triumphant return to Rome is described in the eighty-ninth letter of this collection. For Pompey's share in securing it he expressed, and seems really to have felt, an exaggerated gratitude, which still influenced him in the unhappy months of b.c. 49, when he was hesitating as to joining him beyond seas in the civil war.

But though Clodius had somehow been prevented from hindering his recall, he by no means relaxed his hostility. He not only tried to excite the populace against him by arguing that the scarcity and consequent high price of corn, from which the people were at that time suffering, was in some way attributable to Cicero's policy, but he also opposed the restoration of his house; and when a decree of the senate was passed in Cicero's favour on that point, brought his armed ruffians to prevent the workmen from going on with the rebuilding, as well as to molest Cicero himself (vol. i., p. 195). This was followed by a determined opposition by Milo to the holding of the elections for b.c. 56, until his prosecution of Clodius de vi should have been tried. Clodius, however, was acquitted,¹³ and, being elected ædile, immediately commenced a counter accusation against Milo for vis. He impeached him before the comitia in February (b.c. 56), on which occasion Pompey spoke in Milo's defence in the midst of a storm of interruptions got up by the friends of Clodius (vol. i., pp. 214, 217). Milo was also acquitted, and the rest of Clodius's ædileship seems to have passed without farther acts of open violence.

Cicero and the Triumvirs.

But Cicero had now other causes of anxiety. He had spoken in favour of the commission offered to Pompey in b.c. 57 for superintending the corn-supply of Rome (cura annonæ). Pompey was to have fifteen legates, a good supply of ships and men, and considerable powers in all corn-growing countries in the Mediterranean. Cicero supported this, partly from gratitude to Pompey, but partly also from a wish to promote his power and influence against the ever-increasing influence and fame of Cæsar. He secretly hoped that a jealousy might grow up between them; that Pompey would be drawn closer to the Optimates; and that the union of the triumvirate might be gradually weakened and finally disappear. Pompey was thoroughly offended and alarmed by the insults offered him by the Clodian mob, and by Clodius's own denunciations of him; and if he could be convinced that these were suggested or approved by Cæsar or Crassus, it would go far to withdraw him from friendship with either of them. With Crassus, indeed, he had never been on cordial terms: it was only Cæsar's influence that had caused him to form any union with him. Cæsar, on the other hand, was likely to be uneasy at the great powers which the cura annonæ put into Pompey's hands; and at the possible suggestion of offering him the dictatorship, if the Clodian riots became quite intolerable. On the whole, Cicero thought that he saw the element of a very pretty quarrel, from which he hoped that the result might be "liberty"—the orderly working of the constitution, that is, without the irregular supremacy of anyone, at any rate of anyone of the popular party. He had, however, a delicate part to play. He did not wish or dare to break openly with Cæsar, or to speak too openly to Pompey; and he was conscious that the intemperance, folly, or indifference of many of the Optimates made it difficult to reckon on their support, and made that support a very questionable benefit if accorded. But though his letters of this period are full of expressions indicating doubt of Pompey and irritation with him, yet he seems still to have spoken of him with warmth on public occasions, while he avoided mentioning Cæsar, or spoke of him only in cold terms.

Renewal of the Triumvirate at Luca, April, b.c. 56, and Cicero's change of policy.

The hope, however, of detaching Pompey from Cæsar was dashed by the meeting at Luca in April, b.c. 56, at which a fresh arrangement was made for the mutual advantage of the triumvirs. Cæsar got the promise of the introduction of a law giving him an additional five years of command in Gaul, with special privileges as to his candidature for the consulship of b.c. 48; while Pompey and Crassus bargained for a second consulship in b.c. 55, and the reversion of the Spains (to be held as a single province) and Syria respectively, each for five years. The care taken that none of the three should have imperium overlapping that of the others was indeed a sign of mutual distrust and jealousy. But the bargain was made with sufficient approval of the members of the party crowding Luca to secure its being carried out by the comitia. The union seemed stronger than ever; and Cicero at length resolved on a great change of attitude. Opposition to the triumvirs had been abandoned, he saw,[Pg xxxvii] by the very party for whom he had been incurring the enmity of Pompey and Cæsar. Why should he hold out any longer? "Since those who have no power," he writes to Atticus in April, "refuse me their affection, let me take care to secure the affection of those who have power. You will say, 'I could have wished that you had done so before.' I know you did wish it, and that I have made a real ass of myself."¹⁴ This is the first indication in the letters of the change. But it was soon to be publicly avowed. The opposition to the consulship of Pompey and Crassus was so violent that no election took place during b.c. 56, and they were only elected under the presidency of interreges at the beginning of February, b.c. 55. But by the lex Sempronia the senate was bound to name the consular provinces—i.e., the provinces to be governed by the incoming consuls after their year of office—before the elections, and in his speech on the subject (de Provinciis Consularibus), delivered apparently in July, b.c. 56, Cicero, while urging that Piso and Gabinius should have successors appointed to them in Macedonia and Syria, took occasion to announce and defend his own reconciliation with Cæsar, and to support his continuance in the governorship of Gaul. Shortly afterwards, when defending the citizenship of L. Cornelius Balbus, he delivered a glowing panegyric on Pompey's character and services to the state. This was followed by a complete abstention from any farther opposition to the carrying out of Cæsar's law for the allotment of the Campanian land—a subject which he had himself brought before the senate only a short time before, and on which he really continued to feel strongly.¹⁵ Cicero's most elaborate defence of his change of front is contained in a long letter to P. Lentulus Spinther, written two years afterwards.¹⁶ The gist of it is much the same as the remark to Atticus already[Pg xxxviii] quoted. "Pompey and Cæsar were all-powerful, and could not be resisted without civil violence, if not downright civil war. The Optimates were feeble and shifty, had shewn ingratitude to Cicero himself, and had openly favoured his enemy Clodius. Public peace and safety must be the statesman's chief object, and almost any concession was to be preferred to endangering these." Nevertheless, we cannot think that Cicero was ever heartily reconciled to the policy, or the unconstitutional preponderance of the triumvirs. He patched up some sort of reconciliation with Crassus, and his personal affection for Pompey made it comparatively easy for him to give him a kind of support. Cæsar was away, and a correspondence filled on both sides with courteous expressions could be maintained without seriously compromising his convictions. But Cicero was never easy under the yoke. From b.c. 55 to b.c. 52 he sought several opportunities for a prolonged stay in the country, devoting himself—in default of politics—to literature. The fruits of this were the de Oratore and the de Republica, besides poems on his own times and on his consulship. Still he was obliged from time to time to appear in the forum and senate-house, and in various ways to gratify Pompey and Cæsar. It must have been a great strain upon his loyalty to this new political friendship when, in b.c. 54, Pompey called upon him to undertake the defence of P. Vatinius, whom he had not long before attacked so fiercely while defending Sestius. Vatinius had been a tribune in b.c. 59, acting entirely in Cæsar's interests, and Cicero believed him to have been his enemy both in the matter of his exile and in the opposition to his recall. He had denounced him in terms that would have made it almost impossible, one would think, to have spoken in his defence in any cause whatever. At best he represented all that Cicero most disliked in politics; and on this very election, to the prætorship, for which he was charged with bribery (de sodalitiis), Cicero had already spoken in strongly hostile terms in the senate. For now undertaking his defence he has, in fact, no explanation to give to Lentulus (vol. i., p. 319), and he was long sore at having been forced to do it. Through b.c. 54 and 53 he was busied with his de Republica, and was kept more in touch with Cæsar byQuintus Cicero in Gaul. the fact that his brother Quintus was serving as legatus to the latter in Britain and Gaul, and that his friend Trebatius (introduced by himself) was seeking for promotion and profit in Cæsar's camp. But even his brother's service with Cæsar did not eventually contribute to the formation of cordial feeling on his part towards Cæsar, whom he could not help admiring, but never really liked. For Quintus, though he distinguished himself by his defence of his camp in the autumn of b.c. 54, lost credit and subjected himself to grave rebuke by the disaster incurred in b.c. 53, near Aduatuca (Tongres), brought about by disregarding an express order of Cæsar's. There is no allusion to this in the extant correspondence, but a fragment of letter from Cæsar to Cicero (neque pro cauto ac diligente se castris continuit¹⁷), seems to shew that Cæsar had written sharply to Cicero on his brother's faux pas, and after this time, though Cicero met Cæsar at Ravenna in b.c. 52, and consented to support the bill allowing him to stand for the consulship in his absence,¹⁸ there is apparent in his references to him a return to the cold or critical tone of former times. But of course there were other reasons.

Pompey's third Consulship and the trial of Milo, b.c. 52.

Pompey's six months' sole consulship of b.c. 52 ("that divine third consulship"), the rumour of his dictatorship, and the growing determination of the Optimates to play off Pompey against Cæsar (Crassus having disappeared) and to insist on Cæsar resigning his province and army before the end of his ten years' tenure, and before standing for a second consulship, caused Cicero's hope of a final dissolution of the unconstitutional compact to revive again; and made him draw more and more closely to Pompey as the chief hope of the boni. In the beginning of the year he had found himself in opposition, or quasi-opposition, to Pompey in regard to the prosecution of Milo for the murder of Clodius. But though in the previous year he had declared that the election of Milo to the consulship was of the utmost importance to his own position and the safety of the state,¹⁹ now that it was rendered impossible by Milo's condemnation, he seems to have placed all his hopes on Pompey. Unfortunately, there is here a break in the correspondence. There is no letter of the last six months of b.c. 53, and only four (perhaps only three) of b.c. 52.²⁰ So that the riots which prevented Milo's election, the death of Clodius and the riots following it, and the consequent sole consulship of Pompey, with the latter's new legislation and the trial of Milo—all have to be sought for elsewhere. The last letter of this volume and of this year, addressed to M. Marius in December, b.c. 52, alludes to the condemnation of Milo, and to the numerous prosecutions following it. "Here, in Rome, I am so distracted by the number of trials, the crowded courts, and the new legislation, that I daily offer prayers that there may be no intercalation."²¹

Cicero appointed Proconsul of Cilicia, b.c. 51-50.

When the correspondence opens again in the spring of b.c. 51 an event has happened, of no particular importance in itself, but of supreme interest to Cicero, and very fortunate for the readers of the correspondence. One of Pompey's new laws ordained that no one was to take a province till the fifth year after laying down his consulship or prætorship. Pompey broke his own law by keeping his province, the Spains—his position in regard to them was altogether exceptional—but, in order to carry out the law in other cases, the senate arranged that ex-consuls and ex-prætors who had not been to provinces should in turn draw lots for vacant governorships. Cicero and Bibulus appear to have been the senior consulares in that position, and with much reluctance Cicero allowed his name to be cast into the urn. He drew Cilicia and Bibulus Syria. He says that his motive was a desire to obey the wishes of the senate. Another motive may have been a desire to be away from Rome while the controversy as to Cæsar's retirement from his province was settled, and to retrieve a position of some political importance, which he had certainly not increased during the last few years. When it came to the actual start, however, he felt all the gêne of the business—the formation and control of his staff, the separation from friends, and the residence far from the "light and life" of Rome, among officials who were certainly commonplace and probably corrupt, and amidst a population, perhaps acute and accomplished, but certainly servile and ill content, and in some parts predatory and barbarous. At the best, they would be emphatically provincial, in a dreary sense of the word. He felt unequal to the worry and bore of the whole business, and reproached himself with the folly of the undertaking. Of course, this regret is mingled with his usual self-congratulation on the purity with which he means to manage his province. But even that feeling is not strong enough to prevent his longing earnestly to have the period of banishment as short as possible, or to prevent the alarm with which he hears of a probable invasion by the Parthians. One effect of his almost two years' absence from Rome was, I think, to deprive him of the power of judging clearly of the course of events. He had constant intelligence and excellent correspondents—especially Cælius—still he could not really grasp what was going on under the surface: and when he returned to find the civil war on the point of breaking out, he was, after all, taken by surprise, and had no plan of action ready. This, as well as his government of the province, will be fully illustrated in the next volume of the correspondence.

Cicero's Correspondents.

The persons to whom the chief letters are addressed in this volume, besides Atticus, are Cicero's brother Quintus and P. Lentulus Spinther. There are two excellent letters to M. Marius, and one very interesting, though rather surprising, epistle to L. Lucceius. Others of more than average interest are to Terentia, M. Fadius Gallus, C. Scribonius Curio, and Tiro.

Titus Pomponius Atticus.

Atticus (b.c. 109-32) is a man of whom we should be glad to know more than we do. He was the friend of all the leading men of the day—Pompey, Cæsar, Cicero, Antony, Brutus—father-in-law of Agrippa, and survived to be a constant correspondent of Augustus, between b.c. 43 and his death in b.c. 32. He was spared and respected by both sides in the civil wars, from Sulla to the Second Triumvirate. The secret of his success seems to have been that he was no man's rival. He resolutely declined all official employment, even on the staff of his brother-in-law Quintus Cicero. He committed himself to no side in politics, and, not being in the senate, had no occasion by vote or speech to wound the feelings of anyone. So, too, though he cared for literature, it was rather as a friendly critic of others than as an author. He did, it is true, compile some books on Roman history, on historical portraits, and certain family biographies; but they were not such as made him a rival of any of his contemporaries. They were rather the productions of a rich amateur, who had leisure to indulge a quasi-literary taste, without any thought of joining the ranks of professed writers. Thirdly, he had great wealth, partly inherited, partly acquired by prudent speculation in the purchase of town properties, or in loans to states or public bodies on fair terms: and this wealth was at the service of his friends, but not in the lavish or reckless manner, which often earns only ingratitude without being of any permanent service to the recipients. He lent money, but expected to be repaid even by his brother-in-law. And this prudence helped to retain the confidence, while his sympathetic temperament secured the liking, of most. Again, he had the valuable knack of constantly replenishing the number of his friends among men junior to himself. His character attracted the liking of Sulla, who was twenty-seven years his senior, and he remained the close friend of his contemporaries Hortensius and Cicero (the former five years his senior, the latter three years his junior) till the day of their death. But we also find him on intimate terms with Brutus, twenty-four, and Octavian, forty-six years junior to himself. Lastly, he was not too much at Rome. More than twenty years of his earlier manhood (b.c. 87-65) were spent in Greece, principally at Athens, partly in study and partly in business. And Athens at this time, long deprived of political importance, had still the charm not only of its illustrious past, but also of its surviving character as the home of culture and refinement. When he at length returned to Rome in b.c. 65, he had already purchased a property in Epirus, near Buthrotum (see p. 3), where he built a villa, in which he continued to spend a considerable part of his remaining years. This was sufficiently remote, not only from Rome, but from the summer residences of the Roman nobles, to secure his isolation from the intrigues and enmities of Roman society. He did not indeed—as who does?—always escape giving offence. At the very beginning of the correspondence we hear of his vain attempts to mollify the anger of L. Lucceius—how incurred we do not know; and Quintus Cicero, of whose sharp temper we hear so much, was on more than one occasion on the point of a rupture with him. But his family life was generally as pleasing as his connexion with his friends. With his mother, who lived to a great age, he boasted that he had never been reconciled, because he had never quarrelled. He was the only one who could get on with the crusty uncle Cæcilius. In the delicate matter of his sister Pomponia's differences with her husband Quintus Cicero, he seems to have acted with kindness as well as prudence; and though he married late in life (b.c. 56, when he was in his fifty-third year), he appears to have made an excellent husband to Pilia and a very affectionate father to his daughter. His unwearied sympathy with the varied moods of Cicero—whether of exultation, irritation, or despair—and the entire confidence which Cicero feels that he will have that sympathy in every case, are creditable to both. It is only between sincere souls that one can speak to the other as to a second self, as Cicero often alleges that he does to Atticus.

Quintus Tullius Cicero.

Of Quintus Cicero, the next most important correspondent in this volume, we get a fairly clear picture. Four years younger than his famous brother (b. b.c. 102), he followed him at the due distance up the ladder of official promotion to the prætorship, to which he was elected in the year of his elder's consulship. There, however, Quintus stopped. He never seems to have stood for the consulship. He had no oratorical genius to give him reputation in the forum, nor were his literary productions of any value, either for style or originality. His abilities for administration, as shewn in his three years' government of Asia, appear to have been respectable, but were marred by faults of temper, which too often betrayed him into extreme violence of language. In military command he shewed courage and energy in defending his camp in the rising of the Gauls in the winter of b.c. 54-53; but he spoilt the reputation thus gained by the mistake committed in the autumn of b.c. 53, which cost the loss of a considerable number of troops, and all but allowed the roving Germans to storm his camp. He remained another year in Gaul, but did nothing to retrieve this mistake. In military affairs fortune rarely forgives. In politics he seems to have contented himself generally with saying ditto to his brother. And this continued to be the case up to Pharsalia. After that, finding himself on the losing side, he turned somewhat fiercely upon the brother, whom he regarded as having misled him; and for a time there was a miserable breach between them, which, however, did not last very long. When the end came it found the brothers united in heart as in misfortune. His private happiness was marred by an uncongenial marriage. Pomponia—sister of Atticus—seems to have been as high-tempered as her husband, and less placable. The constant quarrels between them exercised the patience both of Cicero and Atticus, and crops up all through the correspondence. One effect of them was the loss of all control over their son, who, being called upon to smooth over the differences between father and mother, naturally took up at an early age a line of his own, and shewed a disposition to act independently of his elders.

Terentia.

The letters to Terentia do not fill much space in the correspondence, and are rarely interesting. Married about b.c. 80, Cicero seems to have lived in harmony with her at least till the time of his return from exile, during which unhappy period he acknowledges the activity of her exertions in support of his recall, and the drain which his ruin was making upon her resources. Terentia had a large private fortune, and apparently used it liberally in his service. Nevertheless, immediately on his return from exile, there seems to have been some cause of coldness between the husband and wife. He darkly alludes to certain domestic troubles in the first letter to Atticus written from Rome (vol i., p. 189), and repeats the hint in the next (p. 193). When he landed at Brundisium it was Tullia, not Terentia, who came to meet him (p. 187), and for some time after she appears to be presiding in his house rather than Terentia (see pp. 224, 257). Whatever the cause of this coldness was, however, it appears to have been removed for a time. He kept up a correspondence with her while he was in Cilicia (b.c. 51-50), and though he does not seem pleased at her having arranged the marriage of Tullia with Dolabella, he addresses her warmly when about to return, and was met by her on landing. During the five or six months that followed, before Cicero left Italy to join Pompey, there is no indication of any alienation: but the short notes from Pompey's camp, and in the first half of b.c. 47, are cold and conventional, and on his return to Brundisium after Pharsalia, and during his lengthened stay there, he appears to have declined to allow her to come and see him. Soon after his return to Rome, in September, b.c. 47, matters came to a climax. Perhaps some of the mischief was caused by the mismanagement or dishonesty of Terentia's steward, Philotimus, of whom we hear a good deal in the letters from Cilicia: but whatever was the origin of the quarrel, Cicero asserts that on his return he found his affairs in a state of utter disorder. It may well have been that, like other adherents to the losing cause, he had to suffer from loss of any property that could be easily laid hands on in Rome, and that Terentia had had no power to save it. But Cicero, rightly or wrongly, attributed the embarrassment which he found awaiting him to his wife. He says in a letter to Gnæus Plancius:²² "I should not have taken any new step at a time of such general disaster had I not on my return found my private affairs in as sorry a position as the public. The fact is, that when I saw that, owing to the criminal conduct of those to whom my life and fortunes ought, in return for my never-to-be-forgotten services, to have been their dearest object, there was nothing safe within the walls of my house, nothing that was not the subject of some intrigue, I made up my mind that I must arm myself by the faithful support of new marriage connexions against the perfidy of the old." This is a lame excuse for a man of sixty separating from the companion of his whole manhood, and in the eyes of Roman Society it was rendered still more questionable by a prompt marriage with a young girl, rich, and his own ward: from whom, however, he soon again divorced himself, angered, it is said, by her want of feeling at the death of Tullia. Terentia long survived her husband, living, we are told, to be over a hundred years old. Divorce was, of course, not regarded in these days of the Republic as it had once been, or as it is now among ourselves; still we should have been glad, both for his fame and his happiness, if the few years remaining to him had not had this additional cloud. A man of sixty embarking on such matrimonial enterprise is not a dignified spectacle, or one pleasing to gods and men.

The other correspondents may be dismissed in few words.

P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther.

P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, to whom some of the longest letters are addressed, represents the high aristocracy, to which Cicero wished to commend himself, though seeing keenly the weakness which underlay their magnificence. The part played by Lentulus in politics had been showy, but never founded on steadfast principle. He owed his earlier promotions to Cæsar's influence, but in his consulship of b.c. 57 had taken the side of the aristocracy in promoting the recall of Cicero, though he had gone against their sentiment by supporting Pompey's appointment to the cura annonæ. But as he was going to Cilicia in b.c. 56, Lentulus wished to have the lucrative task of restoring Ptolemy Auletes to the throne of Egypt, from which he had been righteously driven by his subjects. Therefore it was all to the good that Pompey should have business at home preventing him from taking this in hand. How Lentulus was baulked in this desire will appear in the letters. He no doubt had his full share of the Lentulitas distinguishing his family. But all was forgiven by Cicero to a man who had promoted his recall, and he takes great pains to justify to Lentulus his own change of policy in regard to the triumvirs after b.c. 56. When the civil war began Lentulus joined Domitius at Corfinium, and with him fell into Cæsar's hands, and was dismissed unharmed. He afterwards joined Pompey in Epirus, intent on succeeding Cæsar as Pontifex Maximus, as soon as the latter had been satisfactorily disposed of. After Pharsalia he sought refuge at Rhodes, but was refused sanctuary by the islanders, and was eventually put to death, though we do not know by whom (Att. xi. 13; Fam. ix. 18).

M. Fadius Gallus, M. Marius, L. Lucceius, C. Scribonius Curio, C. Trebatius Testa.

M. Fadius Gallus, the Epicurean, and M. Marius, the valetudinarian and wit, were among friends valued for their personal and agreeable qualities rather than for any public or political importance attaching to them. The same may be said of L. Lucceius, of whose Roman history Cicero thought so well, that he wrote a remarkable letter begging for an honourable place in it for his consulship, as Pliny did to Tacitus.²³ C. Scribonius Curio, son of a great friend of Cicero, after a jeunesse orageuse, returned to Rome from his quæstorship in Asia, in b.c. 53, to take up the inheritance of his father, which he quickly dissipated. Cicero seems to have had a high idea of his abilities, and to have believed him capable of taking the lead of the Optimates. But in his tribuneship of b.c. 51-50 he disappointed all such hopes by openly joining Cæsar's party, and resisting all attempts to recall him. He joined Cæsar at Ravenna as soon as his tribuneship was out, and urged him to march on Rome. In b.c. 49 he was sent to secure Sicily and Africa. The first he did, but in the second he perished in battle against the senatorial governor and king Iuba. Cicero's relation to C. Trebatius Testa, a learned jurisconsult, was apparently that of a patron or tutor, who, thinking that he has found a young man of ability, endeavours to push him. He sent him with a letter of introduction to Cæsar, who was good-natured, though rather sarcastic as to the scope for legal abilities to be found in Gaul. He gave him, however, a military tribuneship, without exacting military duties, and apparently kept on good terms with him, for he employed him in b.c. 49 to communicate his wish to Cicero as to his remaining at Rome. Cicero's letters to him, though numerous, are not among the most interesting. They are full of banter of a rather forced and dull kind; and Cicero was evidently annoyed to find that his scheme for advancing Trebatius in Cæsar's province had not been very successful. The friendship, however, survived the civil war, and we find Cicero in b.c. 44 dedicating his Topica to Trebatius.

"Tullius, of all the sons of royal Rome
That are, or have been, or are yet to come,
Most skilled to plead, most learned in debate,—
Catullus hails thee, small as thou art great.
Take thou from him his thanks, his fond regards,
The first of patrons from the least of bards."

Catullus, xlix. (J. E. S.)

CICERO'S LETTERS

I (a i, 5)

b.c. 68. Coss., L. Cæcilius Metellus, Q. Marcius Rex.

This opening of the correspondence finds Cicero, now in his thirty-ninth year, in the midst of his official career. He had already been quæstor (b.c. 75) and ædile (b.c. 69), and was looking forward to his election to the prætorship in the next year (b.c. 67). He had already risen almost to the highest place in his profession as advocate, and had partly delivered, partly published his great indictment of Verres only a year ago. He is married to Terentia (b.c. 80), and has one daughter, Tullia or Tulliola, born on August 5, probably the next year (b.c. 79). His intimacy with T. Pomponius Atticus (three years his senior), perhaps begun at school, had lasted at least eleven years, from the time when he met him at Athens (b.c. 79), and with him had been initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries (de Leg. 2, § 36). There too they had both seen much of the writer's cousin Lucius, whose death he deplores in this letter (de Fin. 5, § 1). Atticus had lived abroad in Athens and Epirus, with occasional visits home from b.c. 88 to b.c. 65, in which latter year he seems to have returned for a more lengthened stay (Nep. Att. 4). The two friends have already corresponded frequently, but this is the first letter preserved.

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)
Rome

b.c. 68, æt. 38

We are such intimate friends that more than almost anyone else you can appreciate the grief as well as the actual public and private loss that the death of my cousin Lucius is to me. There is absolutely no gratification which any human being can receive from the kindly character of another that I have not been accustomed to receive from him. I am sure, therefore, that you will share my grief. For, in the first place, whatever affects me affects you; and in the second place, you have yourself lost in him a friend and connexion of the highest character and most obliging disposition, who was attached to you from personal inclination, as well as from my conversation.

As to what you say in your letter about your sister,²⁴ she will herself bear me witness what pains I have taken that my brother Quintus should show her proper affection. Thinking him somewhat inclined to be angry with her, I wrote to him in such a way as I thought would not hurt his feelings as a brother, while giving him some good advice as my junior, and remonstrating with him as being in the wrong. The result is that, from frequent letters since received from him, I feel confident that everything is as it ought and as we should wish it to be.

As to the frequency of my letters you have no ground for your complaint. The fact is our good sister Pomponia never informed me of there being a courier ready to take a letter. Farthermore, I never chanced to know of anyone going to Epirus,²⁵ and I was not till recently informed of your being at Athens.

Again, as to the business of Acutilius which you had left in my hands. I had settled it on my first visit to Rome after your departure. But it turned out that, in the first place, there was no urgency in the matter, and, in the second place, as I felt confidence in your judgment, I preferred that Peducæus²⁶ rather than myself should advise you by letter on the subject. For having submitted my ears to Acutilius for several days (and I think you know his style), I should scarcely have regarded it as a hardship to write you a letter describing his grumblings after patiently enduring the bore (and it was rather a bore, I can tell you) of hearing them. Moreover, though you find fault with me, allow me to observe that I have had only one letter from you, though you had greater leisure for writing, and more opportunity of sending letters.

As to what you say in your letter, "Even if anyone is inclined to be offended with you, I ought to bring him to a better mind"—I understand to what you allude, and I have not neglected the matter. But the truth is that the extent of his displeasure is something surprising. However, I have not omitted to say anything there was to say in your behalf: but on what points I am to hold out your wishes, I consider, ought to be my guide. If you will write me word distinctly what they are, you will find that I have had no desire to be more exacting, and in the future shall be no more yielding, than you wish.²⁷

As to the business of Tadius. He tells me that you have written him word that there was no need of farther trouble, since the property is secured by prescription. I am surprised that you do not know that in the case of a statutory wardship of an unmarried girl prescription cannot be pleaded.²⁸

I am glad you like your purchase in Epirus. What I commissioned you to get for me, and anything you see suitable to my Tusculan villa, I should be glad if you will, as you say in your letter, procure for me, only don't put yourself to any inconvenience. The truth is, there is no other place that gives me complete rest after all my worries and hard work.

I am expecting my brother Quintus every day. Terentia has a severe attack of rheumatism. She is devoted to you, to your sister, and your mother, and adds her kindest regards in a postscript. So does my pet Tulliola. Love me, and be assured that I love you as a brother.

II (a i, 6)

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)
Rome, December

b.c. 68, æt. 38

I won't give you any excuse hereafter for accusing me of neglecting to write. It is you that must take care that with all your leisure you keep up with me.

Rabirius's house at Naples,²⁹for the improvement of which you have designs drawn out and completed in imagination, has been bought by M. Fonteius³⁰ for 130,000 sesterces (about £1,040). I wished you to know this in case you were still hankering after it.

We may be quite satisfied, I think, with my brother's feelings towards Pomponia. He is with her at present in his villa at Arpinum, and has Decimus Turanius with him, who is great in belles lettres.

The date of my father's death was the 28th of November.

That is about all my news. If you light on any articles of vertu suitable for a gymnasium, which would look well in the place you wot of,³¹ please don't let them slip. I am so delighted with my Tusculan villa that I never feel really happy till I get there. Let me know exactly what you are doing and intending to do about everything.

III (a i, 7)

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)
Rome, December

b.c. 68, æt. 38

All's well at your mother's,³² and I keep an eye on her. I have undertaken to pay L. Cincius 20,400 sesterces³³ to your credit on the Ides of February. Pray see that I receive at the earliest possible opportunity what you say in your letters that you have bought and secured for me. I should also be very much obliged if you would, as you promised, think over the means of securing the library for me. My hope of getting the one enjoyment which I care for, when I come to retire, depends entirely on your kindness.

IV (a i, 9)

b.c. 67. Coss., C. Calpurnius Piso, M. Acilius Glabrio.

The year of Cicero's election to the prætorship. It is the year also of Pompey's great commission by the lex Gabinia against the Pirates. But Cicero does not seem as yet much concerned with "foreign politics."

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)
Rome

b.c. 67, æt. 39

I get letters from you far too seldom considering that you can much more easily find people starting for Rome than I to Athens: considering, too, that you are more certain of my being at Rome than I of your being at Athens. For instance, it is owing to this uncertainty on my part that this very letter is somewhat short, because not being sure as to where you are, I don't choose my confidential talk to fall into strange hands. The Megaric statues and the Hermæ, which you mentioned in your letters, I am waiting for impatiently. Anything you have of the same kind which may strike you as worthy of my "Academia," do not hesitate to send, and have complete confidence in my money-chest. My present delight is to pick up anything particularly suitable to a "gymnasium." Lentulus promises the use of his ships. I beg you to be zealous in these matters. Thyillus begs you (and I also at his request) to get him some writings of the Eumolpidæ.³⁴

V (a i, 8)

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)
Rome

b.c. 67, æt. 39

All well at your house. Your mother and sister are regarded with affection by me and my brother Quintus. I have spoken to Acutilius. He says that he has not heard from his agent, and professes surprise that you should make any difficulty of his having refused to guarantee you against farther demands. As to the business of Tadius, the announcement in your letter that you have settled the matter out of court I saw gratified and pleased him very much. That friend of mine³⁵—a most excellent man, upon my honour, and most warmly attached to me—is very angry with you. If I could but know how much you care about it, I should be able to decide how much trouble I am to take in the matter. I have paid L. Cincius the 20,400 sesterces for the Megaric statues in accordance with your letter to me. As to your Hermæ of Pentelic marble with bronze heads, about which you wrote to me—I have fallen in love with them on the spot. So pray send both them and the statues, and anything else that may appear to you to suit the place you wot of, my passion, and your taste—as large a supply and as early as possible. Above all, anything you think appropriate to a gymnasium and terrace. I have such a passion for things of this sort that while I expect assistance from you, I must expect something like rebuke from others. If Lentulus has no vessel there, put them on board anyone you please. My pet Tulliola claims your present and duns me as your security. I am resolved, however, to disown the obligation rather than pay up for you.

VI (a i, 10)

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)
Tusculum

b.c. 67, æt. 39

"Being in my Tusculan villa" (that's for your "being in the Ceramicus")—however, I being there, a courier sent by your sister arrived from Rome and delivered me a letter from you, announcing at the same time that the courier who was going to you started that very afternoon. The result is that, though I do send an answer, I am forced by the shortness of the time to write only these few words. First, as to softening my friend's feeling towards you, or even reconciling him outright, I pledge you my word to do so. Though I have been attempting it already on my own account, I will now urge the point more earnestly and press him closer, as I think I gather from your letter that you are so set upon it. This much I should like you to realize, that he is very deeply offended; but since I cannot see any serious ground for it, I feel confident that he will do as I wish and yield to my influence. As for my statues and Hermeracles, pray put them on board, as you say in your letter, at your very earliest convenience, and anything else you light upon that may seem to you appropriate to the place you wot of, especially anything you think suitable to a palæstra and gymnasium. I say this because I am sitting there as I write, so that the very place itself reminds me. Besides these, I commission you to get me some medallions to let into the walls of my little entrance-court, and two engraved stone-curbs. Mind you don't engage your library to anyone, however keen a lover you may find; for I am hoarding up my little savings expressly to secure that resource for my old age. As to my brother, I trust that all is as I have ever wished and tried to make it. There are many signs of that result—not least that your sister is enceinte. As for my election, I don't forget that I left the question entirely to you, and I have all along been telling our common friends that I have not only not asked you to come, but have positively forbidden you to do so, because I understood that it was much more important to you to carry through the business you have now in hand, than it is to me to have you at my election. I wish you therefore to feel as though you had been sent to where you are in my interests. Nay, you will find me feeling towards you, and hear of it from others, exactly as though my success were obtained not only in your presence, but by your direct agency.

Tulliola gives notice of action against you. She is dunning me as your surety.

VII (a i, 11)

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)
Rome

b.c. 67, æt. 39

I was doing so before spontaneously, and have been since greatly stirred by your two letters, with their earnest expressions to the same effect. Besides, Sallustius has been always at my side to prompt me to spare no pains to induce Lucceius to be reconciled to you. But after doing everything that could be done, not only did I fail to renew his old feelings towards you, but I could not even succeed in eliciting the reason of his alienation. On his part, however, he keeps harping on that arbitration case of his, and the other matters which I knew very well before you left Rome were causing him offence. Still, he has certainly got something else fixed deeper in his mind; and this no letters from you, and no commissioning of me will obliterate as easily as you will do in a personal interview, I don't mean merely by your words, but by the old familiar expression of your face—if only you think it worth while, as you will if you will listen to me, and be willing to act with your habitual kindness. Finally, you need not wonder why it is that, whereas I intimated in my letters that I felt hopeful of his yielding to my influence, I now appear to have no such confidence; for you can scarcely believe how much more stubborn his sentiment appears to me than I expected, and how much more obstinate he is in this anger. However, all this will either be cured when you come, or will only be painful to the party in fault.

As to the sentence in your letter, "you suppose by this time I am prætor-elect," let me tell you that there is no class of people at Rome so harassed by every kind of unreasonable difficulty as candidates for office; and that no one knows when the elections will be.³⁶ However, you will hear all this from Philadelphus. Pray despatch at the earliest opportunity what you have bought for my "Academia." I am surprisingly delighted with the mere thought of that place, to say nothing of its actual occupation. Mind also not to let anyone else have your books. Reserve them, as you say in your letter, for me. I am possessed with the utmost longing for them, as I am with a loathing for affairs of every other kind, which you will find in an incredibly worse position than when you left them.³⁷

VIII (a i, 3)

b.c. 66. Coss., M. Æmilius Lepidus, L. Volcatius Tullus.

In this year Cicero was prætor, and delivered his first extant public speech (apud populum) in support of the lex Manilia, which gave Pompey the command in the Mithridatic War with the provinces of Asia and Bithynia. The strict Optimates opposed it. Cicero supported it on the grounds of the importance of the war and the proofs Pompey had already given of military ability, courage, personal prestige, and good fortune. He takes occasion to point out the mischief done to the Roman name by oppressive or fraudulent governors and imperators. In this same year he delivered one of his ablest speeches in court in defending A. Cluentius Habitus on a charge of poisoning. At the consular elections this year the two first elected were disabled for bribery.

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)
Rome, January

b.c. 66, æt. 40

I have to inform you of the death of your grandmother from pining at your long absence, and at the same time because she was afraid that the Latin towns would revolt and fail to bring the victims up the Alban Mount. I presume that L. Saufeius will send you a letter of condolence on the subject.³⁸ I am expecting you here in the course of January—is it a mere rumour or does it come from letters of yours to others? For to me you have not mentioned the subject. The statues which you got for me have been landed at Caieta. I haven't seen them, for I have been unable to leave Rome. I have sent a man to clear the freightage. I am exceedingly obliged to you for having taken so much trouble to get them, and so reasonably. As to your frequent remarks in your letters about pacifying my friend, I have done everything I could and tried every expedient; but he is inveterate against you to a surprising degree, on what suspicions, though I think you have been told, you shall yet learn from me when you come. I failed to restore Sallustius³⁹ to his old place in his affections, and yet he was on the spot. I tell you this because the latter used to find fault with me in regard to you. Well, he has found by personal experience that he is not so easy to pacify, and that on my part no zeal has been lacking either on his or your behalf. I have betrothed Tulliola to C. Piso Frugi, son of Lucius.⁴⁰

IX (a i, 4)

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)
Rome

b.c. 65, æt. 41

You keep on making me expect you again and again. Only the other day, when I thought you on the point of arriving, I was suddenly put off by you till Quintilis (July). Now, however, I do think that you should come at the time you mention if you possibly can. You will thereby be in time for my brother Quintus's election, will pay me a long-deferred visit, and will settle the dispute with Acutilius. This latter Peducæus also suggested my mentioning to you, for I think it is full time that you settled that affair. My good offices are at your service and always have been so. Here at Rome I have conducted the case of Gaius Macer with a popular approval surpassing belief and unparalleled. Though I had been inclined to take a lenient view of his case, yet I gained much more substantial advantage from the popular approval on his condemnation than I should have got from his gratitude if he had been acquitted.⁴¹ I am very glad to hear what you say about the Hermathena. It is an ornament appropriate to my "Academia" for two reasons: Hermes is a sign common to all gymnasia, Minerva specially of this particular one. So I would have you, as you say, adorn the place with the other objects also, and the more the better. The statues which you sent me before I have not yet seen. They are in my villa at Formiæ, whither I am at this moment thinking of going. I shall get them all transferred to my Tusculan villa. If I find myself with more than I want there I shall begin adorning Caieta. Please reserve your books, and don't despair of my being able to make them mine. If I succeed in that, I am superior to Crassus in wealth and look down on everybody's manors and pastures.⁴²

X (a i, 1)

b.c. 65. Coss., L. Aurelius Cotta, L. Manlius Torquatus.

The election to the consulship is not till the next year (b.c. 64), but Cicero is already making preparation for it, and looking out for support. In July his only son was born. He does not refer to the so-called "first Catilinarian conspiracy," but mentions Catiline as a possible competitor, and even contemplates defending him on some charge brought against him to prevent his standing for the consulship.

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)
Rome, July

b.c. 65, æt. 41

The state of things in regard to my candidature, in which I know that you are supremely interested, is this, as far as can be as yet conjectured. The only person actually canvassing is P. Sulpicius Galba.⁴³ He meets with a good old-fashioned refusal without reserve or disguise. In the general opinion this premature canvass of his is not unfavourable to my interests; for the voters generally give as a reason for their refusal that they are under obligations to me. So I hope my prospects are to a certain degree improved by the report getting about that my friends are found to be numerous. My intention was to begin my own canvass just at the very time that Cincius⁴⁴ tells me that your servant starts with this letter, namely, in the campus at the time of the tribunician elections on the 17th of July. My fellow candidates, to mention only those who seem certain, are Galba and Antonius and Q. Cornificius.⁴⁵ At this I imagine you smiling or sighing. Well, to make you positively smite your forehead, there are people who actually think that Cæsonius⁴⁶ will stand. I don't think Aquilius will, for he openly disclaims it and has alleged as an excuse his health and his leading position at the bar. Catiline will certainly be a candidate, if you can imagine a jury finding that the sun does not shine at noon. As for Aufidius and Palicanus,⁴⁷ I don't think you will expect to hear from me about them. Of the candidates for this year's election Cæsar is considered certain. Thermus is looked upon as the rival of Silanus.⁴⁸ These latter are so weak both in friends and reputation that it seems pas impossible to bring in Curius over their heads. But no one else thinks so. What seems most to my interests is that Thermus should get in with Cæsar. For there is none of those at present canvassing who, if left over to my year, seems likely to be a stronger candidate, from the fact that he is commissioner of the via Flaminia, and when that has been finished, I shall be greatly relieved to have seen him elected consul this election.⁴⁹ Such in outline is the position of affairs in regard to candidates up to date. For myself I shall take the greatest pains to carry out all the duties of a candidate, and perhaps, as Gaul seems to have a considerable voting power, as soon as business at Rome has come to a standstill I shall obtain a libera legatio and make an excursion in the course of September to visit Piso,⁵⁰ but so as not to be back later than January. When I have ascertained the feelings of the nobility I will write you word. Everything else I hope will go smoothly, at any rate while my competitors are such as are now in town. You must undertake to secure for me the entourage of our friend Pompey, since you are nearer than I. Tell him I shall not be annoyed if he doesn't come to my election.⁵¹ So much for that business. But there is a matter for which I am very anxious that you should forgive me. Your uncle Cæcilius having been defrauded of a large sum of money by P. Varius, began an action against his cousin A. Caninius Satyrus for the property which (as he alleged) the latter had received from Varius by a collusive sale. He was joined in this action by the other creditors, among whom were Lucullus and P. Scipio, and the man whom they thought would be official receiver if the property was put up for sale, Lucius Pontius; though it is ridiculous to be talking about a receiver at this stage in the proceedings. Cæcilius asked me to appear for him against Satyrus. Now, scarcely a day passes that Satyrus does not call at my house. The chief object of his attentions is L. Domitius,⁵² but I am next in his regard. He has been of great service both to myself and to my brother Quintus in our elections. I was very much embarrassed by my intimacy with Satyrus as well as that with Domitius, on whom the success of my election depends more than on anyone else. I pointed out these facts to Cæcilius; at the same time I assured him that if the case had been one exclusively between himself and Satyrus, I would have done what he wished. As the matter actually stood, all the creditors being concerned—and that too men of the highest rank, who, without the aid of anyone specially retained by Cæcilius, would have no difficulty in maintaining their common cause—it was only fair that he should have consideration both for my private friendship and my present situation. He seemed to take this somewhat less courteously than I could have wished, or than is usual among gentlemen; and from that time forth he has entirely withdrawn from the intimacy with me, which was only of a few day's standing.⁵³ Pray forgive me, and believe that I was prevented by nothing but natural kindness from assailing the reputation of a friend in so vital a point at a time of such very great distress, considering that he had shewn me every sort of kindness and attention. But if you incline to the harsher view of my conduct, take it that the interests of my canvass prevented me. Yet, even granting that to be so, I think you should pardon me, "since not for sacred beast or oxhide shield."⁵⁴ You see in fact the position I am in, and how necessary I regard it, not only to retain but even to acquire all possible sources of popularity. I hope I have justified myself in your eyes, I am at any rate anxious to have done so. The Hermathena you sent I am delighted with: it has been placed with such charming effect that the whole gymnasium seems arranged specially for it.⁵⁵ I am exceedingly obliged to you.

XI (a i, 2)

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)
Rome, July

b.c. 65, æt. 41

I have to inform you that on the day of the election of L. Iulius Cæsar and C. Marcius Figulus to the consulship, I had an addition to my family in the shape of a baby boy. Terentia doing well.

Why such a time without a letter from you? I have already written to you fully about my circumstances. At this present time I am considering whether to undertake the defence of my fellow candidate, Catiline.⁵⁶ We have a jury to our minds with full consent of the prosecutor. I hope that if he is acquitted he will be more closely united with me in the conduct of our canvass; but if the result be otherwise I shall bear it with resignation. Your early return is of great importance to me, for there is a very strong idea prevailing that some intimate friends of yours, persons of high rank, will be opposed to my election. To win me their favour I see that I shall want you very much. Wherefore be sure to be in Rome in January, as you have agreed to be.

b.c. 62. Coss., D. Iunius Silanus, L. Licinius Murena.

We have no letters to or from Cicero in the years b.c. 64 and 63,⁵⁷ partly, no doubt, because Atticus was in Rome a great deal during these years. We take up the correspondence, therefore, after an interval of two years, which in many respects were the most important in Cicero's life. In b.c. 64 he attained his chief ambition by being elected to the consulship, but we have little trace of his public actions that year, only the fragments of one speech remaining, in defence of Q. Gallius on a charge of ambitus. The animus of the popular party, however, is shewn by the prosecution of some surviving partisans of Sulla on charges of homicide, among them Catiline, who by some means escaped conviction (Dio, xxxvii. 10). In the year of the consulship (b.c. 63) some of Cicero's most important speeches were delivered. The three on the agrarian proposals of Rullus present him to us for the first time as discussing an important question of home politics, the disposal of the ager publicus, a question which had become again prominent owing to the great additions made to it by the confiscations of Sulla. He also defended C. Rabirius, prosecuted by Iulius Cæsar for the murder of Saturninus as long ago as b.c. 100, and later in the year defended Murena on a charge of ambitus. Finally, the three Catilinarian speeches illustrate the event which coloured the whole of Cicero's life. In b.c. 62 his brother Quintus was prætor and Cicero defended in his court P. Sulla, accused of complicity with Catiline. On the 29th of December (b.c. 63) the tribune Q. Cæcilius Metellus Nepos prevented Cicero from making a speech when laying down his consulship, and went on to propose summoning Pompey to Rome, "to protect the lives of the citizens." This led to scenes of violence, and Metellus fled to Pompey, who reached Italy late in the year b.c. 62 from the East.

XII (f v, 7)

TO CN. POMPEIUS MAGNUS
Rome

M. Tullius Cicero, son of Marcus, greets Cn. Pompeius, son of Cneius, Imperator

b.c. 62. æt. 44

If you and the army are well I shall be glad. From your official despatch I have, in common with everyone else, received the liveliest satisfaction; for you have given us that strong hope of peace, of which, in sole reliance on you, I was assuring everyone. But I must inform you that your old enemies—now posing as your friends—have received a stunning blow by this despatch, and, being disappointed in the high hopes they were entertaining, are thoroughly depressed. Though your private letter to me contained a somewhat slight expression of your affection, yet I can assure you it gave me pleasure: for there is nothing in which I habitually find greater satisfaction than in the consciousness of serving my friends; and if on any occasion I do not meet with an adequate return, I am not at all sorry to have the balance of kindness in my favour. Of this I feel no doubt—even if my extraordinary zeal in your behalf has failed to unite you to me—that the interests of the state will certainly effect a mutual attachment and coalition between us. To let you know, however, what I missed in your letter I will write with the candour which my own disposition and our common friendship demand. I did expect some congratulation in your letter on my achievements, for the sake at once of the ties between us and of the Republic. This I presume to have been omitted by you from a fear of hurting anyone's feelings. But let me tell you that what I did for the salvation of the country is approved by the judgment and testimony of the whole world. You are a much greater man than Africanus, but I am not much inferior to Lælius either; and when you come home you will recognize that I have acted with such prudence and spirit, that you will not be ashamed of being coupled with me in politics as well as in private friendship.

XIII (f v, i)

Q. METELLUS CELER TO CICERO
Cisalpine Gaul

Q. Metellus Celer, son of Quintus, proconsul, greets M. Tullius Cicero. ⁵⁸

b.c. 62. æt. 44

If you are well I am glad. I had thought, considering our mutual regard and the reconciliation effected between us, that I was not likely to be held up to ridicule in my absence, nor my brother attacked by you in his civil existence and property for the sake of a mere word. If his own high character was not a sufficient protection to him, yet either the position of our family, or my own loyal conduct to you and the Republic, ought to have been sufficient to support him. As it is, I see that he has been ruined and I abandoned by the last people in the world who ought to have done so. I am accordingly in sorrow and wearing mourning dress, while actually in command of a province and army and conducting a war. And seeing that your conduct in this affair has neither been reasonable nor in accordance with the milder methods of old times, you must not be surprised if you live to repent it. I did not expect to find you so fickle towards me and mine. For myself, meanwhile, neither family sorrow nor ill-treatment by any individual shall withdraw me from the service of the state.

XIV (f v, 2)

TO Q. METELLUS (IN CISALPINE GAUL)
Rome

M. Tullius, son of Marcus, to Q. Metellus Celer, son of Quintus, proconsul, wishes health

b.c. 62, æt. 44

If you and the army are well I shall be glad. You say in your letter that you "thought, considering our mutual regard and the reconciliation effected between us, that you were not likely to be held up to ridicule by me." To what you refer I do not clearly understand, but I suspect that you have been informed that, while arguing in the senate that there were many who were annoyed at my having saved the state, I said that your relations, whose wishes you had been unable to withstand, had induced you to pass over in silence what you had made up your mind you ought to say in the senate in my praise. But while saying so I also added this—that the duty of supporting the Republic had been so divided between us that I was defending the city from internal treachery and the crime of its own citizens, you Italy from armed enemies and covert conspiracy;⁵⁹ yet that this association in a task so noble and so glorious had been imperilled by your relations, who, while you had been complimented by me in the fullest and most laudatory terms, had been afraid of any display of mutual regard on your part being put to my credit. As this sentence betrayed how much I had looked forward to your speech, and how mistaken I had been in that expectation, my speech caused some amusement, and was received with a moderate amount of laughter; but the laugh was not against you, it was rather at my mistake, and at the open and naïve confession of my eagerness to be commended by you. Surely it cannot but be a compliment to you that in the hour of my greatest triumph and glory I yet wished for some testimony of approval from your lips. As to your expression, "considering our mutual regard"—I don't know your idea of what is "mutual" in friendship; mine is an equal interchange of good feeling. Now if I were to mention that I passed over a province for your sake, you might think me somewhat insincere; for, in point of fact, it suited my convenience, and I feel more and more every day of my life the advantage and pleasure which I have received from that decision. But this I do say—the moment I had announced in public meeting my refusal of a province, I began at once thinking how I might hand it on to you. I say nothing as to the circumstances of your allotment: I only wish you to suspect that nothing was done in that matter by my colleague without my cognizance. Recall the other circumstances: how promptly I summoned the senate on that day after the lots had been drawn, at what a length I spoke about you. You yourself said at the time that my speech was not merely complimentary to you, but absolutely a reflexion on your colleagues. Farther, the decree of the senate passed on that day has such a preamble that, so long as it is extant, there can never be any doubt of my services to you. Subsequently, when you had gone out of town, I would have you recall my motions in the senate, my speeches in public meetings, my letters to yourself. And having reviewed all these together, I would like you to judge yourself whether you think that your approach to Rome the last time you came quite shewed an adequate return for all these services.⁶⁰ Again, as to your expression, "the reconciliation effected between us"—I do not understand why you speak of "reconciliation" in the case of a friendship that had never been broken. As to what you say, that your brother Metellus ought not "to have been attacked by me for a mere word," in the first place I would like to assure you that your feeling and fraternal partiality—so full of human kindness and natural affection—meet with my warmest approbation; in the next place I must claim your indulgence if I have in any matter opposed your brother in the interests of the Republic, for my devotion to the Republic is paramount. If, however, it is my personal safety that I have defended against a most ruthless assault of his, I think you should be content that I make no complaint even to you of your brother's injurious conduct. Now, when I had become aware that he was deliberately making every preparation to use his tribunician office to my ruin, I appealed to your wife Claudia⁶¹ and your sister Mucia⁶² (of whose kindness to me for the sake of my friendship with Pompey I had satisfied myself by many instances) to deter him from that injurious conduct. And yet, as I am sure you have heard, on the last day of December he inflicted upon me—a consul and the preserver of my country—an indignity such as was never inflicted upon the most disloyal citizen in the humblest office: that is to say, he deprived me when laying down my office of the privilege of addressing the people—an indignity, however, which after all redounded to my honour. For, upon his forbidding me to do anything but take the oath, I pronounced an oath at once the most absolutely true and the most glorious in a loud voice—an oath which the people swore also in a loud voice to be absolutely true. Though I had actually suffered this signal indignity, I yet on that same day sent common friends to Metellus to persuade him to alter his resolution; to whom he answered that he was no longer free to do so. And, in fact, a short time previously he had said in a public meeting that a man who had punished others without trial ought not himself to be allowed the privilege of speech. What a model of consistency! What an admirable citizen! So he deemed the man who had saved the senate from massacre, the city from the incendiary, Italy from war, deserving of the same penalty as that inflicted by the senate, with the unanimous approval of all loyal citizens, upon those who had intended to set fire to the city, butcher magistrates and senate, and stir up a formidable war! Accordingly, I did withstand your brother Metellus to his face: for on the 1st of January, in the senate, I maintained a debate with him on the state of the Republic, such as taught him that he had to contend with a man of courage and firmness. On the 3rd of January,⁶³ on again opening the debate, he kept harping on me and threatening me at every third word of his speech; nor could any intention be more deliberate than his was to overthrow me by any means in his power, not by calm and judicial argument, but by violence and mere browbeating. If I had not shewn some boldness and spirit in opposing his intemperate attack, would not everyone have concluded that the courage I had displayed in my consulship was the result of accident rather than design? If you did not know that Metellus was contemplating these measures in regard to me, you must consider that you have been kept in the dark by your brother on matters of the utmost importance: if, on the other hand, he did intrust any part of his designs to you, then surely I ought to be regarded by you as a man of placable and reasonable temper for not addressing a word of reproach to you even on such occurrences as these. Understanding then that it was by no "mere word" (as you express it) of Metellus that I was roused, but by his deliberate policy and extraordinary animosity towards me, next observe my forbearance—if "forbearance" is the name to be given to irresolution and laxity under a most galling indignity. I never once delivered a vote in a speech against your brother: every time a motion was before the house I assented without rising to those whose proposal appeared to me to be the mildest. I will also add that, though in the circumstances there was no obligation upon me to do so, yet so far from raising objections I actually did my best to secure that my enemy, because he was your brother, should be relieved from penalties by a decree of the senate.⁶⁴ Wherefore I have not "attacked" your brother, but only defended myself from your brother's attack; nor have I been "fickle" (to quote your word), but, on the contrary, so constant, that I remained faithful to my friendship to you, though left without any sign of kindness from you. For instance, at this moment, though your letter amounts almost to a threat, I am writing back an answer such as you see. I not only pardon your vexation, I even applaud it in the highest degree; for my own heart tells me how strong is the influence of fraternal affection. I ask you in your turn to put a liberal construction upon my vexation, and to conclude that when attacked by your relatives with bitterness, with brutality, and without cause, I not only ought not to retract anything, but, in a case of that kind, should even be able to rely upon the aid of yourself and your army. I have always wished to have you as a friend: I have taken pains to make you understand that I am a warm friend to you. I abide by that sentiment, and shall abide by it as long as you will let me; and I shall more readily cease to be angry with your brother for love of you, than I shall from anger with him abate in the smallest degree my kindness for you.

XV (f v, 6)

TO P. SESTIUS ⁶⁵ (IN MACEDONIA)
Rome, December

b.c. 62, æt. 44

Decius the copyist has been to see me, and begged me to try and secure that no successor should be appointed to you this turn. Though I regarded him as a man of good character and attached to you, yet, remembering the tenor of your previous letter to me, I could not feel certain that the wishes of a cautious man of the world like yourself had undergone so complete a change. But after your wife Cornelia had called on Terentia, and I had had a conversation with Q. Cornelius, I took care to be present at every meeting of the senate, and found that the greatest trouble was to make Fufius the tribune, and the others to whom you had written, believe me rather than your own letters. The whole business has, after all, been postponed till January, but there is no difficulty about it. Roused by your congratulations—for in a letter sometime ago you wished me good luck on the completion of my purchase of a house from Crassus—I have bought that very house for 3,500 sestertia (about £28,000), a good while subsequent to your congratulation. Accordingly, you may now look upon me as being so deeply in debt as to be eager to join a conspiracy if anyone would admit me! But, partly from personal dislike they shut their doors in my face and openly denounce me as the punisher of conspiracy, partly are incredulous and afraid that I am setting a trap for them! Nor do they suppose that a man can be short of money who has relieved the money-lenders from a state of siege. In point of fact, money is plentiful at six per cent., and the success of my measures has caused me to be regarded as a good security. Your own house, and all the details of its construction, I have examined and strongly approve. As for Antonius,⁶⁶ though everyone notices his want of attention to my interests, I have nevertheless defended him in the senate with the utmost earnestness and persistence, and have made a strong impression on the senate by my language as well as by my personal prestige. Pray write to me more frequently.

XVI (a i, 12)

b.c. 61. Coss., M. Papius Piso, M. Valerius Messalla.

The letters of this year are much concerned with the sacrilege of P. Clodius, who, it was alleged, had been detected in disguise in the house of the Pontifex Maximus Iulius Cæsar, when his wife was celebrating the mysteries of the Bona Dea, from which males were excluded. His trial was made the occasion of bitter party struggles, and by giving evidence in contradiction of Clodius's alibi Cicero incurred his enmity, and eventually, therefore, his own exile. Quintus is proprætor in Asia, Cæsar in Spain. Pompey reached Rome early this year. The ordo equester is much irritated with the senate on the question of the contracts for the collection of the Asiatic taxes.

TO ATTICUS (IN EPIRUS)
Rome, 1 January

b.c. 61, æt. 45

The Teucris⁶⁷ business hangs fire, and Cornelius has not called on Terentia since. I suppose I must have recourse to Considius, Axius, and Selicius:⁶⁸ for his nearest relations can't get a penny out of Cæcilius⁶⁹ under twelve per cent. But to return to my first remark: I never saw anything more shameless, artful, and dilatory. "I am on the point of sending my freedman," "I have commissioned Titus"—excuses and delays at every turn! But perhaps it is a case of l'homme propose,⁷⁰ for Pompey's advance couriers tell me that he means to move in the senate that a successor to Antonius ought to be named, and the prætor intends to bring the proposal before the people at the same time. The facts are such that I cannot defend him in view of the opinion either of the aristocrats or the people, and, what is more than anything else, that I have no wish to do so. For a thing has happened into the truth of which I charge you to look thoroughly. I have a freedman, who is a worthless fellow enough; I mean Hilarus, an accountant and a client of your own. The interpreter Valerius gives me this information about him, and Thyillus writes me word that he has been told the same story: that the fellow is with Antonius, and that Antonius, in exacting money payments, frequently remarks that a part is being collected for me, and that I have sent a freedman to look after our common interests. I felt exceedingly disturbed, and yet could not believe it; but at any rate there has been some gossip of the sort. Pray look into the whole matter, learn the truth, find out the author, and get the empty-headed idiot out of the country, if you possibly can. Valerius mentions Cn. Plancius as the origin of this gossip. I trust you thoroughly to investigate and find out what is at the bottom of it. I have good reason to believe that Pompey is most kindly disposed to me. His divorce of Mucia is strongly approved.⁷¹ I suppose you have heard that P. Clodius, son of Appius, was caught in woman's clothes at Gaius Cæsar's house, while the state function was going on, and that he was saved and got out by means of a maid-servant; and that the affair is causing immense scandal. I feel sure you will be sorry for it.⁷² I have nothing else to tell you. And, indeed, at the moment of writing, I am in considerable distress: for a delightful youth, my reader Sosthenes, has just died, and his death has affected me more than that of a slave should, I think, do. Pray write often. If you have no news, write just what comes uppermost.

1 January, in the consulship of M. Messalla and M. Piso.

XVII (f v, 5)

TO C. ANTONIUS (IN MACEDONIA)
Rome, January

M. Cicero wishes health to Gaius Antonius, son of Marcus, Imperator

b.c. 61, æt. 45

Though I had resolved to write you nothing but formal letters of introduction (not because I felt that they had much weight with you, but to avoid giving those who asked me for them an idea that there had been any diminution in our friendship), yet since Titus Pomponius is starting for your province, who knows better than anyone else all that I feel and have done for you, who desires your friendship and is most devotedly attached to me, I thought I must write something, especially as I had no other way of satisfying Pomponius himself. Were I to ask from you services of the greatest moment, it ought not to seem surprising to anyone: for you have not wanted from me any that concerned your interests, honour, or position. That no return has been made by you for these you are the best witness: that something even of a contrary nature has proceeded from you I have been told by many. I say "told," for I do not venture to say "discovered,"⁷³ lest I should chance to use the word which people tell me is often falsely attributed to me by you. But the story which has reached my ears I would prefer your learning from Pomponius (who was equally hurt by it) rather than from my letter. How singularly loyal my feelings have been to you the senate and Roman people are both witnesses. How far you have been grateful to me you may yourself estimate: how much you owe me the rest of the world estimates. I was induced to do what I did for you at first by affection, and afterwards by consistency. Your future, believe me, stands in need of much greater zeal on my part, greater firmness and greater labour.⁷⁴ These labours, unless it shall appear that I am throwing away and wasting my pains, I shall support with all the strength I have; but if I see that they are not appreciated, I shall not allow you—the very person benefited⁷⁵—to think me a fool for my pains. What the meaning of all this is you will be able to learn from Pomponius. In commending Pomponius to you, although I am sure you will do anything in your power for his own sake, yet I do beg that if you have any affection for me left, you will display it all in Pomponius's business. You can do me no greater favour than that.

XVIII (a 1, 13)

TO ATTICUS (IN EPIRUS)
Rome, 27 January

b.c. 61, æt. 45

I have now received three letters from you—one by the hands of M. Cornelius, which you gave him, I think, at Three Taverns; a second which your host at Canusium delivered to me; a third dated, according to you, from on board your pinnace, when the cable was already slipped.⁷⁶ They were all three, to use a phrase from the schools of rhetoric flavoured with the salt of learning, and illumined with the marks of affection. In these letters, indeed, I am urgently pressed by you to send answers, but what renders me rather dilatory in this respect is the difficulty of finding a trustworthy carrier. How few of these gentry are able to convey a letter rather weightier than usual without lightening it by skimming its contents! Besides, I do not always care to send⁷⁷ whenever anyone is starting for Epirus: for I suppose that, having offered victims before your Amaltheia,⁷⁸ you at once started for the siege of Sicyon. And yet I am not even certain when you start to visit Antonius or how much time you are devoting to Epirus. Accordingly, I don't venture to trust either Achæans or Epirotes with a letter somewhat more outspoken than usual. Now some events have occurred since you left me worth my writing to you, but they must not be trusted to the risk of a letter being lost, opened, or intercepted.

Well, then, to begin with: I was not called upon to speak first, and the pacifier of the Allobroges⁷⁹ was preferred to me, and though this met with some murmurs of disapprobation from the senate, I was not sorry it was done. For I am thereby freed from any obligation to shew respect to an ill-conditioned man, and am at liberty to support my position in the Republic in spite of him. Besides, the second place has a dignity almost equal to that of princeps senatus, and does not put one under too much of an obligation to the consul. The third called on was Catulus; the fourth, if you want to go still farther, Hortensius. The consul himself⁸⁰ is a man of a small and ill-regulated mind, a mere buffoon of that splenetic kind which raises a laugh even in the absence of wit: it is his face rather than his facetiousness⁸¹ that causes merriment: he takes practically no part in public business, and is quite alienated from the Optimates. You need expect no service to the state from him, for he has not the will to do any, nor fear any damage, for he hasn't the courage to inflict it. His colleague, however, treats me with great distinction, and is also a zealous supporter of the loyalist party. For the present their disagreement has not come to much; but I fear that this taint may spread farther. For I suppose you have heard that when the state function was being performed in Cæsar's house a man in woman's dress got in,⁸² and that the Vestals having performed the rite again, mention was made of the matter in the senate by Q. Cornificius—he was the first, so don't think that it was one of us consulars—and that on the matter being referred by a decree of the senate to the [Virgins and] pontifices, they decided that a sacrilege had been committed: that then, on a farther decree of the senate, the consuls published a bill: and that Cæsar divorced his wife. On this question Piso, from friendship for P. Clodius, is doing his best to get the bill promulgated by himself (though in accordance with a decree of the senate and on a point of religion) rejected. Messalla as yet is strongly for severe measures. The loyalists hold aloof owing to the entreaties of Clodius: bands of ruffians are being got together: I myself, at first a stern Lycurgus, am becoming daily less and less keen about it: Cato is hot and eager. In short, I fear that between the indifference of the loyalists and the support of the disloyal it may be the cause of great evils to the Republic. However, your great friend⁸³—do you know whom I mean?—of whom you said in your letter that, "not venturing to blame me, he was beginning to be complimentary," is now to all appearance exceedingly fond of me, embraces me, loves and praises me in public, while in secret (though unable to disguise it) he is jealous of me. No good-breeding, no straightforwardness, no political morality, no distinction, no courage, no liberality! But on these points I will write to you more minutely at another time; for in the first place I am not yet quite sure about them, and in the next place I dare not intrust a letter on such weighty matters to such a casual nobody's son as this messenger.

The prætors have not yet drawn their lots for the provinces. The matter remains just where you left it. The description of the scenery of Misenum and Puteoli which you ask for I will include in my speech.⁸⁴ I had already noticed the mistake in the date, 3rd of December. The points in my speeches which you praise, believe me, I liked very much myself, but did not venture to say so before. Now, however, as they have received your approval, I think them much more "Attic" than ever. To the speech in answer to Metellus⁸⁵ I have made some additions. The book shall be sent you, since affection for me gives you a taste for rhetoric. What news have I for you? Let me see. Oh, yes! The consul Messalla has bought Antonius's house for 3,400 sestertia (about £27,200). What is that to me? you will say. Why, thus much. The price has convinced people that I made no bad bargain, and they begin to understand that in making a purchase a man may properly use his friends' means to get what suits his position. The Teucris affair drags on, yet I have hopes. Pray settle the business you have in hand. You shall have a more outspoken letter soon.

27 January, in the consulship of M. Messalla and M. Piso.

XIX (a i, 14)

TO ATTICUS (IN EPIRUS)
Rome, 13 February

b.c. 61, æt. 45

I fear it may seem affectation to tell you how occupied I have been; but I am so distracted with business that I have only just found time for this short letter, and that has been stolen from the most urgent engagements. I have already described to you Pompey's first public speech—it did not please the poor, nor satisfy the disloyal, nor find favour with the wealthy, nor appear sound to the loyalists; accordingly, he is down in the world.⁸⁶ Presently, on the instigation of the consul Piso, that most insignificant of tribunes, Fufius, brought Pompey on to the platform. The meeting was in the circus Flaminius, and there was in the same place that day a crowd of market people—a kind of tiers état.⁸⁷ He asked him to say whether he approved of the jurymen being selected by the prætor, to form a panel for the prætor himself to employ. That was the regulation made by the senate in the matter of Clodius's sacrilege. Thereupon Pompey made a highly "aristocratic" speech, and replied (and at great length) that in all matters the authority of the senate was of the greatest weight in his eyes and had always been so. Later on the consul Messalla in the senate asked Pompey his opinion as to the sacrilege and the bill that had been published. His speech in the senate amounted to a general commendation of all decrees of the house, and when he sat down he said to me, "I think my answer covers your case also."⁸⁸ When Crassus observed that Pompey had got a cheer from the idea in men's minds that he approved my consulship, he rose also to his feet and delivered a speech in the most complimentary terms on my consulship, going so far as to say that he owed it to me that he was still a senator, a citizen, nay, a free man; and that he never beheld wife, home, or country without beholding the fruits of my conduct. In short: that whole topic, which I am wont to paint in various colours in my speeches (of which you are the Aristarchus), the fire, the sword—you know my paint-pots—he elaborated to the highest pitch. I was sitting next to Pompey. I noticed that he was agitated, either at Crassus earning the gratitude which he had himself neglected, or to think that my achievements were, after all, of such magnitude that the senate was so glad to hear them praised, especially by a man who was the less under an obligation to praise me, because in everything I ever wrote⁸⁹ my praise of Pompey was practically a reflexion on him. This day has brought me very close to Crassus, and yet in spite of all I accepted with pleasure any compliment—open or covert—from Pompey. But as for my own speech, good heavens! how I did "put it on" for the benefit of my new auditor Pompey! If I ever did bring every art into play, I did then—period, transition, enthymeme, deduction—everything. In short, I was cheered to the echo. For the subject of my speech was the dignity of the senate, its harmony with the equites, the unanimity of Italy, the dying embers of the conspiracy, the fall in prices, the establishment of peace. You know my thunder when these are my themes. It was so loud, in fact, that I may cut short my description, as I think you must have heard it even in Epirus. The state of things at Rome is this: the senate is a perfect Areopagus. You cannot conceive anything firmer, more grave, or more high-spirited. For when the day came for proposing the bill in accordance with the vote of the senate, a crowd of our dandies with their chin-tufts assembled, all the Catiline set, with Curio's girlish son at their head, and implored the people to reject it. Moreover, Piso the consul, who formally introduced the bill, spoke against it. Clodius's hired ruffians had filled up the entrances to the voting boxes. The voting tickets were so manipulated that no "ayes" were distributed. Hereupon imagine Cato hurrying to the rostra, delivering an admirable invective against the consul, if we can call that an "invective" which was really a speech of the utmost weight and authority, and in fact containing the most salutary advice. He is followed to the same effect by your friend Hortensius, and many loyalists besides, among whom, however, the contribution of Favonius was conspicuous. By this rally of the Optimates the comitia is dissolved, the senate summoned. On the question being put in a full house—in spite of the opposition of Piso, and in spite of Clodius throwing himself at the feet of the senators one after the other—that the consuls should exhort the people to pass the bill, about fifteen voted with Curio, who was against any decree being passed; on the other side there were fully four hundred. So the vote passed. The tribune Fufius then gave in.⁹⁰ Clodius delivered some wretched speeches to the people, in which he bestowed some injurious epithets on Lucullus, Hortensius, C. Piso, and the consul Messalla; me he only charged with having "discovered" everything.⁹¹ In regard to the assignation of provinces to the prætors, the hearing legations, and other business, the senate voted that nothing should be brought before it till the bill had been brought before the people. There's the state of things at Rome for you. Yet pray listen to this one thing more which has surpassed my hopes. Messalla is a superlatively good consul, courageous, firm, painstaking; he praises, shows attachment to, and imitates me. That other one (Piso) is the less mischievous because of one vice—he is lazy, sleepy, unbusiness-like, an utter fainéant, but in intention he is so disaffected that he has begun to loathe Pompey since he made the speech in which some praise was bestowed on the senate. Accordingly, he has alienated all the loyalists to a remarkable degree. And his action is not dictated by love for Clodius more than by a taste for a profligate policy and a profligate party. But he has nobody among the magistrates like himself, with the single exception of the tribune Fufius. The tribunes are excellent, and in Cornutus we have a quasi-Cato. Can I say more?

Now to return to private matters. "Teucris" has fulfilled her promise.⁹² Pray execute the commission you undertook. My brother Quintus, who purchased the remaining three-fourths of the house in the Argiletum for 725 sestertia (about £5,800), is now trying to sell his Tusculan property, in order to purchase, if he can, the town house of Pacilius. Make it up with Lucceius! I see that he is all agog to stand for the consulship. I will do my best. Be careful to let me know exactly how you are, where you are, and how your business goes on.

13 February.

XX (a i, 15)

TO ATTICUS (IN EPIRUS)
Rome, 15 March

b.c. 61, æt. 45

You have heard that my dearest brother Quintus has got Asia; for I do not doubt that rumour has conveyed the news to you quicker than a letter from any of us. Now then, considering how desirous of a good reputation he and I have ever been, and how unusually Philhellenic we are and have the reputation of being, and considering how many there are whose enmity we have incurred for the sake of the Republic, "call to mind all your valour,"⁹³ to secure us the praise and affection of all concerned. I will write at greater length to you on these points in the letter which I shall give to Quintus himself.⁹⁴ Please let me know what you have done about the business I confided to you, and also in your own affair; for I have had no letter from you since you left Brundisium. I am very anxious to hear how you are.

15 March.

XXI (a i, 16)

TO ATTICUS
Rome (May)

b.c. 61, æt. 45

You ask me what has happened about the trial, the result of which was so contrary to the general expectation, and at the same time you want to know how I came to make a worse fight of it than usual. I will answer the last first, after the manner of Homer.⁹⁵ The fact is that, so long as I had to defend the authority of the senate,⁹⁶ I battled with such gallantry and vigour that there were shouts of applause and crowds round me in the house ringing with my praise. Nay, if you ever thought that I shewed courage in political business, you certainly would have admired my conduct in that cause. For when the culprit had betaken himself to public meetings, and had made an invidious use of my name, immortal gods! What battles! What havoc! What sallies I made upon Piso, Curio, on the whole of that set! How I fell upon the old men for their instability, on the young for their profligacy! Again and again, so help me heaven! I regretted your absence not only as the supporter of my policy, but as the spectator also of my admirable fighting. However, when Hortensius hit on the idea of a law as to the sacrilege being proposed by the tribune Fufius, in which there was no difference from the bill of the consul except as to the kind of jurymen—on that point, however, the whole question turned—and got it carried by sheer fighting, because he had persuaded himself and others that he could not get an acquittal no matter who were the jurymen, I drew in my sails, seeing the neediness of the jurors, and gave no evidence beyond what was so notorious and well attested that I could not omit it.⁹⁷ Therefore, if you ask the reason of the acquittal—to return at length to the former of the two questions—it was entirely the poverty and low character of the jury. But that this was possible was entirely the result of Hortensius's policy. In his alarm lest Fufius should veto the law which was to be proposed in virtue of a senatorial decree, he failed to see that it was better that the culprit should be left under a cloud of disgrace and dishonour than that he should be trusted to the discretion of a weak jury. But in his passionate resentment he hastened to bring the case into court, saying that a leaden sword was good enough to cut his throat. But if you want to know the history of the trial, with its incredible verdict, it was such that Hortensius's policy is now blamed by other people after the event, though I disapproved of it from the first. When the rejection of jurors had taken place, amidst loud cheers and counter-cheers—the accuser like a strict censor rejecting the most worthless, the defendant like a kind-hearted trainer of gladiators all the best—as soon as the jury had taken their seats, the loyalists at once began to feel distrust. There never was a seedier lot round a table in a gambling hell. Senators under a cloud, equites out at elbows, tribunes who were not so much made of money as "collectors" of it, according to their official title.⁹⁸ However, there were a few honest men in the panel, whom he had been unable to drive off it by rejection, and they took their seats among their uncongenial comrades with gloomy looks and signs of emotion, and were keenly disgusted at having to rub elbows with such rascals. Hereupon, as question after question was referred to the panel in the preliminary proceedings, the severity of the decisions passes belief: there was no disagreement in voting, the defendant carried none of his points, while the accuser got even more than he asked. He was triumphant. Need I say more? Hortensius would have it that he was the only one of us who had seen the truth. There was not a man who did not think it impossible for him to stand his trial without being condemned a thousand times over. Farther, when I was produced as a witness, I suppose you have been told how the shouts of Clodius's supporters were answered by the jury rising to their feet to gather round me, and openly to offer their throats to P. Clodius in my defence. This seemed to me a greater compliment than the well-known occasion when your fellow citizens⁹⁹ stopped Xenocrates from taking an oath in the witness-box, or when, upon the accounts of Metellus Numidicus¹⁰⁰ being as usual handed round, a Roman jury refused to look at them. The compliment paid me, I repeat, was much greater. Accordingly, as the jurymen were protecting me as the mainstay of the country, it was by their voices that the defendant was overwhelmed, and with him all his advocates suffered a crushing blow. Next day my house was visited by as great a throng as that which escorted me home when I laid down the consulship. Our eminent Areopagites then exclaimed that they would not come into court unless a guard was assigned them. The question was put to the whole panel: there was only one vote against the need of a guard. The question is brought before the senate: the decree is passed in the most solemn and laudatory terms: the jurymen are complimented: the magistrates are commissioned to carry it out: no one thought that the fellow would venture on a defence. "Tell me, ye Muses, now how first the fire befell!"¹⁰¹ You know Bald-head, the Nanneian millionaire,¹⁰² that panegyrist of mine, whose complimentary oration I have already mentioned to you in a letter. In two days' time, by the agency of a single slave, and one, too, from a school of gladiators, he settled the whole business—he summoned them to an interview, made a promise, offered security, paid money down. Still farther, good heavens, what a scandal! even favours from certain ladies, and introductions to young men of rank, were thrown in as a kind of pourboire to some of the jurors. Accordingly, with the loyalists holding completely aloof, with the forum full of slaves, twenty-five jurors were yet found so courageous that, though at the risk of their lives, they preferred even death to producing universal ruin. There were thirty-one who were more influenced by famine than fame. On seeing one of these latter Catulus said to him, "Why did you ask us for a guard? Did you fear being robbed of the money?" There you have, as briefly as I could put it, the nature of the trial and the cause of the acquittal.

Next you want to know the present state of public affairs and of my own. That settlement of the Republic—firmly established by my wisdom, as you thought, as I thought by God's—which seemed fixed on a sure foundation by the unanimity of all loyalists and the influence of my consulship—that I assure you, unless some God take compassion on us, has by this one verdict escaped from our grasp: if "verdict" it is to be called, when thirty of the most worthless and dissolute fellows in Rome for a paltry sum of money obliterate every principle of law and justice, and when that which every man—I had almost said every animal—knows to have taken place, a Thalna, a Plautus, and a Spongia, and other scum of that sort decide not to have taken place. However, to console you as to the state of the Republic, rascaldom is not as cheerful and exultant in its victory as the disloyal hoped after the infliction of such a wound upon the Republic. For they fully expected that when religion, morality, the honour of juries, and the prestige of the senate had sustained such a crushing fall, victorious profligacy and lawless lust would openly exact vengeance from all the best men for the mortification which the strictness of my consulship had branded in upon all the worst. And it is once more I—for I do not feel as if I were boasting vaingloriously when speaking of myself to you, especially in a letter not intended to be read by others—it was I once more, I say, who revived the fainting spirits of the loyalists, cheering and encouraging each personally. Moreover, by my denunciations and invectives against those corrupt jurors I left none of the favourers and supporters of that victory a word to say for themselves. I gave the consul Piso no rest anywhere, I got him deprived of Syria, which had been already plighted to him, I revived the fainting spirit of the senate and recalled it to its former severity. I overwhelmed Clodius in the senate to his face, both in a set speech, very weighty and serious, and also in an interchange of repartees, of which I append a specimen for your delectation. The rest lose all point and grace without the excitement of the contest, or, as you Greeks call it, the ἀγών. Well, at the meeting of the senate on the 15th of May, being called on for my opinion, I spoke at considerable length on the high interests of the Republic, and brought in the following passage by a happy inspiration: "Do not, Fathers, regard yourselves as fallen utterly, do not faint, because you have received one blow. The wound is one which I cannot disguise, but which I yet feel sure should not be regarded with extreme fear: to fear would shew us to be the greatest of cowards, to ignore it the greatest of fools. Lentulus was twice acquitted, so was Catiline, a third such criminal has now been let loose by jurors upon the Republic. You are mistaken, Clodius: it is not for the city but for the prison that the jurors have reserved you, and their intention was not to retain you in the state, but to deprive you of the privilege of exile. Wherefore, Fathers, rouse up all your courage, hold fast to your high calling. There still remains in the Republic the old unanimity of the loyalists: their feelings have been outraged, their resolution has not been weakened: no fresh mischief has been done, only what was actually existing has been discovered. In the trial of one profligate many like him have been detected."—But what am I about? I have copied almost a speech into a letter. I return to the duel of words. Up gets our dandified young gentleman, and throws in my teeth my having been at Baiæ. It wasn't true, but what did that matter to him? "It is as though you were to say," replied I, "that I had been in disguise!" "What business," quoth he, "has an Arpinate with hot baths?" "Say that to your patron," said I, "who coveted the watering-place of an Arpinate."¹⁰³ For you know about the marine villa. "How long," said he, "are we to put up with this king?" "Do you mention a king," quoth I, "when Rex¹⁰⁴ made no mention of you?" He, you know, had swallowed the inheritance of Rex in anticipation. "You have bought a house," says he. "You would think that he said," quoth I, "you have bought a jury." "They didn't trust you on your oath," said he. "Yes," said I, "twenty-five jurors did trust me, thirty-one didn't trust you, for they took care to get their money beforehand." Here he was overpowered by a burst of applause and broke down without a word to say.

My own position is this: with the loyalists I hold the same place as when you left town, with the tagrag and bobtail of the city I hold a much better one than at your departure. For it does me no harm that my evidence appears not to have availed. Envy has been let blood without causing pain, and even more so from the fact that all the supporters of that flagitious proceeding confess that a perfectly notorious fact has been hushed up by bribing the jury. Besides, the wretched starveling mob, the blood-sucker of the treasury, imagines me to be high in the favour of Magnus—and indeed we have been mutually united by frequent pleasant intercourse to such an extent, that our friends the boon companions of the conspiracy, the young chin-tufts, speak of him in ordinary conversation as Gnæus Cicero. Accordingly, both in the circus and at the gladiatorial games, I received a remarkable ovation without a single cat-call. There is at present a lively anticipation of the elections, in which, contrary to everybody's wishes, our friend Magnus is pushing the claims of Aulus's son;¹⁰⁵ and in that matter his weapons are neither his prestige nor his popularity, but those by which Philip said that any fortress could be taken—if only an ass laden with gold could make its way up into it. Farthermore, that precious consul, playing as it were second fiddle to Pompey,¹⁰⁶ is said to have undertaken the business and to have bribery agents at his house, which I don't believe. But two decrees have already passed the house of an unpopular character, because they are thought to be directed against the consul on the demand of Cato and Domitius¹⁰⁷—one that search should be allowed in magistrates' houses, and a second, that all who had bribery agents in their houses were guilty of treason. The tribune Lurco also, having entered on his office irregularly in view of the Ælian law, has been relieved from the provisions both of the Ælian and Fufian laws, in order to enable him to propose his law on bribery, which he promulgated with correct auspices though a cripple.¹⁰⁸ Accordingly, the comitia have been postponed to the 27th of July. There is this novelty in his bill, that a man who has promised money among the tribes, but not paid it, is not liable, but, if he has paid, he is liable for life to pay 3,000 sesterces to each tribe. I remarked that P. Clodius had obeyed this law by anticipation, for he was accustomed to promise, and not pay. But observe! Don't you see that the consulship of which we thought so much, which Curio used of old to call an apotheosis, if this Afranius is elected, will become a mere farce and mockery? Therefore I think one should play the philosopher, as you in fact do, and not care a straw for your consulships!

You say in your letter that you have decided not to go to Asia. For my part I should have preferred your going, and I fear that there may be some offence¹⁰⁹ given in that matter. Nevertheless, I am not the man to blame you, especially considering that I have not gone to a province myself. I shall be quite content with the inscriptions you have placed in your Amaltheium,¹¹⁰ especially as Thyillus has deserted me and Archias written nothing about me. The latter, I am afraid, having composed a Greek poem on the Luculli, is now turning his attention to the Cæcilian drama.¹¹¹ I have thanked Antonius on your account, and I have intrusted the letter to Mallius. I have heretofore written to you more rarely because I had no one to whom I could trust a letter, and was not sure of your address. I have puffed you well. If Cincius should refer any business of yours to me, I will undertake it. But at present he is more intent on his own business, in which I am rendering him some assistance. If you mean to stay any length of time in one place you may expect frequent letters from me: but pray send even more yourself. I wish you would describe your Amaltheium to me, its decoration and its plan; and send me any poems or stories you may have about Amaltheia.¹¹² I should like to make a copy of it at Arpinum. I will forward you something of what I have written. At present there is nothing finished.

XXII (a i, 17)

TO ATTICUS (IN EPIRUS)
Rome, 5 December

b.c. 61, æt. 45

Your letter, in which you inclose copies of his letters, has made me realize that my brother Quintus's feelings have undergone many alternations, and that his opinions and judgments have varied widely from time to time.¹¹³ This has not only caused me all the pain which my extreme affection for both of you was bound to bring, but it has also made me wonder what can have happened to cause my brother Quintus such deep offence, or such an extraordinary change of feeling. And yet I was already aware, as I saw that you also, when you took leave of me, were beginning to suspect, that there was some lurking dissatisfaction, that his feelings were wounded, and that certain unfriendly suspicions had sunk deep into his heart. On trying on several previous occasions, but more eagerly than ever after the allotment of his province, to assuage these feelings, I failed to discover on the one hand that the extent of his offence was so great as your letter indicates; but on the other I did not make as much progress in allaying it as I wished. However, I consoled myself with thinking that there would be no doubt of his seeing you at Dyrrachium, or somewhere in your part of the country: and, if that happened, I felt sure and fully persuaded that everything would be made smooth between you, not only by conversation and mutual explanation, but by the very sight of each other in such an interview. For I need not say in writing to you, who know it quite well, how kind and sweet-tempered my brother is, as ready to forgive as he is sensitive in taking offence. But it most unfortunately happened that you did not see him anywhere. For the impression he had received from the artifices of others had more weight with him than duty or relationship, or the old affection so long existing between you, which ought to have been the strongest influence of all. And yet, as to where the blame for this misunderstanding resides, I can more easily conceive than write: since I am afraid that, while defending my own relations, I should not spare yours. For I perceive that, though no actual wound was inflicted by members of the family, they yet could at least have cured it. But the root of the mischief in this case, which perhaps extends farther than appears, I shall more conveniently explain to you when we meet. As to the letter he sent to you from Thessalonica,¹¹⁴ and about the language which you suppose him to have used both at Rome among your friends and on his journey, I don't know how far the matter went, but my whole hope of removing this unpleasantness rests on your kindness. For if you will only make up your mind to believe that the best men are often those whose feelings are most easily irritated and appeased, and that this quickness, so to speak, and sensitiveness of disposition are generally signs of a good heart; and lastly—and this is the main thing—that we must mutually put up with each other's gaucheries (shall I call them?), or faults, or injurious acts, then these misunderstandings will, I hope, be easily smoothed away. I beg you to take this view, for it is the dearest wish of my heart (which is yours as no one else's can be) that there should not be one of my family or friends who does not love you and is not loved by you.

That part of your letter was entirely superfluous, in which you mention what opportunities of doing good business in the provinces or the city you let pass at other times as well as in the year of my consulship: for I am thoroughly persuaded of your unselfishness and magnanimity, nor did I ever think that there was any difference between you and me except in our choice of a career. Ambition led me to seek official advancement, while another and perfectly laudable resolution led you to seek an honourable privacy. In the true glory, which is founded on honesty, industry, and piety, I place neither myself nor anyone else above you. In affection towards myself, next to my brother and immediate family, I put you first. For indeed, indeed I have seen and thoroughly appreciated how your anxiety and joy have corresponded with the variations of my fortunes. Often has your congratulation added a charm to praise, and your consolation a welcome antidote to alarm. Nay, at this moment of your absence, it is not only your advice—in which you excel—but the interchange of speech—in which no one gives me so much delight as you do—that I miss most, shall I say in politics, in which circumspection is always incumbent on me, or in my forensic labour, which I formerly sustained with a view to official promotion, and nowadays to maintain my position by securing popularity, or in the mere business of my family? In all these I missed you and our conversations before my brother left Rome, and still more do I miss them since. Finally, neither my work nor rest, neither my business nor leisure, neither my affairs in the forum or at home, public or private, can any longer do without your most consolatory and affectionate counsel and conversation. The modest reserve which characterizes both of us has often prevented my mentioning these facts; but on this occasion it was rendered necessary by that part of your letter in which you expressed a wish to have yourself and your character "put straight" and "cleared" in my eyes. Yet, in the midst of all this unfortunate alienation and anger, there is one fortunate circumstance—that your determination of not going to a province was known to me and your other friends, and had been at various times before distinctly expressed by yourself; so that your not being his guest may be attributed to your personal tastes and judgments, not to the quarrel and rupture between you. And so those ties which have been broken will be restored, and ours which have been so religiously preserved will retain all their old inviolability.

At Rome I find politics in a shaky condition; everything is unsatisfactory and foreboding change. For I have no doubt you have been told that our friends, the equites, are all but alienated from the senate. Their first grievance was the promulgation of a bill on the authority of the senate for the trial of such as had taken bribes for giving a verdict. I happened not to be in the house when that decree was passed, but when I found that the equestrian order was indignant at it, and yet refrained from openly saying so, I remonstrated with the senate, as I thought, in very impressive language, and was very weighty and eloquent considering the unsatisfactory nature of my cause. But here is another piece of almost intolerable coolness on the part of the equites, which I have not only submitted to, but have even put in as good a light as possible! The companies which had contracted with the censors for Asia complained that in the heat of the competition they had taken the contract at an excessive price; they demanded that the contract should be annulled. I led in their support, or rather, I was second, for it was Crassus who induced them to venture on this demand. The case is scandalous, the demand a disgraceful one, and a confession of rash speculation. Yet there was a very great risk that, if they got no concession, they would be completely alienated from the senate. Here again I came to the rescue more than anyone else, and secured them a full and very friendly house, in which I, on the 1st and 2nd of December, delivered long speeches on the dignity and harmony of the two orders. The business is not yet settled, but the favourable feeling of the senate has been made manifest: for no one had spoken against it except the consul-designate, Metellus; while our hero Cato had still to speak, the shortness of the day having prevented his turn being reached. Thus I, in the maintenance of my steady policy, preserve to the best of my ability that harmony of the orders which was originally my joiner's work; but since it all now seems in such a crazy condition, I am constructing what I may call a road towards the maintenance of our power, a safe one I hope, which I cannot fully describe to you in a letter, but of which I will nevertheless give you a hint. I cultivate close intimacy with Pompey. I foresee what you will say. I will use all necessary precautions, and I will write another time at greater length about my schemes for managing the Republic. You must know that Lucceius has it in his mind to stand for the consulship at once; for there are said to be only two candidates in prospect. Cæsar is thinking of coming to terms with him by the agency of Arrius, and Bibulus also thinks he may effect a coalition with him by means of C. Piso.¹¹⁵ You smile? This is no laughing matter, believe me. What else shall I write to you? What? I have plenty to say, but must put it off to another time. If you mean to wait till you hear, let me know. For the moment I am satisfied with a modest request, though it is what I desire above everything—that you should come to Rome as soon as possible.

5 December.

XXIII (a i, 18)

b.c. 60. Coss., Q. Cæcilius Metellus Celer, L. Afranius.

This was the year in which Cæsar, returning from his proprætorship in Spain, found Pompey in difficulties with the senate (1) as to the confirmation en bloc of his acta in the East, (2) as to the assignation of lands to his veterans; and being met with opposition himself as to the triumph that he claimed, and his candidatureship for the consulship, he formed with Pompey and Crassus the agreement known as the first triumvirate. Cicero saw his favourite political object, the concordia ordinum, threatened by any opposition to the triumvirate, which he yet distrusted as dangerous to the constitution. We shall find him, therefore, vacillating between giving his support to its policy or standing by the extreme Optimates. P. Clodius is taking measures to be adopted into a plebeian gens, in order to stand for the tribuneship. Quintus is still in Asia. Pompey's triumph had taken place in the previous September.

TO ATTICUS (IN EPIRUS)
Rome, 20 January

b.c. 60, æt. 46

Believe me there is nothing at this moment of which I stand so much in need as a man with whom to share all that causes me anxiety: a man to love me; a man of sense to whom I can speak without affectation, reserve, or concealment. For my brother is away—that most open-hearted and affectionate of men. Metellus is not a human being, but

"Mere sound and air, a howling wilderness."

While you, who have so often lightened my anxiety and my anguish of soul by your conversation and advice, who are ever my ally in public affairs, my confidant in all private business, the sharer in all my conversations and projects—where are you? So entirely am I abandoned by all, that the only moments of repose left me are those which are spent with my wife, pet daughter, and sweet little Cicero. For as to those friendships with the great, and their artificial attractions, they have indeed a certain glitter in the outside world, but they bring no private satisfaction. And so, after a crowded morning levée, as I go down to the forum surrounded by troops of friends, I can find no one out of all that crowd with whom to jest freely, or into whose ear I can breathe a familiar sigh. Therefore I wait for you, I long for you, I even urge on you to come; for I have many anxieties, many pressing cares, of which I think, if I once had your ears to listen to me, I could unburden myself in the conversation of a single walk. And of my private anxieties, indeed, I shall conceal all the stings and vexations, and not trust them to this letter and an unknown letter-carrier. These, however—for I don't want you to be made too anxious—are not very painful: yet they are persistent and worrying, and are not put to rest by the advice or conversation of any friend. But in regard to the Republic I have still the same courage and purpose, though it has again and again of its own act eluded treatment.¹¹⁶ For should I put briefly what has occurred since you left, you would certainly exclaim that the Roman empire cannot be maintained much longer. Well, after your departure our first scene, I think, was the appearance of the Clodian scandal, in which having, as I thought, got an opportunity of pruning licentiousness and keeping our young men within bounds, I exerted myself to the utmost, and lavished all the resources of my intellect and genius, not from dislike to an individual, but from the hope of not merely correcting, but of completely curing the state. The Republic received a crushing blow when this jury was won over by money and the opportunity of debauchery. See what has followed! We have had a consul inflicted upon us, whom none except us philosophers can look at without a sigh. What a blow that is! Though a decree of the senate has been passed about bribery and the corruption of juries, no law has been carried; the senate has been harassed to death, the Roman knights alienated. So that one year has undermined two buttresses of the Republic, which owed their existence to me, and me alone; for it has at once destroyed the prestige of the senate and broken up the harmony of the orders. And now enter this precious year! It was inaugurated by the suspension of the annual rites of Iuventas;¹¹⁷ for Memmius initiated M. Lucullus's wife in some rites of his own! Our Menelaus, being annoyed at that, divorced his wife. Yet the old Idæan shepherd had only injured Menelaus; our Roman Paris thought Agamemnon as proper an object of injury as Menelaus.¹¹⁸ Next there is a certain tribune named C. Herennius, whom you, perhaps, do not even know—and yet you may know him, for he is of your tribe, and his father Sextus used to distribute money to your tribesmen—this person is trying to transfer P. Clodius to the plebs, and is actually proposing a law to authorize the whole people to vote in Clodius's affair in the campus.¹¹⁹ I have given him a characteristic reception in the senate, but he is the thickest-skinned fellow in the world. Metellus is an excellent consul, and much attached to me, but he has lowered his influence by promulgating (though only for form's sake) an identical bill about Clodius. But the son of Aulus,¹²⁰ God in heaven! What a cowardly and spiritless fellow for a soldier! How well he deserves to be exposed, as he is, day after day to the abuse of Palicanus!¹²¹ Farther, an agrarian law has been promulgated by Flavius, a poor production enough, almost identical with that of Plotius. But meanwhile a genuine statesman is not to be found, even "in a dream." The man who could be one, my friend Pompey—for such he is, as I would have you know—defends his twopenny embroidered toga¹²² by saying nothing. Crassus never risks his popularity by a word. The others you know without my telling you. They are such fools that they seem to expect that, though the Republic is lost, their fish-ponds will be safe. There is one man who does take some trouble, but rather, as it seems to me, with consistency and honesty, than with either prudence or ability—Cato. He has been for the last three months worrying those unhappy publicani, who were formerly devoted to him, and refuses to allow of an answer being given them by the senate. And so we are forced to suspend all decrees on other subjects until the publicani have got their answer. For the same reason I suppose even the business of the foreign embassies will be postponed. You now understand in what stormy water we are: and as from what I have written to you in such strong terms you have a view also of what I have not written, come back to me, for it is time you did. And though the state of affairs to which I invite you is one to be avoided, yet let your value for me so far prevail, as to induce you to come there even in these vexatious circumstances. For the rest I will take care that due warning is given, and a notice put up in all places, to prevent you being entered on the census as absent; and to get put on the census just before the lustration is the mark of your true man of business.¹²³ So let me see you at the earliest possible moment. Farewell.

20 January in the Consulship of Q. Metellus and L. Afranius.

XXIV (a i, 19)

TO ATTICUS (IN EPIRUS)
Rome, 15 March

b.c. 60, æt. 46

It is not only if I had as much leisure as you, but also if I chose to send letters as short as yours usually are, should I easily beat you and be much the more regular in writing. But, in fact, it is only one more item in an immense and inconceivable amount of business, that I allow no letter to reach you from me without its containing some definite sketch of events and the reflexions arising from it. And in writing to you, as a lover of your country, my first subject will naturally be the state of the Republic; next, as I am the nearest object of your affection, I will also write about myself, and tell you what I think you will not be indisposed to know. Well then, in public affairs for the moment the chief subject of interest is the disturbance in Gaul. For the Ædui—"our brethren"¹²⁴—have recently fought a losing battle, and the Helvetii are undoubtedly in arms and making raids upon our province.¹²⁵ The senate has decreed that the two consuls should draw lots for the Gauls, that a levy should be held, all exemptions from service be suspended, and legates with full powers be sent to visit the states in Gaul, and see that they do not join the Helvetii. The legates are Quintus Metellus Creticus,¹²⁶ L. Flaccus,¹²⁷ and lastly—a case of "rich unguent on lentils"—Lentulus, son of Clodianus.¹²⁸ And while on this subject I cannot omit mentioning that when among the consulars my name was the first to come up in the ballot, a full meeting of the senate declared with one voice that I must be kept in the city. The same occurred to Pompey after me; so that we two appeared to be kept at home as pledges of the safety of the Republic. Why should I look for the "bravos" of others when I get these compliments at home? Well, the state of affairs in the city is as follows. The agrarian law is being vehemently pushed by the tribune Flavius, with the support of Pompey, but it has nothing popular about it except its supporter. From this law I, with the full assent of a public meeting, proposed to omit all clauses which adversely affected private rights. I proposed to except from its operation such public land as had been so in the consulship of P. Mucius and L. Calpurnius.¹²⁹ I proposed to confirm the titles of holders of those to whom Sulla had actually assigned lands. I proposed to retain the men of Volaterræ and Arretium—whose lands Sulla had declared forfeited but had not allotted—in their holdings. There was only one section in the bill that I did not propose to omit, namely, that land should be purchased with this money from abroad, the proceeds of the new revenues for the next five years.¹³⁰ But to this whole agrarian scheme the senate was opposed, suspecting that some novel power for Pompey was aimed at. Pompey, indeed, had set his heart on getting the law passed. I, however, with the full approval of the applicants for land, maintained the holdings of all private owners—for, as you know, the landed gentry form the bulk of our party's forces—while I nevertheless satisfied the people and Pompey (for I wanted to do that also) by the purchase clause; for, if that was put on a sound footing, I thought that two advantages would accrue—the dregs might be drawn from the city, and the deserted portions of Italy be repeopled. But this whole business was interrupted by the war, and has cooled off. Metellus is an exceedingly good consul, and much attached to me. That other one is such a ninny that he clearly doesn't know what to do with his purchase.¹³¹ This is all my public news, unless you regard as touching on public affairs the fact that a certain Herennius, a tribune, and a fellow tribesman of yours—a fellow as unprincipled as he is needy—has now begun making frequent proposals for transferring P. Clodius to the plebs; he is vetoed by many of his colleagues. That is really, I think, all the public news.

For my part, ever since I won what I may call the splendid and immortal glory of the famous fifth of December¹³² (though it was accompanied by the jealousy and hostility of many), I have never ceased to play my part in the Republic in the same lofty spirit, and to maintain the position I then inaugurated and took upon myself. But when, first, by the acquittal of Clodius I clearly perceived the insecurity and rotten state of the law courts; and, secondly, when I saw that it took so little to alienate my friends the publicani from the senate—though with me personally they had no quarrel; and, thirdly, that the rich (I mean your friends the fish-breeders) did not disguise their jealousy of me, I thought I must look out for some greater security and stronger support. So, to begin with, I have brought the man who had been too long silent on my achievements, Pompey himself, to such a frame of mind as not once only in the senate, but many times and in many words, to ascribe to me the preservation of this empire and of the world. And this was not so important to me—for those transactions are neither so obscure as to need testimony, nor so dubious as to need commendation—as to the Republic; for there were certain persons base enough to think that some misunderstanding would arise between me and Pompey from a difference of opinion on these measures. With him I have united myself in such close intimacy that both of us can by this union be better fortified in his own views, and more secure in his political position. However, the dislike of the licentious dandies, which had been roused against me, has been so far softened by a conciliatory manner on my part, that they all combine to show me marked attention. In fine, while avoiding churlishness to anyone, I do not curry favour with the populace or relax any principle; but my whole course of conduct is so carefully regulated, that, while exhibiting an example of firmness to the Republic, in my own private concerns—in view of the instability of the loyalists, the hostility of the disaffected, and the hatred of the disloyal towards me—I employ a certain caution and circumspection, and do not allow myself, after all, to be involved in these new friendships so far but that the famous refrain of the cunning Sicilian frequently sounds in my ears:¹³³

"Keep sober and distrust: these wisdom's sinews!"

Of my course and way of life, therefore, you see, I think, what may be called a sketch or outline. Of your own business, however, you frequently write to me, but I cannot at the moment supply the remedy you require. For that decree of the senate was passed with the greatest unanimity on the part of the rank and file,¹³⁴ though without the support of any of us consulars. For as to your seeing my name at the foot of the decree, you can ascertain from the decree itself that the subject put to the vote at the time was a different one, and that this clause about "free peoples" was added without good reason. It was done by P. Servilius the younger,¹³⁵ who delivered his vote among the last, but it cannot be altered after such an interval of time. Accordingly, the meetings, which at first were crowded, have long ceased to be held. If you have been able, notwithstanding, by your insinuating address to get a trifle of money out of the Sicyonians, I wish you would let me know.¹³⁶ I have sent you an account of my consulship written in Greek. If there is anything in it which to a genuine Attic like yourself seems to be un-Greek or unscholarly, I shall not say as Lucullus said to you (at Panhormus, was it not?) about his own history, that he had interspersed certain barbarisms and solecisms for the express purpose of proving that it was the work of a Roman. No, if there is anything of that sort in my book, it will be without my knowledge and against my will. When I have finished the Latin version I will send it to you; and thirdly, you may expect a poem on the subject, for I would not have any method of celebrating my praise omitted by myself. In this regard pray do not quote "Who will praise his sire?"¹³⁷ For if there is anything in the world to be preferred to this, let it receive its due meed of praise, and I mine of blame for not selecting another theme for my praise. However, what I write is not panegyric but history. My brother Quintus clears himself to me in a letter, and asserts that he has never said a disparaging word of you to anyone. But this we must discuss face to face with the greatest care and earnestness: only do come to see me again at last! This Cossinius, to whom I intrust my letter, seems to me a very good fellow, steady, devoted to you, and exactly the sort of man which your letter to me had described.

15 March.

XXV (a i, 20)

TO ATTICUS (IN EPIRUS)
Rome, 13 May

b.c. 60, æt. 46

On my return to Rome from my villa at Pompeii on the 12th of May, our friend Cincius handed me your letter dated 13th February. It is this letter of yours which I will now proceed to answer. And first let me say how glad I am that you have fully understood my appreciation of you;¹³⁸ and next how excessively rejoiced I am that you have been so extremely reasonable in regard to those particulars in which you thought¹³⁹ that I and mine had behaved unkindly, or with insufficient consideration for your feelings: and this I regard as a proof of no common affection, and of the most excellent judgment and wisdom. Wherefore, since you have written to me in a tone so delightful, considerate, friendly and kind, that I not only have no call to press you any farther, but can never even hope to meet from you or any other man with so much gentleness and good nature, I think the very best course I can pursue is not to say another word on the subject in my letters. When we meet, if the occasion should arise, we will discuss it together.

As to what you say about politics, your suggestions indeed are both affectionate and wise, and the course you suggest does not differ substantially from my own policy—for I must neither budge an inch from the position imposed upon me by my rank, nor must I without forces of my own enter the lines of another, while that other, whom you mention in your letter, has nothing large-minded about him, nothing lofty, nothing which is not abject and time-serving. However, the course I took was, after all, perhaps not ill-calculated for securing the tranquillity of my own life; but, by heaven, I did greater service to the Republic than, by suppressing the attacks of the disloyal, I did to myself, when I brought conviction home to the wavering mind of a man of the most splendid fortune, influence and popularity, and induced him to disappoint the disloyal and praise my acts. Now if I had been forced to sacrifice consistency in this transaction, I should not have thought anything worth that price; but the fact is that I have so worked the whole business, that I did not seem to be less consistent from my complacency to him, but that he appeared to gain in character by his approbation of me. In everything else I am so acting, and shall continue so to act, as to prevent my seeming to have done what I did do by mere chance. My friends the loyalists, the men at whom you hint, and that "Sparta" which you say has fallen to my lot,¹⁴⁰ I will not only never desert, but even if I am deserted by her, I shall still stand by my ancient creed. However, please consider this, that since the death of Catulus I am holding this road for the loyalists without any garrison or company. For as Rhinton, I think, says:

"Some are stark naught, and some care not at all."¹⁴¹

However, how our friends the fish-breeders¹⁴² envy me I will write you word another time, or will reserve it till we meet. But from the senate-house nothing shall ever tear me: either because that course is the right one, or because it is most to my interests, or because I am far from being dissatisfied with the estimation in which I am held by the senate.

As to the Sicyonians, as I wrote to you before,¹⁴³ there is not much to be hoped for in the senate. For there is no one now to lay a complaint before it. Therefore, if you are waiting for that, you will find it a tedious business. Fight some other way if you can. At the time the decree was passed no one noticed who would be affected by it, and besides the rank and file of the senators voted in a great hurry for that clause. For cancelling the senatorial decree the time is not yet ripe, because there are none to complain of it, and because also many are glad to have it so, some from spite, some from a notion of its equity. Your friend Metellus is an admirable consul: I have only one fault to find with him—he doesn't receive the news from Gaul of the restoration of peace with much pleasure. He wants a triumph, I suppose. I could have wished a little less of that sort of thing: in other respects he is splendid. But the son of Aulus behaves in such a way, that his consulship is not a consulship but a stigma on our friend Magnus. Of my writings I send you my consulship in Greek completed. I have handed that book to L. Cossinius. My Latin works I think you like, but as a Greek you envy this Greek book. If others write treatises on the subject I will send them to you, but I assure you that, as soon as they have read mine, some how or other they become slack. To return to my own affairs, L. Papirius Pætus, an excellent man and an admirer of mine, has presented me with the books left him by Servius Claudius. As your friend Cincius told me that I could take them without breaking the lex Cincia¹⁴⁴, I told him that I should have great pleasure in accepting them, if he brought them to Italy. Wherefore, as you love me, as you know that I love you, do try by means of friends, clients, guests, or even your freedmen or slaves, to prevent the loss of a single leaf. For I am in urgent need of the Greek books which I suspect, and of the Latin books which I know, that he left: and more and more every day I find repose in such studies every moment left to me from my labours in the forum. You will, I say, do me a very great favour, if you will be as zealous in this matter as you ever are in matters in which you suppose me to feel strongly; and Pætus's own affairs I recommend to your kindness for which he thanks you extremely. A prompt visit from yourself is a thing which I do not merely ask for, I advise it.

XXVI (a ii, 1)

TO ATTICUS (IN GREECE)
Rome, June

b.c. 60, æt. 46

On the 1st of June, as I was on my way to Antium, and eagerly getting out of the way of M. Metellus's gladiators, your boy met me, and delivered to me a letter from you and a history of my consulship written in Greek.¹⁴⁵ This made me glad that I had some time before delivered to L. Cossinius a book, also written in Greek, on the same subject, to take to you. For if I had read yours first you might have said that I had pilfered from you. Although your essay (which I have read with pleasure) seemed to me just a trifle rough and bald, yet its very neglect of ornament is an ornament in itself, as women were once thought to have the best perfume who used none. My book, on the other hand, has exhausted the whole of Isocrates's unguent case, and all the paint-boxes of his pupils, and even Aristotle's colours. This, as you tell me in another letter, you glanced over at Corcyra, and afterwards I suppose received it from Cossinius.¹⁴⁶ I should not have ventured to send it to you until I had slowly and fastidiously revised it. However, Posidonius, in his letter of acknowledgment from Rhodes, says that as he read my memoir, which I had sent him with a view to his writing on the same subject with more elaboration, he was not only not incited to write, but absolutely made afraid to do so. In a word, I have routed the Greeks. Accordingly, as a general rule, those who were pressing me for material to work up, have now ceased to bother me. Pray, if you like the book, see to there being copies at Athens and other Greek towns;¹⁴⁷ for it may possibly throw some lustre on my actions. As for my poor speeches, I will send you both those you ask for and some more also, since what I write to satisfy the studious youth finds favour, it seems, with you also. [For it suited my purpose¹⁴⁸—both because it was in his Philippics that your fellow citizen Demosthenes gained his reputation, and because it was by withdrawing from the mere controversial and forensic style of oratory that he acquired the character of a serious politician—to see that I too should have speeches that may properly be called consular. Of these are, first, one delivered on the 1st of January in the senate, a second to the people on the agrarian law, a third on Otho, a fourth for Rabirius, a fifth on the Sons of the Proscribed, a sixth when I declined a province in public meeting, a seventh when I allowed Catiline to escape, which I delivered the day after Catiline fled, a ninth in public meeting on the day that the Allobroges made their revelation, a tenth in the senate on the 5th of December. There are also two short ones, which may be called fragments, on the agrarian law. This whole cycle I will see that you have. And since you like my writings as well as my actions, from these same rolls you will learn both what I have done and what I have said—or you should not have asked for them, for I did not make you an offer of them.]

You ask me why I urge you to come home, and at the same time you intimate that you are hampered by business affairs, and yet say that you will nevertheless hasten back, not only if it is needful, but even if I desire it. Well, there is certainly no absolute necessity, yet I do think you might plan the periods of your tour somewhat more conveniently. Your absence is too prolonged, especially as you are in a neighbouring country, while yet I cannot enjoy your society, nor you mine. For the present there is peace, but if my young friend Pulcher's¹⁴⁹ madness found means to advance a little farther, I should certainly summon you from your present sojourn. But Metellus is offering him a splendid opposition and will continue to do so. Need I say more? He is a truly patriotic consul and, as I have ever thought, naturally an honest man. That person, however, makes no disguise, but avowedly desires to be elected tribune. But when the matter was mooted in the senate, I cut the fellow to pieces, and taunted him with his changeableness in seeking the tribuneship at Rome after having given out at Hera, in Sicily,¹⁵⁰ that he was a candidate for the ædileship; and went on to say that we needn't much trouble ourselves, for that he would not be permitted to ruin the Republic any more as a plebeian, than patricians like him had been allowed to do so in my consulship. Presently, on his saying that he had completed the journey from the straits in seven days, and that it was impossible for anyone to have gone out to meet him, and that he had entered the city by night,¹⁵¹ and making a great parade of this in a public meeting, I remarked that that was nothing new for him: seven days from Sicily to Rome, three hours from Rome to Interamna!¹⁵² Entered by night, did he? so he did before! No one went to meet him? neither did anyone on the other occasion, exactly when it should have been done! In short, I bring our young upstart to his bearings, not only by a set and serious speech, but also by repartees of this sort. Accordingly, I have come now to rally him and jest with him in quite a familiar manner. For instance, when we were escorting a candidate, he asked me "whether I had been accustomed to secure Sicilians places at the gladiatorial shows?" "No," said I. "Well, I intend to start the practice," said he, "as their new patron; but my sister,¹⁵³ who has the control of such a large part of the consul's space, wont give me more than a single foot." "Don't grumble," said I, "about one of your sister's feet; you may lift the other also." A jest, you will say, unbecoming to a consular. I confess it, but I detest that woman—so unworthy of a consul. For

"A shrew she is and with her husband jars,

and not only with Metellus, but also with Fabius,¹⁵⁴ because she is annoyed at their interference in this business.¹⁵⁵ You ask about the agrarian law: it has completely lost all interest, I think. You rather chide me, though gently, about my intimacy with Pompey. I would not have you think that I have made friends with him for my own protection; but things had come to such a pass that, if by any chance we had quarrelled, there would inevitably have been violent dissensions in the state. And in taking precautions and making provision against that, I by no means swerved from my well-known loyalist policy, but my object was to make him more of a loyalist and induce him to drop somewhat of his time-serving vacillation: and he, let me assure you, now speaks in much higher terms of my achievements (against which many had tried to incite him) than of his own. He testifies that while he served the state well, I preserved it. What if I even make a better citizen of Cæsar,¹⁵⁶ who has now the wind full in his sails—am I doing so poor a service to the Republic? Farthermore, if there was no one to envy me, if all, as they ought to be, were my supporters, nevertheless a preference should still be given to a treatment that would cure the diseased parts of the state, rather than to the use of the knife. As it is, however, since the knighthood, which I once stationed on the slope of the Capitoline,¹⁵⁷ with you as their standard-bearer and leader, has deserted the senate, and since our leading men think themselves in a seventh heaven, if there are bearded mullets in their fish-ponds that will come to hand for food, and neglect everything else, do not you think that I am doing no mean service if I secure that those who have the power, should not have the will, to do any harm? As for our friend Cato, you do not love him more than I do: but after all, with the very best intentions and the most absolute honesty, he sometimes does harm to the Republic. He speaks and votes as though he were in the Republic of Plato, not in the scum of Romulus. What could be fairer than that a man should be brought to trial who has taken a bribe for his verdict? Cato voted for this: the senate agreed with him. The equites declared war on the senate, not on me, for I voted against it. What could be a greater piece of impudence than the equites renouncing the obligations of their contract? Yet for the sake of keeping the friendship of the order it was necessary to submit to the loss. Cato resisted and carried his point. Accordingly, though we have now had the spectacle of a consul thrown into prison,¹⁵⁸ of riots again and again stirred up, not one of those moved a finger to help, with whose support I and the consuls that immediately followed me were accustomed to defend the Republic. "Well, but," say you, "are we to pay them for their support?" What are we to do if we can't get it on any other terms? Are we to be slaves to freedmen or even slaves? But, as you say, assez de sérieux! Favonius¹⁵⁹ carried my tribe with better credit than his own; he lost that of Lucceius. His accusation of Nasica¹⁶⁰ was not creditable, but was conducted with moderation: he spoke so badly that he appeared when in Rhodes to have ground at the mills more than at the lessons of Molon.¹⁶¹ He was somewhat angry with me because I appeared for the defence: however, he is now making up to me again on public grounds. I will write you word how Lucceius is getting on when I have seen Cæsar, who will be here in a couple of days. The injury done you by the Sicyonians you attribute to Cato and his imitator Servilius.¹⁶² Why? did not that blow reach many excellent citizens? But since the senate has so determined, let us commend it, and not be in a minority of one.¹⁶³ My "Amaltheia"¹⁶⁴ is waiting and longing for you. My Tusculan and Pompeian properties please me immensely, except that they have overwhelmed me—me, the scourge of debt!—not exactly in Corinthian bronze, but in the bronze which is current in the market.¹⁶⁵ In Gaul I hope peace is restored. My "Prognostics,"¹⁶⁶ along with my poor speeches, expect shortly. Yet write and tell me what your ideas are as to returning. For Pomponia sent a message to me that you would be at Rome some time in July. That does not agree with your letter which you wrote to me about your name being put on the census roll. Pætus, as I have already told you, has presented me with all books left by his brother. This gift of his depends upon your seeing to it with care. Pray, if you love me, take measures for their preservation and transmission to me. You could do me no greater favour, and I want the Latin books preserved with as much care as the Greek. I shall look upon them as virtually a present from yourself. I have written to Octavius:¹⁶⁷ I had not said anything to him about you by word of mouth; for I did not suppose that you carried on your business in that province, or look upon you in the light of general money-lender: but I have written, as in duty bound, with all seriousness.

XXVII (a ii, 2)

TO ATTICUS (ON HIS WAY TO ROME)
Tusculum (December)

b.c. 60, æt. 46

Take care of my dear nephew Cicero, I beg of you. I seem to share his illness. I am engaged on the "Constitution of Pellene," and, by heaven, have piled up a huge heap of Dicæarchus at my feet.¹⁶⁸ What a great man! You may learn much more from him than from Procilius. His "Constitution of Corinth" and "Constitution of Athens" I have, I think, at Rome. Upon my word, you will say, if you read these, "What a remarkable man!" Herodes, if he had any sense, would have read him rather than write a single letter himself.¹⁶⁹ He has attacked me by letter; with you I see he has come to close quarters. I would have joined a conspiracy rather than resisted one, if I had thought that I should have to listen to him as my reward. As to Lollius, you must be mad. As to the wine, I think you are right.¹⁷⁰ But look here! Don't you see that the Kalends are approaching, and no Antonius?¹⁷¹ That the jury is being empanelled? For so they send me word. That Nigidius¹⁷² threatens in public meeting that he will personally cite any juror who does not appear? However, I should be glad if you would write me word whether you have heard anything about the return of Antonius; and since you don't mean to come here, dine with me in any case on the 29th. Mind you do this, and take care of your health.

XXVIII (a ii, 3)

TO ATTICUS (ON HIS WAY TO ROME)
Rome (December)

b.c. 60, æt. 46

First, I have good news for you, as I think. Valerius has been acquitted. Hortensius was his counsel. The verdict is thought to have been a favour to Aulus's son; and "Epicrates,"¹⁷³ I suspect, has been up to some mischief. I didn't like his boots and his white leggings.¹⁷⁴ What it is I shall know when you arrive. When you find fault with the narrow windows, let me tell you that you are criticising the Cyropædeia.¹⁷⁵ For when I made the same remark, Cyrus used to answer that the views of the gardens through broad lights were not so pleasant. For let α be the eye, βγ the object seen, δ and ε the rays … you see the rest.¹⁷⁶ For if sight resulted from the impact of images,¹⁷⁷ the images would be in great difficulties with a narrow entrance: but, as it is, that "effusion" of rays gets on quite nicely. If you have any other fault to find you won't get off without an answer, unless it is something that can be put right without expense.

I now come to January and my "political attitude," in which, after the manner of the Socratics, I shall put the two sides; at the end, however, as they were wont to do, the one which I approve. It is, indeed, a matter for profound reflexion. For I must either firmly oppose the agrarian law—which will involve a certain struggle, but a struggle full of glory—or I must remain altogether passive, which is about equivalent to retiring to Solonium¹⁷⁸ or Antium; or, lastly, I must actually assist the bill, which I am told Cæsar fully expects from me without any doubt. For Cornelius has been with me (I mean Cornelius Balbus,¹⁷⁹ Cæsar's intimate), and solemnly assured me that he meant to avail himself of my advice and Pompey's in everything, and intended to endeavour to reconcile Crassus with Pompey.¹⁸⁰ In this last course there are the following advantages: a very close union with Pompey, and, if I choose, with Cæsar also; a reconciliation with my political enemies, peace with the common herd, ease for my old age. But the conclusion of the third book of my own poem has a strong hold on me:

"Meanwhile the tenor of thy youth's first spring,
Which still as consul thou with all thy soul
And all thy manhood heldest, see thou keep,
And swell the chorus of all good men's praise."¹⁸¹

These verses Calliope herself dictated to me in that book, which contains much written in an "aristocratic" spirit, and I cannot, therefore, doubt that I shall always hold that

"The best of omens is our country's cause."¹⁸²

But let us reserve all this for our walks during the Compitalia¹⁸³. Remember the day before the Compitalia. I will order the bath to be heated, and Terentia is going to invite Pomponia. We will add your mother to the party. Please bring me Theophrastus de Ambitione from my brother's library.

XXIX (q fr i, 1)

Quintus Cicero was prætor in b.c. 62. In b.c. 61 (March) he went out to "Asia" as proprætor; his first year of office would be up in March, b.c. 60, but his governorship was, as was very common, extended till March, b.c. 59. Towards the end of b.c. 60 the senate seems to have arranged not to appoint his successor, that is, he would be left in office till about March, b.c. 58. It is in view of this third year of office that Cicero writes this essay-letter to him on the duties of a provincial governor. Apparently Quintus had faults of temper which had caused some scandals to reach Rome. We have seen how he was one of the few who managed to quarrel with Atticus; and in b.c. 48 we shall find how fiercely he resented the exercise of his brother's influence which had led him to take the losing side, which from his attachment to Cæsar he may have been half inclined to think the wrong side. His constant squabbles with his wife (though the fault was evidently in great part hers) also go towards forming our conclusion about him that, with some ability and honesty, he was un peu difficile.

TO HIS BROTHER QUINTUS (IN ASIA)
Rome (December)

b.c. 60, æt. 46

I. Though I have no doubt that many messengers, and even common rumour, with its usual speed, will anticipate this letter, and that you will already have heard from others that a third year has been added to my loss and your labour, yet I thought you ought to receive from me also the news of this tiresome circumstance. For not in one, but in several of my previous letters, in spite of others having given up the idea in despair, I gave you hope of being able at an early date to quit your province, not only that I might as long as possible cheer you with a pleasurable belief, but also because I and the prætors took such pains in the matter, that I felt no misgiving as to the possibility of its being arranged. As it is, since matters have so turned out that neither the prætors by the weight of their influence, nor I by my earnest efforts, have been able to prevail, it is certainly difficult not to be annoyed, yet our minds, practised as they are in conducting and supporting business of the utmost gravity, ought not to be crushed or weakened by vexation. And since men ought to feel most vexed at what has been brought upon them by their own fault, it is I who ought in this matter to be more vexed than you. For it is the result of a fault on my part, against which you had protested both in conversation at the moment of your departure, and in letters since, that your successor was not named last year. In this, while consulting for the interests of our allies, and resisting the shameless conduct of some merchants, and while seeking the increase of our reputation by your virtues, I acted unwisely, especially as I made it possible for that second year to entail a third. And as I confess the mistake to have been mine, it lies with your wisdom and kindness to remedy it, and to see that my imprudence is turned to advantage by your careful performance of your duties. And truly, if you exert yourself in every direction to earn men's good word, not with a view to rival others, but henceforth to surpass yourself, if you rouse your whole mind and your every thought and care to the ambition of gaining a superior reputation in all respects, believe me, one year added to your labour will bring us, nay, our posterity also, a joy of many years' duration. Wherefore I begin by entreating you not to let your soul shrink and be cast down, nor to allow yourself to be overpowered by the magnitude of the business as though by a wave; but, on the contrary, to stand upright and keep your footing, or even advance to meet the flood of affairs. For you are not administering a department of the state, in which fortune reigns supreme, but one in which a well-considered policy and an attention to business are the most important things. But if I had seen you receiving the prolongation of a command in a great and dangerous war, I should have trembled in spirit, because I should have known that the dominion of fortune over us had been at the same time prolonged. As it is, however, a department of the state has been intrusted to you in which fortune occupies no part, or, at any rate, an insignificant one, and which appears to me to depend entirely on your virtue and self-control. We have no reason to fear, as far as I know, any designs of our enemies, any actual fighting in the field, any revolts of allies, any default in the tribute or in the supply of corn, any mutiny in the army: things which have very often befallen the wisest of men in such a way, that they have been no more able to get the better of the assault of fortune, than the best of pilots a violent tempest. You have been granted profound peace, a dead calm: yet if the pilot falls asleep, it may even so overwhelm him, though if he keeps awake it may give him positive pleasure. For your province consists, in the first place, of allies of a race which, of all the world, is the most civilized; and, in the second place, of citizens, who, either as being publicani, are very closely connected with me, or, as being traders who have made money, think that they owe the security of their property to my consulship.

II. But it may be said that among even such men as these there occur serious disputes, many wrongful acts are committed, and hotly contested litigation is the result. As though I ever thought that you had no trouble to contend with! I know that the trouble is exceedingly great, and such as demands the very greatest prudence; but remember that it is prudence much more than fortune on which, in my opinion, the result of your trouble depends. For what trouble is it to govern those over whom you are set, if you do but govern yourself? That may be a great and difficult task to others, and indeed it is most difficult: to you it has always been the easiest thing in the world, and indeed ought to be so, for your natural disposition is such that, even without discipline, it appears capable of self-control; whereas a discipline has, in fact, been applied that might educate the most faulty of characters. But while you resist, as you do, money, pleasure, and every kind of desire yourself, there will, I am to be told, be a risk of your not being able to suppress some fraudulent banker or some rather over-extortionate tax-collector! For as to the Greeks, they will think, as they behold the innocence of your life, that one of the heroes of their history, or a demigod from heaven, has come down into the province. And this I say, not to induce you to act thus, but to make you glad that you are acting or have acted so. It is a splendid thing to have been three years in supreme power in Asia without allowing statue, picture, plate, napery, slave, anyone's good looks, or any offer of money—all of which are plentiful in your province—to cause you to swerve from the most absolute honesty and purity of life. What can be imagined so striking or so desirable as that a virtue, a command over the passions, a self-control such as yours, are not remaining in darkness and obscurity, but have been set in the broad daylight of Asia, before the eyes of a famous province, and in the hearing of all nations and peoples? That the inhabitants are not being ruined by your progresses, drained by your charges, agitated by your approach? That there is the liveliest joy, public and private, wheresoever you come, the city regarding you as a protector and not a tyrant, the private house as a guest and not a plunderer?

III. But in these matters I am sure that mere experience has by this time taught you that it is by no means sufficient to have these virtues yourself, but that you must keep your eyes open and vigilant, in order that in the guardianship of your province you may be considered to vouch to the allies, the citizens, and the state, not for yourself alone, but for all the subordinates of your government. However, you have in the persons of your legati men likely to have a regard for their own reputation. Of these in rank, position, and age Tubero is first; who, I think, particularly as he is a writer of history, could select from his own Annals many whom he would like and would be able to imitate. Allienus, again, is ours, as well in heart and affection, as in his conformity to our principles. I need not speak of Gratidius: I am sure that, while taking pains to preserve his own reputation, his fraternal affection for us makes him take pains for ours also.¹⁸⁴ Your quæstor is not of your own selection, but the one assigned you by lot. He is bound both to act with propriety of his own accord, and to conform to the policy and principles which you lay down. But should any one of these adopt a lower standard of conduct, you should tolerate such behaviour, if it goes no farther than a breach, in his private capacity, of the rules by which he was bound, but not if it goes to the extent of employing for gain the authority which you granted him as a promotion. For I am far from thinking, especially since the moral sentiments of the day are so much inclined to excessive laxity and self-seeking, that you should investigate every case of petty misconduct, and thoroughly examine every one of these persons; but that you should regulate your confidence by the trustworthiness of its recipient. And among such persons you will have to vouch for those whom the Republic has itself given you as companions and assistants in public affairs, at least within the limits which I have before laid down.

IV. In the case, however, of those of your personal staff or official attendants whom you have yourself selected to be about you—who are usually spoken of as a kind of prætor's cohort—we must vouch, not only for their acts, but even for their words. But those you have with you are the sort of men of whom you may easily be fond when they are acting rightly, and whom you may very easily check when they shew insufficient regard for your reputation. By these, when you were raw to the work, your frank disposition might possibly have been deceived—for the better a man is the less easily does he suspect others of being bad—now, however, let this third year witness an integrity as perfect as the two former, but still more wary and vigilant. Listen to that only which you are supposed to listen to; don't let your ears be open to whispered falsehoods and interested suggestions. Don't let your signet ring be a mere implement, but, as it were, your second self: not the minister of another's will, but a witness of your own. Let your marshal hold the rank which our ancestors wished him to hold, who, looking upon this place as not one of profit, but of labour and duty, scarcely ever conferred it upon any but their freedmen, whom they indeed controlled almost as absolutely as their slaves. Let the lictor be the dispenser of your clemency, not his own; and let the fasces and axes which they carry before you constitute ensigns rather of rank than of power. Let it, in fact, be known to the whole province that the life, children, fame, and fortunes of all over whom you preside are exceedingly dear to you. Finally, let it be believed that you will, if you detect it, be hostile not only to those who have accepted a bribe, but to those also who have given it. And, indeed, no one will give anything, if it is made quite clear that nothing is usually obtained from you through those who pretend to be very influential with you. Not, however, that the object of this discourse is to make you over-harsh or suspicious towards your staff. For if any of them in the course of the last two years has never fallen under suspicion of rapacity, as I am told about Cæsius and Chærippus and Labeo—and think it true, because I know them—there is no authority, I think, which may not be intrusted to them, and no confidence which may not be placed in them with the utmost propriety, and in anyone else like them. But if there is anyone of whom you have already had reason to doubt, or concerning whom you have made some discovery, in such a man place no confidence, intrust him with no particle of your reputation.

V. If, however, you have found in the province itself anyone, hitherto unknown to us, who has made his way into intimacy with you, take care how much confidence you repose in him; not that there may not be many good provincials, but, though we may hope so, it is risky to be positive. For everyone's real character is covered by many wrappings of pretence and is concealed by a kind of veil: face, eyes, expression very often lie, speech most often of all. Wherefore, how can you expect to find in that class¹⁸⁵ any who, while foregoing for the sake of money all from which we can scarcely tear ourselves away,¹⁸⁶ will yet love you sincerely and not merely pretend to do so from interested motives? I think, indeed, it is a hard task to find such men, especially if we notice that the same persons care nothing for almost any man out of office, yet always with one consent shew affection for the prætors. But of this class, if by chance you have discovered any one to be fonder of you—for it may so happen—than of your office, such a man indeed gladly admit upon your list of friends: but if you fail to perceive that, there is no class of people you must be more on your guard against admitting to intimacy, just because they are acquainted with all the ways of making money, do everything for the sake of it, and have no consideration for the reputation of a man with whom they are not destined to pass their lives. And even among the Greeks themselves you must be on your guard against admitting close intimacies, except in the case of the very few, if such are to be found, who are worthy of ancient Greece. As things now stand, indeed, too many of them are untrustworthy, false, and schooled by long servitude in the arts of extravagant adulation. My advice is that these men should all be entertained with courtesy, but that close ties of hospitality or friendship should only be formed with the best of them: excessive intimacies with them are not very trustworthy—for they do not venture to oppose our wishes—and they are not only jealous of our countrymen, but of their own as well.

VI. And now, considering the caution and care that I would shew in matters of this kind—in which I fear I may be somewhat over-severe—what do you suppose my sentiments are in regard to slaves? Upon these we ought to keep a hold in all places, but especially in the provinces. On this head many rules may be laid down, but this is at once the shortest and most easily maintained—that they should behave during your progresses in Asia as though you were travelling on the Appian way, and not suppose that it makes any difference whether they have arrived at Tralles or Formiæ. But if, again, any one of your slaves is conspicuously trustworthy, employ him in your domestic and private affairs; but in affairs pertaining to your office as governor, or in any department of the state, do not let him lay a finger. For many things which may, with perfect propriety, be intrusted to slaves, must yet not be so intrusted, for the sake of avoiding talk and hostile remark. But my discourse, I know not how, has slipped into the didactic vein, though that is not what I proposed to myself originally. For what right have I to be laying down rules for one who, I am fully aware, in this subject especially, is not my inferior in wisdom, while in experience he is even my superior? Yet, after all, if your actions had the additional weight of my approval, I thought that they would seem more satisfactory to yourself. Wherefore, let these be the foundations on which your public character rests: first and foremost your own honesty and self-control, then the scrupulous conduct of all your staff, the exceedingly cautious and careful selection in regard to intimacies with provincials and Greeks, the strict and unbending government of your slaves. These are creditable even in the conduct of our private and everyday business: in such an important government, where morals are so debased and the province has such a corrupting influence, they must needs seem divine. Such principles and conduct on your part are sufficient to justify the strictness which you have displayed in some acts of administration, owing to which I have encountered certain personal disputes with great satisfaction, unless, indeed, you suppose me to be annoyed by the complaints of a fellow like Paconius—who is not even a Greek, but in reality a Mysian or Phrygian—or by the words of Tuscenius, a madman and a knave, from whose abominable jaws you snatched the fruits of a most infamous piece of extortion with the most complete justice.

VII. These and similar instances of your strict administration in your province we shall find difficulty in justifying, unless they are accompanied by the most perfect integrity: wherefore let there be the greatest strictness in your administration of justice, provided only that it is never varied from favour, but is kept up with impartiality. But it is of little avail that justice is administered by yourself with impartiality and care, unless the same is done by those to whom you have intrusted any portion of this duty. And, indeed, in my view there is no very great variety of business in the government of Asia: the entire province mainly depends on the administration of justice. In it we have the whole theory of government, especially of provincial government, clearly displayed: all that a governor has to do is to shew consistency and firmness enough, not only to resist favouritism, but even the suspicion of it. To this also must be added courtesy in listening to pleaders, consideration in pronouncing a decision, and painstaking efforts to convince suitors of its justice, and to answer their arguments. It is by such habits that C. Octavius has recently made himself very popular;¹⁸⁷ in whose court, for the first time,¹⁸⁸ the lictor did not interfere, and the marshal kept silence, while every suitor spoke as often and as long as he chose. In which conduct he would perhaps have been thought over-lax, had it not been that this laxity enabled him to maintain the following instance of severity. The partisans of Sulla were forced to restore what they had taken by violence and terrorism. Those who had made inequitable decrees, while in office, were now as private citizens forced to submit to the principles they had established. This strictness on his part would have been thought harsh, had it not been rendered palatable by many sweetening influences of courtesy. But if this gentleness was sufficient to make him popular at Rome, where there is such haughtiness of spirit, such unrestrained liberty, such unlimited licence of individuals, and, in fine, so many magistrates, so many means of obtaining protection, such vast power in the hands of the popular assembly, and such influence exercised by the senate, how welcome must a prætor's courtesy be in Asia, in which there is such a numerous body of citizens and allies, so many cities, so many communities, all hanging on one man's nod, and in which there are no means of protection, no one to whom to make a complaint, no senate, no popular assembly! Wherefore it requires an exalted character, a man who is not only equitable from natural impulse, but who has also been trained by study and the refinements of a liberal education, so to conduct himself while in the possession of such immense power, that those over whom he rules should not feel the want of any other power.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

1

That Cicero up to the time of his consulship had been connected rather with the populares is illustrated by Quintus (de Petit. i.) urging him to make it clear that he had never been a demagogue, but that if he had ever spoken "in the spirit of the popular party, he had done so with the view of attracting Pompey."

Back

2

De Orat. ii. §§ 1, 2.

Back

3

"The city, the city, my dear Rufus—stick to that, and live in its full light. Residence elsewhere—as I made up my mind early in life—is mere eclipse and obscurity to those whose energy is capable of shining at Rome."—Fam. ii. 12 (vol. ii., p. 166).

Back

4

Even at these he found troublesome people to interrupt him. See vol. i., pp. 102, 104.

Back

5

Yet the announcement of the birth of his son (p. 16) and of the dangerous confinement of Tullia (vol. ii., p. 403) are almost equally brief.

Back

6

See Att. ii. 1, vol. i., p. 62; Plut. Cic. 13; Cic. in Pis. § 4.

Back

7

See Att. ii. 1, vol. i., p. 62; Plut. Cic. 13; Cic. in Pis. § 4.

Back

8

Die Entstchungsgeschichte der catilinarischen Verschwörung, by Dr. Constantin John, 1876. I am still of opinion that Plutarch's statement can be strongly supported.

Back

9

Cæsar said, οὺ μὴν καὶ προσήκειν ἐπὶ τοῐς παρεληλυθόσι τοιοῠτόν τινα νόμον συγγράφεσθαι (Dio, xxxviii. 17).

Back

10

"The man who did not so much as raise me up, when I threw myself at his feet."—Att. x. 4 (vol. ii., p. 362). Similar allusions to Pompey's conduct to him on the occasion often occur.

Back

11

See vol. i., p. 190.

Back

12

See vol. i., pp. 129, 138; cp. pro Planc. §§ 95-96.

Back

13

Fam. i. 9, 15 (vol. i., p. 316).

Back

14

Letter CVII, vol. i., pp. 219, 220.

Back

15

Ever since its capture in the second Punic War, Capua had ceased to have any corporate existence, and its territory had been ager publicus, let out to tenants (aratores). Cæsar had restored its corporate existence by making it a colonia, and much of the land had been allotted to veterans of his own and Pompey's armies. The state thus lost the rent of the land, one of the few sources of revenue from Italy now drawn by the exchequer of Rome.

Back

16

Letter CLII, vol. i., pp. 310-324.

Back

17

Quoted by Flavius Charisius, Ars Gramm. i., p. 126 (ed. Kiel).

Back

18

Vol. ii., p. 204.

Back

19

Vol. i., p. 357.

Back

20

CLXXVIII-CLXXXI. The date of the letter to P. Sittius (CLXXVIII) is not certain.

Back

21

Vol. i., p. 366.

Back

22

Letter DXXXIII (Fam. iv. 14), about October, B.C. 46.

Back

23

Vol. i., p. 226; Pliny, Ep., vii. 33.

Back

24

Pomponia, married to Cicero's younger brother Quintus. We shall frequently hear of this unfortunate marriage. Quintus was four years younger than his brother, who had apparently arranged the match, and felt therefore perhaps somewhat responsible for the result (Nep. Att. 5).

Back

25

Atticus had estates and a villa near Buthrotum in Epirus,—Butrinto in Albania, opposite Corfu.

Back

26

This is probably Sext. Peducæus the younger, an intimate friend of Atticus (Nep. Att. 21); his father had been prætor in Sicily when Cicero was quæstor (b.c. 76-75), the son was afterwards a partisan of Cæsar in the Civil War, governor of Sardinia, b.c. 48, and proprætor in Spain, b.c. 39.

Back

27

The person alluded to is L. Lucceius, of whom we shall hear again. See Letters V, VII, VIII, CVIII. What his quarrel with Atticus was about, we do not know.

Back

28

Prescriptive right to property was acquired by possession (usus) of two years. But no such right could be acquired to the property of a girl under guardianship (pro Flacco, § 84).

Back

29

C. Rabirius, whom Cicero defended in b.c. 63, when prosecuted by Cæsar for his share in the murder of Saturninus (b.c. 100). He lived, we know, in Campania, for his neighbours came to give evidence in his favour at the trial.

Back

30

M. Fonteius made a fortune in the province of Gaul beyond the Alps, of which he was proprætor, b.c. 77-74. In b.c. 69 he had been accused of malversation, and defended by Cicero. After his acquittal he seems to be buying a seaside residence in Campania, as so many of the men of fashion did.

Back

31

Cicero's "gymnasium" was some arrangement of buildings and plantations more or less on the model of the Greek gymnasia, at his Tusculan villa.

Back

32

The mother of Atticus lived to be ninety, dying in b.c. 33, not long before Atticus himself, who at her funeral declared that "he had never been reconciled to her, for he had never had a word of dispute with her" (Nep. Att. 17).

Back

33

This sum (about £163) is for the works of art purchased for the writer by Atticus.

Back

34

Thyillus (sometimes written Chilius), a Greek poet living at Rome. See Letters XVI and XXI. The Eumolpidæ were a family of priests at Athens who had charge of the temple of Demeter at Eleusis. The πάτρια Εὐμολπιδῶν (the phrase used by Cicero here) may be either books of ritual or records such as priests usually kept: πάτρια is an appropriate word for such rituals or records handed down by priests of one race or family.

Back

35

Lucceius, as in the first letter and the next.

Back

36

The comitia were twice postponed this year. Apparently the voting for Cicero had in each case been completed, so that he is able to say that he was "thrice returned at the head of the poll by an unanimous vote" (de Imp. Pomp. § 2). The postponement of the elections was probably connected with the struggles of the senate to hinder the legislation (as to bribery) of the Tribune, Gaius Cornelius (Dio, 36, 38-39).

Back

37

The first allusion in these letters to the disturbed position of public affairs. See the passage of Dio quoted in the previous note. There were so many riots in the interval between the proclamation and the holding of the elections, not without bloodshed, that the senate voted the consuls a guard.

Back

38

The point of this frigid joke is not clear. Was the grandmother really dead? What was she to do with the Latin feriæ? Mr. Strachan Davidson's explanation is perhaps the best, that Cicero means that the old lady was thinking of the Social War in b.c. 89, when the loyalty of the Latin towns must have been a subject of anxiety. She is in her dotage and only remembers old scares. This is understanding civitates with Latinæ. Others understand feriæ or mulieres. Saufeius, a Roman eques, was an Epicurean, who would hold death to be no evil. He was a close friend of Atticus, who afterwards saved his property from confiscation by the Triumvirs (Nep. Att. 12).

Back

39

Cneius Sallustius, a learned friend of Cicero's, of whom we shall often hear again.

Back

40

C. Calpurnius Piso, quæstor b.c. 58, died in b.c. 57. The marriage took place in b.c. 63.

Back

41

The annalist C. Licinius Macer was impeached de repetundis (he was prætor about b.c. 70 or 69, and afterwards had a province), and finding that he was going to be condemned, committed suicide. He was never therefore condemned regularly (Val. Max. ix. 127; Plut. Cic. 9). Cicero presided at the court as prætor.

Back

42

The books must have been a very valuable collection, or Cicero would hardly have made so much of being able to buy them, considering his lavish orders for statues or antiques.

Back

43

One of the judices rejected by Verres on his trial, a pontifex and augur.

Back

44

Agent of Atticus.

Back

45

C. Antonius (uncle of M. Antonius) was elected with Cicero. Q. Cornificius had been tr. pl. in b.c. 69. See Letter XVIII.

Back

46

M. Cæsonius, Cicero's colleague in the ædileship. He had lost credit as one of the Iunianum concilium in the trial of Oppianicus.

Back

47

Aufidius Lurco, tr. pl. b.c. 61. M. Lollius Palicanus, tr. pl. some years previously.

Back

48

L. Iulius Cæsar, actually consul in b.c. 64, brother-in-law of Lentulus the Catilinarian conspirator, was afterwards legatus to his distant kinsman, Iulius Cæsar, in Gaul. A. Minucius Thermus, defended by Cicero in b.c. 59, but the identification is not certain. D. Iunius Silanus got the consulship in the year after Cicero (b.c. 62), and as consul-designate spoke in favour of executing the Catilinarian conspirators.

Back

49

The text is corrupt in all MSS. I have assumed a reading, something of this sort, quæ cum erit absoluta, sane facile ac libenter eum nunc fieri consulem viderim. This at any rate gives nearly the required sense, which is that Cicero regards the influence which Thermus will gain by managing the repair of the Flaminia as likely to make him a formidable candidate, and therefore he would be glad to see him elected in the present year 65 (nunc) rather than wait for the next, his own year.

Back

50

C. Calpurnis Piso, consul in b.c. 67, then proconsul of Gallia Transalpina (Narbonensis). He was charged with embezzlement in his province and defended by Cicero in b.c. 63. There were no votes in Transalpine Gaul, but Cicero means in going and coming to canvass the Cispadane cities.

Back

51

Pompey was this year on his way to take over the Mithridatic War. But Cicero may have thought it likely that he or some of his staff would pass through Athens and meet Atticus.

Back

52

L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, prætor in b.c. 58, and consul b.c. 54, fell at Pharsalia, fighting against Cæsar.

Back

53

Q. Cæcilius, a rich uncle of Atticus, so cross-grained that no one but Atticus could get on with him, to whom he accordingly left his large fortune (Nep. Att. 5).

Back

54

Hom. Il. xxii. 159, Achilles pursuing Hector:

"Since not for sacred beast or oxhide shield
They strove,—man's guerdon for the fleet of foot:
Their stake was Hector's soul, the swift steed's lord."

Back

55

Reading eius ἀνάθημα, and taking the latter word in the common sense of "ornament": the Hermathena is so placed that the whole gymnasium is as it were an ornament to it, designed to set it off, instead of its being a mere ornament to the gymnasium. Professor Tyrrell, however, will not admit that the words can have this or any meaning, and reads, ἡλίου ἄναμμα, "sun light"—"the whole gymnasium seems as bright as the sun"—a curious effect, after all, for one statue to have.

Back

56

Asconius assigns this to the accusation of embezzlement in Africa. But that seems to have been tried in the previous year, or earlier in this year. The new impeachment threatened seems to have been connected with his crimes in the proscriptions of Sulla (Dio, xxxvii, 10). Cicero may have thought of defending him on a charge relating to so distant a period, just as he did Rabirius on the charge of murdering Saturninus (b.c. 100), though he had regarded his guilt in the case of extortion in Africa as glaring.

Back

57

The essay on the duties of a candidate attributed to Quintus is hardly a letter, and there is some doubt as to its authenticity. I have therefore relegated it to an appendix.

Back

58

Q. Metellus Celer had been prætor in b.c. 63 and was now (b.c. 62), as proconsul in Gallia Cisalpina, engaged against the remains of the Catilinarian conspiracy. Meanwhile his brother (or cousin) Q. Cæcilius Metellus Nepos, a tribune, after trying in vain to bring Cicero to trial for the execution of the conspirators, at last proposed to summon Pompey to Rome to prevent danger to the lives of citizens. This attempt led to riots and contests with Cato, and Nepos finally fled from Rome to Pompey. By leaving Rome he broke the law as to the tribunes, and the senate declared his office vacant, and this letter would even seem to shew that the senate declared him a public enemy. This letter of remonstrance is peremptory, if not insolent, in tone, and the reader will observe that the formal sentences, dropped in more familiar letters, are carefully used.

Back

59

Metellus had been employed with Antonius against the camp at Fæsulæ, but was now engaged against some Alpine tribes.

Back

60

When Metellus was commanding against Catiline, it is suggested that he marched towards Rome to support his brother, but this is conjecture.

Back

61

Sister of P. Clodius. Of this famous woman we shall hear often again. She is believed to be the Lesbia of Catullus, and she is the "Palatine Medea" of the speech pro Cælio. Yet, in spite of Cicero's denunciations of her, he seems at one time to have been so fond of her society as to rouse Terentia's jealousy.

Back

62

Wife of Pompey—divorced by him on his return from the East.

Back

63

On the next meeting of the senate. The second was a dies comitialis on which the senate usually did not meet (Cæs. B. Civ. i. i).

Back

64

For the riots caused by his contests with Cato (on which the senate seems to have passed the senatus consultum ultimum), and for his having left Rome while tribune.

Back

65

P. Sestius was serving as proquæstor in Macedonia under Gaius Antonius. As tribune in b.c. 57 he worked for Cicero's recall, but was afterwards prosecuted de vi, and defended by Cicero.

Back

66

Gaius Antonius, Cicero's colleague in the consulship. He had the province of Macedonia after the consulship, Cicero having voluntarily withdrawn in his favour to secure his support against Catiline. Scandal said that he had bargained to pay Cicero large sums from the profits of the province. He governed so corruptly and unsuccessfully that he was on his return condemned of maiestas.

Back

67

From expressions in the following letters it seems certain that this refers to money expected from Gaius Antonius; but we have no means of deciding whether or no Teucris is a pseudonym for some agent. Cicero had undertaken to be the advocate and supporter of Antonius, and though as an actual patronus in court he could not take money, he may have felt justified in receiving supplies from him. Still, he knew the character of Antonius, and how such wealth was likely to be got, and it is not a pleasant affair.

Back

68

Money-lenders.

Back

69

The rich and cross-grained uncle of Atticus. See Letter X.

Back

70

Cicero quotes half a Greek verse of Menander's, ταὐτόματον ἡμῶν, leaving Atticus to fill up the other two words, καλλίω βουλεύεται, "Chance designs better than we ourselves."

Back

71

Mucia was suspected of intriguing with Iulius Cæsar.

Back

72

The chief festival of the Bona Dea (Tellus) was in May. The celebration referred to here took place on the night between the 3rd and 4th of December. It was a state function (pro populo), and was celebrated in the presence of the Vestals and the wife of the consul or prætor urbanus, in ea domo quæ est in imperio. As Cæsar was Pontifex Maximus, as well as prætor urbanus, it took place in the Regia, the Pontiff's official house (Plutarch, Cic. 19; Dio, xxxvii. 35).

Back

73

The word (comperisse) used by Cicero in regard to the Catilinarian conspiracy; it had apparently become a subject of rather malignant chaff.

Back

74

Cicero is hinting at the danger of prosecution hanging over the head of Antonius.

Back

75

Reading tibi ipsi (not ipse), with Tyrrell.

Back

76

Ora soluta. Or, if ancora sublata be read, "when the anchor was already weighed." In either case it means "just as you were starting." Atticus wrote on board, and gave the letter to a carrier to take on shore.

Back

77

A word lost in the text.

Back

78

See end of Letter XXI. Cicero playfully supposes that Atticus only stayed in his villa in Epirus to offer sacrifices to the nymph in his gymnasium, and then hurried off to Sicyon, where people owed him money which he wanted to get. He goes to Antonius first to get his authority for putting pressure on Sicyon, and perhaps even some military force.

Back

79

C. Calpurnius Piso (consul b.c. 67), brother of the consul of the year, had been governor of Gallia Narbonensis (b.c. 66-65), and had suppressed a rising of the Allobroges, the most troublesome tribe in the province, who were, in fact, again in rebellion.

Back

80

M. Pupius Piso.

Back

81

"By the expression of his face rather than the force of his expressions" (Tyrrell).

Back

82

See p. 27, note 2.

Back

83

Pompey.

Back

84

Or, "inclose with my speech"; in both cases the dative orationi meæ is peculiar. No speech exists containing such a description, but we have only two of the previous year extant (pro Flacco and pro Archia Poeta). Cicero was probably sending it, whichever it was, to Atticus to be copied by his librarii, and published. Atticus had apparently some other works of Cicero's in hand, for which he had sent him some "queries."

Back

85

Apparently the speech in the senate referred to in Letter XIV, p. 23, spoken on 1st January, b.c. 62. Metellus had prevented his contio the day before.

Back

86

The letter giving this description is lost. I think frigebat is epistolary imperfect—"he is in the cold shade," not, "it fell flat."

Back

87

πανήγυρις. Cicero uses the word (an honourable one in Greek) contemptuously of the rabble brought together at a market.

Back

88

Pompey's general commendation of the decrees of the senate would include those regarding the Catiline conspirators, and he therefore claimed to have satisfied Cicero.

Back

89

Meis omnibus litteris, the MS. reading. Prof. Tyrrell's emendation, orationibus meis, omnibus litteris, "in my speeches, every letter of them," seems to me even harsher than the MS., a gross exaggeration, and doubtful Latin. Meis litteris is well supported by literæ forenses et senatoriæ of de Off. 2, § 3, and though it is an unusual mode of referring to speeches, we must remember that they were now published and were "literature." The particular reference is to the speech pro Imperio Pompeii, in which, among other things, the whole credit of the reduction of Spartacus's gladiators is given to Pompey, whereas the brunt of the war had been borne by Crassus.

Back

90

Fufius, though Cicero does not say so, must have vetoed the decree, but in the face of such a majority withdrew his veto. The practice seems to have been, in case of tribunician veto, to take the vote, which remained as an auctoritas senatus, but was not a senatus consultum unless the tribune was induced to withdraw.

Back

91

Comperisse. See Letter XVII, note 1, p. 28.

Back

92

See Letters XVI and XVIII, pp. 26, 32.

Back

93

παντοίης ἀρέτης μιμνήσκεο (Hom. Il. xxii. 8)

Back

94

The allotment of provinces had been put off (see last letter) till the affair of Clodius's trial was settled; consequently Quintus would not have much time for preparation, and would soon set out. He would cross to Dyrrachium, and proceed along the via Egnatia to Thessalonica. He might meet Atticus at Dyrrachium, or go out of his way to call on him at Buthrotum.

Back

95

ὕστερον πρότερον Ὁμηρικῶς.

Back

96

That is, the resolution of the senate, that the consuls should endeavour to get the bill passed.

Back

97

Cicero deposed to having seen Clodius in Rome three hours after he swore that he was at Interamna (ninety miles off), thus spoiling his alibi.

Back

98

The difficulty of this sentence is well known. The juries were now made up of three decuriæ—senators, equites, and tribuni ærarii. But the exact meaning of tribuni ærarii is not known, beyond the fact that they formed an ordo, coming immediately below the equites. Possibly they were old tribal officers who had the duty of distributing pay or collecting taxes (to which the translation supposes a punning reference), and as such were required to be of a census immediately below that of the equites. I do not profess to be satisfied, but I cannot think that Professor Tyrrell's proposal makes matters much easier—tribuni non tam ærarii, ut appellantur, quam ærati; for his translation of ærati as "bribed" is not better supported, and is a less natural deduction than "moneyed."

Back

99

I.e., the Athenians. Xenocrates of Calchedon (b.c. 396-314), residing at Athens, is said to have been so trusted that his word was taken as a witness without an oath (Diog. Laert. iv. ii. 4).

Back

100

Q. Cæcilius Numidicus, consul b.c. 109, commanded against Iugurtha. The event referred to in the text is said to have occurred on his trial de repetundis, after his return from a province which he had held as proprætor (Val. Max. ii. x. 1).

Back

101

Hom. Il. xvi. 112:

ἕσπετε νῦν μοι, Μοῦσαι, Ὀλύμπια δώματ' ἔχουσαι
ὅππως δὴ πρῶτον πῦρ ἔμπεσε νηυσὶν Ἀχαίων.

Back

102

The reference is to Crassus. But the rest is very dark. The old commentators say that he is here called ex Nanneianis because he made a large sum of money by the property of one Nanneius, who was among those proscribed by Sulla. His calling Crassus his "panegyrist" is explained by Letter XIX, pp. 33-34.

Back

103

C. Curio, the elder, defended Clodius. He had bought the villa of Marius (a native of Arpinum) at Baiæ.

Back

104

Q. Marcius Rex married a sister of Clodius, and dying, left him no legacy.

Back

105

L. Afranius.

Back

106

Reading deterioris histrionis similis, "like an inferior actor."

Back

107

Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, married to Cato's sister. Consul b.c. 54. A strong aristocrat and vehement opponent of Cæsar.

Back

108

Aufidius Lurco had apparently proposed his law on bribery between the time of the notice of the elections (indictio) and the elections themselves, which was against a provision of the leges Ælia et Fufia. What his breach of the law was in entering on his office originally we do not know: perhaps some neglect of auspices, or his personal deformity.

Back

109

I.e. to Quintus Cicero, now proprætor in Asia, who apparently wished his brother-in-law to come to Asia in some official capacity.

Back

110

Some epigrams or inscriptions under a portrait bust of Cicero in the gymnasium of Atticus's villa at Buthrotum. Atticus had a taste for such compositions. See Nepos, Att. 18; Pliny, N. H. 35, § 11.

Back

111

Cicero had defended Archias, and Thyillus seems also to have been intimate with him: but he says Archias, after complimenting the Luculli by a poem, is now doing the same to the Cæcilii Metelli. The "Cæcilian drama" is a reference to the old dramatist, Cæcilius Statius (ob. b.c. 168).

Back

112

Of Amaltheia, nurse of Zeus in Crete, there were plenty of legends. Atticus is making in his house something like what Cicero had made in his, and called his academia or gymnasium. That of Atticus was probably also a summer house or study, with garden, fountains, etc., and a shrine or statue of Amaltheia.

Back

113

Cicero is evidently very anxious as to the misunderstanding between Quintus and his brother-in-law Atticus, caused, as he hints, or at any rate not allayed, by Pomponia. The letter is very carefully written, without the familiar tone and mixture of jest and earnest common to most of the letters to Atticus.

Back

114

At the end of the via Egnatia, which started from Dyrrachium.

Back

115

The election in question is that to be held in b.c. 60 for the consulship of b.c. 59. Cæsar and Bibulus were elected, and apparently were the only two candidates declared as yet. They were, of course, extremists, and Lucceius seems to reckon on getting in by forming a coalition with either one or the other, and so getting the support of one of the extreme parties, with the moderates, for himself. The bargain eventually made was between Lucceius and Cæsar, the former finding the money. But the Optimates found more, and carried Bibulus. Arrius is Q. Arrius the orator (see Index). C. Piso is the consul of b.c. 67.

Back

116

Reading (mainly with Schutz) animus præsens et voluntas, tamen etiam atque etiam ipsa medicinam refugit. The verb refugit is very doubtful, but it gives nearly the sense required. Cicero is ready to be as brave and active as before, but the state will not do its part. It has, for instance, blundered in the matter of the law against judicial corruption. The senate offended the equites by proposing it, and yet did not carry the law. I think animus and voluntas must refer to Cicero, not the state, to which in his present humour he would not attribute them.

Back

117

The temple of Iuventas was vowed by M. Livius after the battle of the Metaurus (b.c. 207), and dedicated in b.c. 191 by C. Licinius Lucullus, games being established on the anniversary of its dedication (Livy, xxi. 62; xxxvi. 36). It is suggested, therefore, that some of the Luculli usually presided at these games, but on this occasion refused, because of the injury done by C. Memmius, who was curule ædile.

Back

118

By Agamemnon and Menelaus Cicero means Lucius and Marcus Lucullus; the former Memmius had, as tribune in b.c. 66-65, opposed in his demand for a triumph, the latter he has now injured in the person of his wife.

Back

119

A man who was sui iuris was properly adopted before the commitia curiata, now represented by thirty lictors. What Herennius proposed was that it should take place by a regular lex, passed by the comitia tributa. The object apparently was to avoid the necessity of the presence of a pontifex and augur, which was required at the comitia curiata. The concurrent law by the consul would come before the comitia centuriata. The adopter was P. Fonteius, a very young man.

Back

120

L. Afranius, the other consul.

Back

121

M. Lollius Palicanus, "a mere mob orator" (Brutus, §223).

Back

122

The toga picta of a triumphator, which Pompey, by special law, was authorized to wear at the games. Cicero uses the contemptuous diminutive, togula.

Back

123

To be absent from the census without excuse rendered a man liable to penalties. Cicero will therefore put up notices in Atticus's various places of business or residence of his intention to appear in due course. To appear just at the end of the period was, it seems, in the case of a man of business, advisable, that he might be rated at the actual amount of his property, no more or less.

Back

124

A special title given to the Ædui on their application for alliance. Cæsar, B. G. i. 33.

Back

125

The migration of the Helvetii did not actually begin till b.c. 58. Cæsar tells us in the first book of his Commentaries how he stopped it.

Back

126

Consul b.c. 69, superseded in Crete by Pompey b.c. 65. Triumphed b.c. 62.

Back

127

Prætor b.c. 63, defended by Cicero in an extant oration.

Back

128

Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus, consul in b.c. 72. Cicero puns on the name Lentulus from lens (pulse, φακή), and quotes a Greek proverb for things incongruous. See Athenæus, 160 (from the Necuia of Sopater):

Ἴθακος Ὀδυσσεὺς, τὸ ἐκὶ τῇ φακῇ μύρον
πάρεστι· θάρσει, θυμέ.

Back

129

b.c. 133, the year before the agrarian law of Tiberius Gracchus. The law of Gracchus had not touched the public land in Campania (the old territory of Capua). The object of this clause (which appears repeatedly in those of b.c. 120 and 111, see Bruns, Fontes Iuris, p. 72) is to confine the allotment of ager publicus to such land as had become so subsequently, i.e., to land made "public" principally by the confiscations of Sulla.

Back

130

That is, he proposed to hypothecate the vectigalia from the new provinces formed by Pompey in the East for five years.

Back

131

The consulship. The bribery at Afranius's election is asserted in Letter XXI.

Back

132

The day of the execution of the Catilinarian conspirators.

Back

133

Epicharmus, twice quoted by Polybius, xviii. 40; xxxi. 21. νᾶφε καὶ μέμνας' ἀπιστεῖν, ἄρθρα ταῦτα τῶν φρενῶν.

Back

134

Pedarii were probably those senators who had not held curule office. They were not different from the other senators in point of legal rights, but as ex-magistrates were asked for their sententia first, they seldom had time to do anything but signify by word their assent to one or other motion, or to cross over to the person whom they intended to support.

Back

135

P. Servilius Vatia Isauricus, son of the conqueror of the Isaurians. As he had not yet been a prætor, he would be called on after the consulares and prætorii. He then moved a new clause to the decree, and carried it.

Back

136

The decree apparently prevented the recovery of debts from a libera civitas in the Roman courts. Atticus would therefore have to trust to the regard of the Sicyonians for their credit.

Back

137

A son must be hard up for something to say for himself if he is always harping on his father's reputation; and so must I, if I have nothing but my consulship. That seems the only point in the quotation. I do not feel that there is any reference to praise of his father in Cicero's own poem. There are two versions of the proverb:

τίς πατέρ' αἰνήσει εἰ μὴ κακοδαίμονες υἱοί

and

τίς πατέρ' αἰνήσει εἰ μὴ εὐδαίμονες υἱοί.

Back

138

Contained in Letter XXII, pp. 46-47.

Back

139

Reading tibi for mihi, as Prof. Tyrrell suggests.

Back

140

Σπάρτην ἔλαχες κείνην κοσμεῖ. "Sparta is your lot, do it credit," a line of Euripides which had become proverbial.

Back

141

οἱ μὲν παρ' οὐδέν εἰσι, τοῖς δ' οὐδεν μέλει. Rhinton, a dramatist, circa b.c. 320-280 (of Tarentum or Syracuse).

Back

142

See pp. 52, 56, 65.

Back

143

See p. 57.

Back

144

The lex Cincia (b.c. 204) forbade the taking of presents for acting as advocate in law courts.

Back

145

Nep. Att. c. 18.

Back

146

Atticus seems to have seen a copy belonging to some one else at Corfu. Cicero explains that he had kept back Atticus's copy for revision.

Back

147

Cicero evidently intends Atticus to act as a publisher. His librarii will make copies. See p. 32, note 1.

Back

148

The passage in brackets is believed by some, not on very good grounds, to be spurious. Otho is L. Roscius Otho, the author of the law as to the seats in the theatre of the equites. The "proscribed" are those proscribed by Sulla, their sons being forbidden to hold office, a disability which Cicero maintained for fear of civil disturbances. See in Pis. §§ 4-5.

Back

149

Pulchellus, i.e., P. Clodius Pulcher, the diminutive of contempt.

Back

150

Where he had been as quæstor. Hera is said to be another name for Hybla. Some read heri, "only yesterday."

Back

151

Clodius is shewing off his modesty. It was usual for persons returning from a province to send messengers in front, and to travel deliberately, that their friends might pay them the compliment of going out to meet them. Entering the city after nightfall was another method of avoiding a public reception. See Suet. Aug. 53.

Back

152

See p. 37, note 3.

Back

153

Clodia, wife of the consul Metellus. See p. 22, note.

Back

154

We don't know who this is; probably a cavaliere servente of Clodia's.

Back

155

I.e., in the business of her brother Clodius's attempt to get the tribuneship.

Back

156

Though Cæsar has been mentioned before in regard to his candidature for the consulship, and in connexion with the Clodius case, this is the first reference to him as a statesman. He is on the eve of his return from Spain, and already is giving indication of his coalition with Pompey. His military success in Spain first clearly demonstrated his importance.

Back

157

During the meeting of the senate at the time of the Catilinarian conspiracy (2 Phil. § 16).

Back

158

The consul Cæcilius Metellus was imprisoned by the tribune Flavius for resisting his land law (Dio, xxxvii. 50).

Back

159

M. Favonius, an extreme Optimate. Ille Catonis æmulus (Suet. Aug. 13). He had a bitter tongue, but a faithful heart (Plut. Pomp. 60, 73; Vell. ii 73). He did not get the prætorship (which he was now seeking) till b.c. 49. He was executed after Philippi (Dio. 47, 49).

Back

160

P. Scipio Nasica Metellus Pius, the future father-in-law of Pompey, who got the prætorship, was indicted for ambitus by Favonius.

Back

161

Ἀπολλόνιος Μόλων of Alabanda taught rhetoric at Rhodes. Cicero had himself attended his lectures. He puns on the name Molon and molæ, "mill at which slaves worked."

Back

162

See pp. 57, 60.

Back

163

Reading discessionibus, "divisions in the senate," with Manutius and Tyrrell, not dissentionibus; and deinde ne, but not st for si.

Back

164

His study, which he playfully calls by this name, in imitation of that of Atticus. See p. 30.

Back

165

See Letter XV, p. 25.

Back

166

His translation of the Prognostics of Aratus.

Back

167

Gaius Octavius, father of Augustus, governor of Macedonia.

Back

168

The roll being unwound as he read and piled on the ground. Dicæarchus of Messene, a contemporary of Aristotle, wrote on "Constitutions" among other things. Procilius seems also to have written on polities.

Back

169

Herodes, a teacher at Athens, afterwards tutor to young Cicero. He seems to have written on Cicero's consulship.

Back

170

These remarks refer to something in Atticus's letter.

Back

171

Gaius Antonius, about to be prosecuted for maiestas on his return from Macedonia.

Back

172

P. Nigidius Figulus, a tribune (which dates the letter after the 10th of December). The tribunes had no right of summons (vocatio), they must personally enforce their commands.

Back

173

"The Conqueror," i.e., Pompey. Aulus's son is L. Afranius.

Back

174

I.e., his military get-up.

Back

175

Cyrus was Cicero's architect; his argument or theory he calls Cyropædeia, after Xenophon's book.

Back

176

He supposes himself to be making a mathematical figure in optics:

Back

177

The theory of sight held by Democritus, denounced as unphilosophical by Plutarch (Timoleon, Introd.).

Back

178

Apparently a villa in the Solonius ager, near Lanuvium.

Back

179

The Cornelius Balbus of Gades, whose citizenship Cicero defended b.c. 56 (consul b.c. 40). He was Cæsar's close friend and agent.

Back

180

Cicero was apparently not behind the scenes. The coalition with Pompey certainly, and with Crassus probably, had been already made and the terms agreed upon soon after the elections. If Cicero afterwards discovered this it must have shewn him how little he could trust Pompey's show of friendship and Cæsar's candour. Cæsar desired Cicero's private friendship and public acquiescence, but was prepared to do without them.

Back

181

From Cicero's Latin poem on his consulship.

Back

182

εἶς οἰωνός ἄριστος ἀμύνεσθαι περὶ πάτρης (Hom. Il. xii. 243).

Back

183

A country festival and general holiday. It was a feriæ conceptivæ, and therefore the exact day varied. But it was about the end of the year or beginning of the new year (in Pis. § 4; Aul. Gell. x. 24; Macrob. Sat. i. 4; ad Att. vii. 5; vii. 7, § 2).

Back

184

Of the persons mentioned, L. Ælius Tubero is elsewhere praised as a man of learning (pro Lig. § 10); A. Allienus (prætor b.c. 49) was a friend and correspondent; M. Gratidius is mentioned in pro Flacco, § 49, as acting in a judicial capacity, and was perhaps a cousin of Cicero's.

Back

185

The class of Romans who have practically become provincials.

Back

186

Rome and its society and interests.

Back

187

Father of Augustus, governor of Macedonia, b.c. 60-59. But he seems to refer to his prætorship (b.c. 61) at Rome; at any rate, as well as to his conduct in Macedonia.

Back

188

Reading primum; others primus, "his head lictor."

Back