anxious to hear. You will of course make all that clear to me, as you have done everything else. I am not sorry that your slight attack of sickness has given you an excuse for taking a holiday; for as I read your letter I thought you had had a short rest. Always write and tell me everything about Brutus, where he is, what he is thinking of doing. I do hope that by this time he is able even without a guard to wander in safety in any part of the city. But after all DCCVIII (F VI, 17) TO AULUS POMPEIUS BITHYNICUS (IN SICILY) CAMPANIA (APRIL) FOR every reason I am anxious for the constitution to be at length put on a sound footing; but, believe me, an additional motive for desiring it still more is supplied me by the promise conveyed in your letter. You say in it that, if that is ever the case, you will pass your time in my society. Such a wish on your part is highly gratifying to me, and is entirely in accord with our close friendship and with the opinion your illustrious father entertained of me. believe me when I say that others, who have had at times or still have the opportunity, may be more closely united to you by the amount of their services than I am, but that in friendship no one can be so. Accordingly, I am gratified both by your recollection of our intimacy and by your wish to increase it.2 1 Reading aut valent. 2 For the letter to which this is answer, see DCXCVIII., p. 3. For DCCIX (A XIV, 9) TO ATTICUS (AT ROME) PUTEOLI, 18 APRIL However, to your I HAVE learnt a good deal about public affairs from your letters, a considerable batch of which I received at the same time from the freedman of Vestorius. questions I shall make a short answer. that I am delighted with the Cluvian estate.1 question about the reason for my having sent for Chrysippus-two of my shops have fallen down and the rest are cracking. So not only the tenants but the very mice have migrated. Other people call this a misfortune, I don't call it even a nuisance. Oh Socrates and Socratic philosophers, I shall never be able to thank you enough! Good heavens, how paltry such things are in my eyes! But after all I am adopting a plan of building on the suggestion and advice of Vestorius, which will convert this loss into a gain. Here there is a great crowd of visitors and there will, I hear, be a greater still. Our two consuls-designate forsooth!" Good God, the tyranny survives though the tyrant is dead! We rejoice at his assassination, yet support his acts! Accordingly, M. Curtius 3 criticises us with such severity that one feels ashamed to be alive. And not without reason: for it had been better to die a thousand deaths than to endure the present state of things, which seems to me likely to be more than a passing phase. Balbus too is here and often at my house. He has had a letter from Vetus, dated on the last day of the year, announcing that "when he was investing Cæcilius Bassus, and was on the point of compelling him Some property that had been left to Cicero and others by Cluvius of Puteoli. Cicero had bought out his co-heirs (vol. iii., p. 321). 2 Pansa and Hirtius had been designated consuls by Cæsar, though probably a form of election had been gone through. 3 M. Curtius Postumus, an ardent Cæsarian. See vol. ii., p. 316. to surrender, the Parthian Pacorus arrived with an immense force: that accordingly Bassus was snatched from his hands, for which he blames Volcatius." 1 Accordingly, I think that a war there is imminent. But that will be the affair of Dolabella and Nicias. Balbus also gives better news from Gaul. He has a letter dated twenty-one days back announcing that the Germans and the tribes there, on hearing about Cæsar's death, sent legates to Aurelius, who was put in command by Hirtius, promising obedience. In short, everything speaks of peace in those parts, contrary to what Calvena said to me.* DCCX (A XIV, 10) TO ATTICUS (AT ROME) CUMÆ, 19 APRIL CAN it be true? Is this all that our noble Brutus has accomplished--that he should have to live at Lanuvium, and Trebonius should have to slink to his province by by-roads? That all the acts, memoranda, words, promises, and projects of Cæsar should have more validity than if he were still 1 Q. Cæcilius Bassus (quæstor B.C. 59) escaped from Pharsalia to Syria, where he induced some of the soldiers of the prætor Sext. Iulius to murder their commander and join him, asserting that he had been appointed proprætor of Syria, and maintained himself for three years in Apamea till Cassius arrived early in B.C. 45. C. Antistius Vetus, who had been with Cæsar in Spain in B.C. 61-60, had apparently been sent out specially to attack him. Volcatius is probably L. Volcatius Tullus, prætor in B.C. 46. 2 Dolabella had been allotted the province of Syria. Nicias Curtius of Cos was a Greek grammarian who had been with Cicero in Cilicia (vol. ii., p. 221), and was now with Dolabella as secretary-friend, and Cicero jestingly supposes that he will have to take part in the war. That is Belgic Gaul, where a rising had been feared. See p. 5. See Letter DCC. C. Matius Calvena had prophesied a rising in Gaul. Hirtius, though he had been made governor of Gallia Belgica by Cæsar in B.C. 44, had not gone to the province, but had governed it by a deputy. alive? Do you remember that on that very first day of the retreat upon the Capitol I exclaimed that the senate should be summoned into the Capitoline temple? Good heavens, what might have been effected then, when all loyalists—even semi-loyalists were exultant, and the brigands utterly dismayed! You lay the blame on the Liberalia. What was possible at the time? Our case had long been hopeless. Do you remember that you explained that it was all over with us, if he were allowed a funeral? But he was even burnt in the forum, and a funeral oration was pronounced over him in moving terms, and a number of slaves and starvelings instigated to attack our houses with firebrands. What next! They even have the impudence to say: "You utter a word against the will of Cæsar?" These and other things like 1 That is, on what was done in the senate on the 17th of March. The course of events referred to is as follows: (a) March 15th. Cæsar is assassinated in the Curia Pompei about noon. The conspirators (joined by some who wished to be thought in the plot) marched through the city protected by Dec. Brutus's gladiators and barricaded themselves on the Capitol. There they were visited by Cicero and others. In the afternoon Brutus and Cassius ventured down into the forum and addressed the people, but then returned to the Capitol. (6) March 16th was spent in various negotiations with the consul Antony and with Lepidus, who had an army in the city. In the evening Antony issued a summons for a meeting of the senate next day in the temple of Tellus (near his own house). (c) March 17th. At the meeting of the senate (to which the assassins were summoned, but did not come) Cicero spoke in favour of an amnesty. Dio (44, 23-33) professes to give his speech. At this meeting decrees or resolutions were passed: (1) That there should be a general amnesty, i.e., no prosecution of the assassins. (2) That Cæsar's acta should be confirmed. (3) That grants of land made or promised to the veterans should hold good. (4) That Cæsar should be allowed a public funeral, and that Piso (his father-in-law) should publish his will. It was the funeral and the recitation of the will to which Atticus (as did Cicero, 2 Phil. § 89) attributed the revulsion of public feeling and the mischief which followed. The best account of the scene in the senate and of how this last resolution was carried is in Appian, B. C. ii. 126-136. The will was read and the funeral took place apparently on the 18th. The bill declaring it illegal to nominate any man dictator was apparently brought in by Antony a few days later in consequence of a vote in this meeting. them I cannot endure, and accordingly I am thinking of wandering away "from land to land." Your land,' however, is too much in the eye of the wind. Is your sickness quite gone by this time? I rather judged so from the tone of your letter. I return to the case of the veterans-your Tebassi, Scævæ, and Frangones. Do you suppose these men feel any confidence in retaining their grants so long as our party have any footing in the state? They have found it possessed of more resolution than they expected. They, I presume, are devoted to the cause of public tranquillity rather than supporters of robbery! But when I wrote to you about Curtilius and the estate of Sextilius, I must be understood to have included Censorinus, Messalla, Plancus, Postumus,' and the whole lot. It had been better to have risked destruction3which would never have befallen us—when Cæsar was killed, rather than to have lived to see this sort of thing. Octavius arrived at Naples on the 18th of April. There Balbus called on him early next day, and on the same day came to see me at Cumæ, with the information that he intended to accept the inheritance, but that, as you say, there will be a fine scrimmage with Antony. Your business about Buthrotum is receiving, as it is bound to do, and will continue to receive my attention. You ask me whether Cluvius's legacy is reaching one hundred sestertia yet. It seems to be approaching that. At least I made eighty the first year. 5 My brother Quintus writes to me with heavy complaints of his son, chiefly because he is now taking his mother's Epirus. He seems to mean that it is too easy of access to his enemies. He must go farther. 2 All men enriched in various ways by Cæsar's confiscations. For Sextilius see p. II. 3 That is, by taking strong measures. This seems the only meaning possible if the MS. reading, quod nunquam accidisset, is retained, but I doubt whether the meaning is to be got out of the Latin. It would be at any rate much more intelligible if we read with Gronovius, quod utinam accidisset. What Cicero really wrote is of course the questionand of this MSS. are the best though not the certain guides. * His stepfather Philippus had advised him not to accept the inheritance and adoption (Nicol. Dam. 18). The saving the Buthrotians from confiscation of land for the colony of Cæsar's veterans sent there. See pp. 19, 20, etc. |