Letters to his Friends/Book 2

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¹ Though I am sorry you should have suspected me on the score of "neglect," still I am more pleased that you missed my attentions than put out that you should accuse me of any remissness, especially since in so far as your charge went, I was in no sense to blame, while in so far as you implied that you longed for a letter from me, you openly avowed an affection for me, which, well as I knew it before, is none the less delightful and desirable. As a matter of fact I have not let a single carrier pass, if I thought he would reach you, without giving him a letter for you. Come now, who so indefatigable a correspondent as I? As for you, I have only ​had two or three letters from you at the most, and those very short ones. Therefore if you judge me harshly, I shall find you guilty on the same charge; if you don't want me to do so, you will have to be lenient with me. But no more about correspondence; I am not afraid of failing to give you your fill of letters, especially if you show a proper appreciation of my efforts in that line.

² I have grieved at your long absence from among us, because I have not been able to enjoy your most agreeable society, but at the same time I rejoice that while absent you have attained all your objects with the greatest honour to yourself, and that in all your affairs fortune has answered my prayers. There is a little piece of advice which my extraordinary affection for you compels me to offer you. So much is expected of your courage, or, it may be of your capacity, that I do not hesitate to beg and beseech you to return to us in such a frame of mind^[2] as to be able to uphold and justify all the expectations you have excited. And while it is true that no forgetfulness will ever efface the memory of what you have done for me, I beg you to remember that, whatever enhancements of fortune or honour may accrue to you in the future, you could never have secured them, had you not in the old days of your boyhood hearkened to the advice given you in all sincerity and affection by myself. And that is why your feelings towards me should be such, that, burdened as I am with the increasing weight of years, I should find repose in your love and in your youth.

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¹ In the person of your highly distinguished father^[3] I have been robbed of a substantial witness to my very great affection for you. Had he but been blessed with a sight of you before his death, he would have been jthe most fortunate man in the world, not only in his own achievements, but in having a son like you. But I trust that our friendship needs no witnesses. May heaven bless the estate you have inherited! In any event you will have in me one to whom you are just as dear and delightful as you were to your father.

¹ Rupa^[4] has shown himself most anxious to advertise public spectacles in your name; but neither I nor any of your friends approved of anything being done in your absence which would not leave you with a free hand on your arrival. My own opinion I shall either send you later in fuller detail, or else, to prevent your thinking out arguments to ​meet it, I shall take you unprepared, and pit my view of the matter against yours, face to face, so that I may either bring you over to my way of thinking, or at any rate leave on record in your mind a duly attested declaration of my convictions, so that if ever you begin—I hope you never will—to be dissatisfied with your own decision, you may be able to recall mine. To put it shortly, however, you may take it from me that on your return you will find such a condition of affairs in general that you will more easily secure all political distinctions by means of the blessings bestowed upon you by nature, by your enthusiasm,^[5] and by fortune, than by public spectacles; the ability to give them excites no admiration, for it is a sign of wealth, and not of worth; and there is nobody who is not now sick and tired of them.

² But I am not acting as I declared I would; I am entering upon a reasoned explanation of my views; so I postpone all discussion of this until you arrive. Let me assure you that you are most eagerly awaited, and that such things are expected of you as are naturally to be expected of preeminence in merit and capacity; and if you are prepared, as you ought to be, to satisfy such anticipations, and I am sure it is so, why, then the shows^[6] with which you are sure to delight us, your friends, the whole body of your fellow-citizens, and the state, will be in the highest degree varied and magnificent. But there is one thing which you will assuredly discover—that nobody in the world is dearer or more delightful to me than yourself.

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¹ That there are many kinds of letters you are well aware; there is one kind, however, about which there can be no mistake,—for indeed letter-writing was invented just in order that we might inform those at a distance if there were anything which it was important for them or for ourselves that they should know. A letter of this kind you will of course not expect from me; for as regards your own affairs you have your correspondents and messengers at home, while as regards mine there is absolutely no news to tell you. There remain two kinds of letters which have a great charm for me, the one intimate and humorous, the other austere and serious. Which of the two it least beseems me to employ, I do not quite see. Am I to jest with you by letter? On my oath, I don't think there is a citizen in existence who can laugh in these days. Or am I to write something more serious? What is there that can possibly be written by Cicero to Curio, in the serious style, except on public affairs? Ah! but in this regard my case is just this, that I dare not write what I feel, and I am not inclined to write what I don't feel.

² And so, since there is no subject left me for a letter, I shall fall back upon my usual peroration, and exhort you to an earnest quest of the highest glory. For you have a serious rival here, firmly established and ready for you, in the extraordinary ​expectation you have aroused. This rival you will overmatch without difficulty if you do one thing—if you resolve that whatever be the qualities that achieve the glorious deeds on which you have set your heart, it is upon them that you must spend all your strength. I should write more to this effect, were I not assured that you are eager enough on your own account; and if I have touched upon the subject at all, it was not to set your ambitions ablaze, but to show my love for you.

¹ What the state of affairs is here I dare not tell I you even in a letter. As for yourself, although, wherever you are, as I wrote to you before, you are in the same boat, yet I congratulate you on being away, partly because you do not see what we see, and partly because your renown is set on a very high and conspicuous pinnacle before the eyes of thousands of both allies and fellow-citizens, and the report of it reaches me not by means of vague and varied gossip, but in the ringing tones of one voice—the voice of all. ² One thing I am not sure about, whether to congratulate you, or to feel anxious about you, since the expectations your return has excited are quite amazing; not that I am afraid that your great abilities will fall short of men's estimate of them, but—Heaven help us—that when you come you will find nothing to take charge of, ​so universal is the decay, indeed I may almost say, the destruction of our public interests. But I am not sure that it is safe to have entrusted to a letter even what I have just written; so you will be told all the rest by others.

As to yourself however, whether you have some hope left of the Republic, or whether you have none, be prepared with such aspirations and projects as ought to find room in the heart of that citizen, that hero, who is destined to rescue the State, prostrated and crushed as she is with the miseries of the times and the subversion of morals, and restore her to her pristine dignity and independence.

¹ We had not yet heard of your approaching arrival in Italy when I sent Sextus Villius, the intimate friend of my friend Milo, to you with this letter. Still, since it was supposed that you would arrive very shortly, and there was no doubt that you had set out from Asia en route for Rome, the matter was so pressing that I was not afraid of being in too great a hurry in dispatching the letter, as I was extremely anxious that it should reach you at the earliest possible moment.

If, my dear Curio, there were nothing to be considered but my services to you—services such as you constantly proclaim them to be rather than as I appraise them—I should not be so forward in ​appealing to you had I some important request to make. A man of any modesty finds it repugnant to address such a petition to one whom he thinks he has put under an obhgation to himself, lest he should appear to exact rather than request what he wants, and to reckon the granting of it rather as payment for value received than as an act of kindness. ² Since, however, on your side, your kindnesses to me are a matter of common knowledge, or it may be that my own unprecedented misfortunes have made them stand out in a strong and clear light, and since it is the mark of a generous disposition to wish to owe most to whom you owe much, I have not hesitated to ask you by letter to do something for me which is more important and more indispensable to me than anything else in the world. For I have never been afraid of being overwhelmed by your services to me, numberless as they are, especially as I felt confident that there was no favour you could do me which my heart could not find room for in the acceptance of it, or fail to recompense abundantly, and even to glorify in the requital.^[7]

³ I have irrevocably invested all my aspirations, all my energies, anxieties, exertions, and thoughts, in short, my whole heart and soul, in Milo's election to the consulship; and I have come to the conclusion that it is there^[8] that I must look not only for some return for my good offices, but also for some reputation for loyalty.^[9]

I doubt if any man has ever been so concerned for his own security and worldly wealth as I am for Milo's promotion to office, upon which depends, I am convinced, all I have in the world, and I realize that you are the one man who can, if you will, help ​him so much that we should not need any further assistance.

All these points are in our favour—the active support of the loyalists, which his tribunate won for him, as I hope you understand, on account of his defence of my cause, the support of the man in the street, on account of the magnificence of his public shows and the generosity of his disposition, the support of the young citizens, and of men of influence in securing votes, due to his own outstanding popularity, or it may be his assiduity in that connexion, and lastly, my own electoral support, which, though not so powerful as the above, has at any rate been tested and is only right and no more than his due, and on those grounds perhaps not without influence.

⁴ What we want is a leader, and a man of moral weight, and a sort of controller and as it were a steersman to avail himself of those winds I have just described; and had we to choose one man in the wide world, we should have nobody we could compare with you.

And for that reason, if you can regard me (and you can) as being not unmindful or ungrateful for a kindness, and as an honest man, if only for my strenuous exertions on Milo's behalf, if in short you deem me worthy of your beneficence (and you do), well, then what I ask you to do is just this—to relieve my present anxiety, and to devote your zeal to the defence of my reputation, or, to speak more accurately, of what is almost my personal safety in the present crisis.

As regards T. Annius^[10] himself, I promise you this much, that you will find nobody of greater ​courage, steadiness, and constancy, or, if it be your pleasure to welcome him with open arms, of kindlier feeling towards yourself. As for myself, such is the glory and dignity with which you will have invested me, that I shall be prompt to recognize that you did as much for me in defence of my good name as you did in my restoration.

⁵ Were I not sure that you quite understand with what serious intent I write these words, what a load of obligation I am shouldering, how whole-heartedly I must concentrate my strength on this candidature of Milo's, not only in every sort of effort but even in actual conflict,^[11] I should write at greater length; as it is I simply entrust and hand over to you the whole business, the cause of Milo, and my own interests, without reserve.

Of this one fact you may rest assured, that if my appeal to you in this matter is granted, I shall almost owe more to you than to Milo himself; for my restoration—and in that I owe most to his support—was not so dear to me as will be my delight in o wing my devotion by my gratitude; now that joy I am sure I can only realize through the active support of one single man, and that man is yourself.

¹ Congratulations are not usually resented because I they arrive late, especially if there has been no negligence in their omission. I am a long way off, ​and I get my news late. But I do congratulate you, and earnestly pray that your tribunate may redound to your everlasting honour; and I exhort you to let yourself be guided and controlled in all things by your own common sense, and not be carried away by the proposals of others. There is nobody who can give you sounder advice than yourself; if you listen to yourself, you will never slip, I am not writing this in a haphazard way; I understand to whom I am writing; I know your spirit, I know your sagacity, I am not afraid of your showing either timidity or stupidity in anything you do, if only you maintain what you yourself feel to be right.

² I am sure you understand the political situation into which you have—no, not stumbled, but stepped; for it was by deliberate choice and by no accident that you flung your tribunate into the very crisis of things; and I doubt not that you reflect how potent in politics is opportunity, how shifting the phases, how incalculable the issues, of events, how easily swayed are men's predilections, what pitfalls there are and what insincerity in life.

But I beg of you, do not let your thoughts and anxieties take a new direction, but do just what I suggested at the beginning of my letter, have a talk with yourself, invite yourself to a consultation; give ear, and no deaf ear, to yourself; the man who can give better advice than you can to another, is far to seek; the man who will give better to yourself, does not exist. Ye everlasting Gods! why am I not at your elbow, to be the spectator of your exploits, to share or be a partner in your schemes, or even your agent in their execution? Though you have not the slightest need of it, still such is the ​extent and intensity of my affection, that I might have proved of some assistance to you with my advice.

³ I shall write to you more fully in another letter; for in a few days' time I am going to send some private carriers of my own, so that, having now discharged a public duty with distinct success and to my own satisfaction, I may send the Senate in a single dispatch a detailed account of the achievements of the whole summer.^[13]

As to your election to the priesthood,^[14] you will be informed in the letter I have entrusted to your freedman, Thraso, what attention I have given it, and how difficult the business, and your particular case, has been.

⁴ I adjure you, my dear Curio, in the name of your extraordinary friendship for me, and of mine, incomparable as it is, for you, not to allow any extension of time to be made in this irksome provincial government of mine.

I pleaded with you in person, when I little thought that you would be tribune of the plebs for this year, and I frequently repeated the petition by letter, but then it was addressed as it were to a very distinguished partisan, though a most popular young man, whereas now it is addressed to a tribune of the plebs, and that tribune Curio; and my petition is, not that some fresh decree should be passed, which is often a matter of considerable difficulty, but that no fresh decree at all should be passed, and that you should maintain the existing decrees of the Senate and the laws, and that the same terms should remain in force as when I left Rome. This I earnestly beg of you again and again.

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¹ Well! Do you really think that this is what I commissioned you to do, to send me reports of "the gladiatorial pairs," "the adjournment of trials," "burglary by Chrestus," and such tittle-tattle as nobody would have the impertinence to repeat to me when I am at Rome? Now observe what a compliment I am paying you by my judgement of you—and rightly so, upon my faith; for I have never yet known a man with a greater flair for politics than yourself—I am not anxious that you should write to me what is done each day, even as regards important political events, unless something touches me personally. Others will write, many will bring me news, much too will reach me even in the way of rumour. That is why I do not look to you for anything about the past or present, but as may be expected of a man who sees so far ahead into the future, about what is likely to happen, so that when your letters have explained to me the general political design, I may be in a position to know what sort of a building to expect.

² So far, however, I have no fault to find with you; for nothing has occurred which you could have foreseen any more than any other of us, and myself in particular, who have spent several days with Pompey,^[16] talking about nothing else but politics; but our conversation could not and should not be ​repeated in writing. Of this much you may be sure, that Pompey is an excellent citizen and ready in heart and head to take any precautionary measure necessitated by the political situation.

For the same persons are either good or bad citizens in his eyes, who as a rule seem good or bad in ours. ³ Having been just ten days at Athens, and having had plenty of our friend Caninius Gallus's^[18] society, I am leaving the city on July 6, the day on which I send you per carrier this scrap of a letter. While I desire that all my affairs should have your most earnest attention, there is nothing I desire more than that there should be no extension of my term of office in the province. Everything that concerns me depends on that. When, how, and through whom that must be managed, you will be best able to decide.

¹ In the first place, I congratulate you, as in duty bound, and rejoice not only in your present, but in your anticipated, promotion. I am rather late in the day, not through any negligence on my part; but because I know nothing at all of what is going on. For I am here in a district where news penetrates very slowly; it is so far away, and there are brigands ​about. I congratulate you, but more than that, I can hardly find words to express my gratitude to you for having been elected in such a way as to give us, as you put it, "something to chuckle over for the rest of our days." So no sooner did I get the news, than I was transformed into that 'ero himself (you know the man I mean);^[19] and I played the parts of all those young 'eroes of whom that 'ero brags.

² I find it hard to express myself. But when I see you with fancy's eye in distant Rome, and talk to you as it were face to face, well, I may say

I was so surprised at its happening that I fell back on the old tag,

Then I suddenly strutted forth "merry as merry could be"; and when they rated me for being almost off my head with excess of joy, in self-defence I quoted:

To put it shortly, in laughing at him I nearly sank to the level of that 'ero myself.

³ But of this more fully, and much else about you and addressed to you, as soon as I get a spell of leisure.

As for yourself, my dear Rufus, I love you; it was you that fortune appointed to enhance my prestige, to be my avenger on those who hate, as well as on those who envy me, to make them sorry, some for their crimes, others for their follies as well.

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¹ Just see for yourself how letters fail to reach me! For nothing can induce me to believe that you have sent me no letter since your election to the aedileship, especially in view of its importance, and the hearty congratulations it demanded, in your case because it was what I hoped, in that of Hillus (pardon my lisp),^[21] because I had not expected it. Anyhow you may take it as a fact that I have not received a single epistle from you since that splendid election of yours which threw me into ecstasies of delight; consequently I fear that my own letters may meet with the same fate. I assure you I have never sent home a single communication without its being accompanied by another to yourself; why, to me you are the dearest and most delightful fellow in the world. But (my lisp is gone) let us get back to business.^[22]

² It is just as you desired; for you say you could wish that I should be put to only just so much trouble as to secure me the laurel.^[23] You fear the Parthians because you have no confidence in my forces. Very well, this is what happened. War with the Parthians is announced; reckoning on certain defiles and the natural trend of the mountains, I march my army to Amanus—an army well enough supported by auxiliaries and by the moral influence, if I may so call it, of my own prestige among people who did not know me personally. In these parts one con- ​stantly hears this sort of thing: "Is this the man by whom the city was... whom the Senate...?"^[24] You can fill up the gaps for yourself. When I arrived at Amanus, a mountain I share with Bibulus, the line of demarcation being the watershed, our friend Cassius had already, to my great delight, succeeded in driving the enemy back from Antioch; Bibulus had taken over the province from him.

³ Meanwhile with all the forces I had I harassed those everlasting foes of ours, the mountaineers of Amanus. Many were killed and captured, the rest scattered; their fortified strongholds, surprised by my arrival, were captured and burnt. And so, having been hailed, on the strength of a legitimate victory,^[25] as Imperator at Issus (the place where, according to the story given you, as you have so often told me, by Clitarchus,^[26] Darius was defeated by Alexander), I marched my army off to the most disturbed district in Cilicia, where for the last five and twenty days I have been attacking the very strongly fortified town of Pindenissus with earthworks, mantlets, and towers, in fact with such resources and so strenuously that I lack nothing to attain the height of glory—except the name of the town. If I take it, as I hope to do, then you may be sure I shall send a state dispatch.

⁴ I write thus to you at present to give you grounds for hoping that you are in a fair way of getting what you desired.^[27]

But, to return to the Parthians, this summer has had the quite successful ending I have described; it is next summer that fills me with alarm. For that reason, my dear Rufus, you must be wide awake in securing, firstly, that I have a successor; but if ​that prove, as you write and I can well believe, too heavy clay for your plough,^[28] then (and that is easy enough) that there should be no prolongation of my tenure of office. On the subject of politics, I look to your letters, as I wrote to you before, for an account of current, and, even more, for a forecast of coming events. I therefore earnestly beg of you to write to me fully on all points with all possible assiduity.

¹ Would you ever have thought it possible that words would fail me, and not only those oratorical words you public speakers use, but the ordinary, homely words I use? And yet they do fail me, and for this reason—I am extraordinarily anxious as to what on earth may be decreed about the provinces. It is surprising how I yearn for Rome; you cannot believe how I yearn for my friends, and particularly for you; but as to the province, I am heartily sick of it, whether it be because I seem, to have attained such a measure of fame, that I should not so much seek any addition to it, as apprehend a reverse of fortune, or because the whole business is unworthy of my powers, seeing that I can, and often do, carry heavier burdens in the service of the state; or because we have hanging over us the horror of a great war, which I seem likely to escape if I quit the province on the appointed day.

​² About the panthers,^[29] the business is being carefully attended to according to my orders with the aid of those who hunt them regularly^[30]; but it is surprising how few panthers there are; and they tell me that those there are bitterly complain that in my province no snares are set for any living creature but themselves; and so they have decided, it is said, to emigrate from this province into Caria. Still my people are busy in the matter, and nobody more so than Patiscus. All the animals caught will be at your service; but how many there are, I have no idea. Your aedileship, I do assure you, is of intense interest to me; this day itself reminds me of it, for I write this on the very day of the Megalensia.^[31]

³ I should like you to spare no pains in writing to me fully about the whole political situation; for I shall regard the information you give me as the most trustworthy.

² I am indeed distressed about affairs at Rome; reports reach me of such stormy meetings, such a worrying Quinquatrian vacation.^[32] For I have no news as yet of what followed; but nothing distresses me more than that amid all these worries, if there is anything to laugh at, I do not share the joke with you. Of course there are many things to laugh at, but I dare not commit them to paper. What worries me is that so far I have nothing in the way ​of a letter from you about these affairs. And that is why, although, when you read these words, I shall have already completed my year of office, I should still like to have a letter from you on my way home, to post me up in the general state of public affairs, so that I may not be an utter stranger when I arrive. ² There is nobody who can do so better than yourself. Your friend Diogenes, a nice quiet man, has left me and gone with Philo from Pessinus. They are on their way to visit Adjatorix,^[33] though they were well aware that the whole situation there held out no prospect of either loving-kindness or lucre. Rome, my dear Rufus, Rome—stay there in that full light and live.

All foreign service (and this has been my conviction from the days of my youth) is obscurity and squalor for those whose active services at Rome can shine forth in splendour. And being so well assured of this, would that I had remained true to my creed! All the profits of a province are not to be compared, I swear it, with one single little stroll, and one single talk, with you. I hope I have gained a reputation of integrity; but that I gained quite as much by my rejection, as by my successful administration of a province.^[34] "Any hope of a triumph?" you say. I should have quite a glorious triumph if only in the shortening of the period of my yearning for all that is dearest to me. But (such is my hope) I shall see you at an early date. Mind you send me some letters worthy of their writer to meet me on the way.

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¹ The letters I get from you are few and far between (perhaps they do not reach me), but they are charming; to take only the last I got, how shrewd it was, how packed with kindness and good advice! Though I had already decided that I should have to act in every respect as you advise, I am none the less fortified in my intentions by the feeling that men of discernment and my faithful counsellors hold the same views.

² For Appius,^[36] as I have often remarked in my conversations with you, I have a profound regard, and as soon as we buried the hatchet I felt that I had begun to win his regard. When consul he was prompt to do me honour, as a friend he is charming, and he takes an interest in what interests me. That I, on the other hand, never failed in my good services to him, you yourself can testify; and now I think I have the added testimony of Phania,^[37] turning up like the witness in the denouement of a comedy^[38]; and, on my honour, I thought all the more highly of him because I felt that he was devoted to you. You know that I am now all for Pompey, and you understand that I am fond of Brutus. What reason is there why it should not be one of my particular desires to take to my heart one so illustriously blessed with youth, affluence, public honours,^[39] ability, children,^[40] relatives, connexions, and friends, ​especially when he is a colleague of mine as augur, and even in dealing with the fame and erudition of our College has proved his devotion to me? I have written more fully on these points because your letter conveyed a slight hint that you had a lurking doubt as to my goodwill towards him. I expect you have been hearing something; if you have heard anything, believe me, it is a lie.

My own measures and policy differ to some extent in their very nature from his ideas of provincial administration, with the result that certain folks have perhaps suspected that my disagreement with him is due to the clash of incompatible temperaments, and not to a mere difference of opinion. Now I have never either done or said a single thing with the intention of disparaging his reputation. Indeed, since this trouble caused by our friend Dolabella's indiscretion,^[41] I am putting myself forward as his intercessor in the day of his need.

³ In the same letter occurs "the lethargy of the state." I am delighted to hear of it, and rejoice that my friend's^[42] joints have grown stiff from having nothing to do. The postscript in your own handwriting gave me a twinge of pain. What's this? "Curio is now defending Caesar." Who would ever have thought so, excepting myself? For, on my life, I did think so. O ye everlasting gods! How I miss the laugh you and I would have had over it!

⁴ Now that I have finished my judicial duties, put the states on a sound financial basis, secured for the publicani the arrears (just think of it) of the past five years without the slightest protest on the part of the allies, and have made myself pleasant ​to private persons of all ranks from highest to lowest, what I propose to do is this—to set out for Cilicia on May 15, and as soon as ever I have reached our summer quarters, and made my military dispositions, to quit the province in accordance with the decree of the Senate. I am anxious to see you as an aedile, and it is wonderful how I long for Rome, and all my friends, and for no one more than yourself.

I am on terms of the greatest intimacy with Marcus Fadius,^[43] a most excellent man and a very distinguished scholar; I have a wonderful liking for him, not only for his preeminence in genius and learning, but also for his singularly unassuming demeanour. I should be glad if you would undertake his business as though it were my own. Oh, I know you, you famous advocates! If a man would avail himself of your services, his proper course is to commit a murder. But in this man's case I take no excuse. You will drop everything else, if you will be my friend, when Fadius desires the benefit of your services. I am eagerly awaiting news of affairs at Rome, indeed I am pining for it; and most particularly do I want to know how you are. The winter has been so severe that it is now ever so long since we had any news at all.

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¹ Nothing could have been more correct or sensible than your action in conjunction with Curio in the matter of my supplicatio^[44]; and, really and truly, the business has been carried through to my entire satisfaction, not only in point of dispatch, but also because the man who was so angry, the candidate who opposed you and myself too at the polls,^[45] concurred with the man who honoured my achievements with eulogies befitting a god. Be assured, therefore, that I am hopeful about the next step^[46]; see that you make ready for it.

² As for Dolabella, I am glad, firstly, that you speak well of him, secondly, that you are actually attached to him; for when you express a hope of his possible reformation by the discreet influence of my dear Tullia, I know what letter of yours^[47] that is intended to counterbalance. What if you were to read the letter^[48] I sent at the time, in consequence of your letter, to Appius? But what is one to do? Such is life. What is done, may the gods approve. I hope I shall find him a pleasant son-in-law; and there your kindheartedness will be a great help to me.

³ The political outlook causes me great anxiety. There's Curio—I am favourably disposed towards him; Caesar—I sincerely wish him all honour; ​Pompey—I could shed my life-blood for him. But when all is said and done, nothing in the world is more precious to me than the Republic herself. And you? you are not making much of a show in that same Republic; being at once a good citizen and a good friend, you seem to me to be drawn in two directions.

⁴ On quitting my province I put my quaestor Caelius in command. "A boy like that!" you will say. Yes, but a quaestor; yes, and a youth of noble birth; yes, and I followed a practically unbroken precedent, and there was nobody who had held a higher public office for me to appoint over his head. Pomptinus^[49] had left long before; my brother Quintus could not be induced to take office;—and besides, had I left him behind me, the maliciously disposed would now be saying that I had not as a matter of fact quitted the province at the end of my year, as was the intention of the Senate, seeing that I had left behind me a second self. Probably also they would add that the intention of the Senate had been that only those should be governors of provinces who had not been governors before; whereas my brother had been governor of Asia for three years. In short, I am rid of all anxieties; had I left my brother behind me, I should have everything to fear. Lastly, it was not so much on my own initiative as according to the precedent set by the two most powerful men in Rome, who have eagerly taken up all the Cassiuses and Antoniuses^[50] in the world, that in the case of this high-born youth I,—well, I was not so anxious to entice him to my side, as I was anxious not to make an enemy of him. You must perforce ​applaud this decision of mine, for it cannot be altered.

⁵ What you wrote to me about Ocella is not as intelligible as it should be; and it does not appear in the Gazette.^[51] Your exploits are so celebrated that the affair of Matrinius has been heard of even on the other side of Mount Taurus. If I am not delayed at all by the Etesian Winds,^[52] I shall see you, I hope, pretty soon.

¹ I should have been deeply grieved at your letter I had not my own reflection by this time stifled all sense of irritation, and had not I so long despaired of affairs that my mind had grown callous to any fresh grief. Why it should have happened, however, that my former letter should lead you to suspect what you mention in yours, I fail to see. What did that letter contain beyond a complaint of the times, which keep my mind on the rack, but no more so than yours? My experience of your acute intellect is not such that I could ever suppose you do not see all that I see myself. What surprises me is that you, who ought to know my inmost heart, could ever have been induced to regard me as either so short-sighted as to desert a cause exalted to such a height for one that is tottering and all but prostrate, or so inconsistent as to forfeit in a moment all the favour I had accumulated in the eyes of one now ​in the heyday of his prosperity, to prove myself a renegade to my own principles, and—what I have always avoided from the very firsf—to engage in a civil war.

² What then is that "gloomy resolve"^[54] of mine? To withdraw perhaps to some desolate region? Well, you know how my gorge rises—there was a time when you felt like that yourself—and how my eyes also turn away in disgust at the abominable behaviour of these insolent fellows. There is, moreover, this parade of my lictors here, which embarrasses me, and the title of imperator, by which I am addressed. If I were rid of that burden I should be content with any hiding-place, however humble, in Italy. But this laurelled pomp of mine has now to meet not only the peering eyes, but also the jeering cries of my ill-wishers.^[55] And yet, in spite of this, I have never for a moment contemplated leaving the country except with your and your friends' approval. But you know of my little estates; well, it is on them that I must live, so as not to be an incubus on my friends. But just because I find it most pleasant to live at my place at the seaside, I excite in some folks the suspicion that I mean to take ship; and after all perhaps I might not be disinclined to do so, if I could find peace at the end of the voyage. If there is only war awaiting me there, what is the good of sailing?—especially to fight against the man to whom I hope I have given satisfaction, and on the side of the man who cannot now be satisfied with me whatever I do?

³ Then again you might very easily have understood my sentiments ever since the time you came to meet me at my Cuman villa; for I made no secret of what ​T. Ampius^[56] told me, and you saw how I hated the idea of leaving Rome. When I heard it, did I not declare to you that I would suffer any hardship on earth sooner than leave Italy to take part in a civil war? What has happened then to make me change my mind? Nay rather what has not happened to confirm me in my opinion? I should be glad if you would take my word for this—and I fancy it is what you think yourself—that I look for nothing else as the outcome of these miseries but that the world may at last realize that my one dominant desire was for peace; that, when there was no hope of peace, there was nothing I so persistently avoided as civil arms. My consistent conduct in this respect I think I shall never have reason to regret. Indeed I remember, that, in discussing such matters, it was a frequent boast of my dear friend, Q. Hortensius, that he had never taken part in civil warfare. My credit will be the more conspicuous in so far as in his case it was attributed to lack of spirit, whereas in my case I do not think such an idea could be possibly entertained.

⁴ And you do not frighten me with the arguments you so very loyally and lovingly set before me to intimidate me. Why, in this world-convulsion there is no bitterness of woe that does not seem to hang over the heads of all of us—and most gladly would I have diverted this woe from the state at the cost of my own private and domestic troubles, aye, even of those of which you warn me to beware.

⁵ To my son (I am glad you like him) if any form of government survives, I shall leave a sufficiently handsome inheritance in memory of my name; if there is no government at all, he ​will be no exception to the common lot of his fellow-citizens.

When you ask me to keep an eye on the interests of my own son-in-law, excellent youth as he is, and very dear to me, can you, when you know how much both he, and, of course, my dear Tullia are to me, can you, I say, doubt that my solicitude for them causes me intense anxiety? And all the more so since, amid the universal misery, I had still this gleam of hope to comfort me, that my, or rather our Dolabella would be freed from those embarrassments in which his liberality had involved him. I should like you to inquire what sort of settling-days he faced when in Rome, how painful to himself, how far from creditable to myself, his father-in-law.

⁶ And so I am neither awaiting the issue of this affair in Spain,^[57] of which I have satisfied myself that your letter gives a true account, nor have I any crafty policy in my head. If ever there is to be a state, there will surely be room in it for me; if not, you will yourself, I imagine, come to those same desolate regions in which you hear that I have settled down. But maybe I am only raving, and everything will turn out better than we expect. I call to mind the fits of despair to which those folks were subject who were old men when I was a lad: perhaps I am now following their example, and indulging the weakness of my age. I hope it may be so; and yet. . .

⁷ I expect you have been told that Oppius is having a toga praetexta^[58] woven for him; for our friend Curtius has set his heart on a double-dyed robe^[59]; but he finds his dyer's "job" takes time.^[60] There's a pinch ​of pepper for you, just to show you that, in the midst of my chagrin,^[61] I still have a laugh now and again.

As to Dolabella's business, I urge you to attend to it as though your own interests were at stake. One last word—I shall do nothing wildly, nothing rashly, I entreat you, however, in whatever country we find ourselves, so to protect me and my children as our friendship and your own sense of honour shall demand.

¹ Two letters from you were handed me by your orderly at Tarsus on July 17; I shall answer them in due order, as you seem to desire. I have heard nothing about my successor, and I do not think I shall have one at all. There is no reason why I should not quit the province on the appointed day, especially now that all apprehension of the Parthians is removed. I have no idea at all of stopping anywhere, though I think I shall visit Rhodes for the sake of the Cicero boys,^[63] but I am not sure even of that: I want to get to Rome as soon as possible, but in any case my journey will be guided by considerations of state and of affairs in the City. Your successor cannot possibly make such haste as to enable you to meet me in Asia.

​² As to the delivery of your accounts, it is no invenience to me that you should omit to deliver any, for which you write that Bibulus gives you authority, but I hardly think you can omit to do so according to the Julian law; and though Bibulus, for a definite reason of his own,^[64] refuses to observe that law, it should in my opinion be scrupulously observed by you.

³ You write that the garrison ought not to have been withdrawn from Apamea; well, I see that everybody else thinks so too, and I am annoyed that my ill-wishers have made rather disagreeable comments on it. Whether the Parthians have crossed or not is a question I see nobody has any doubt about except yourself;^[65] and so, influenced by the positive way people spoke about it, I dismissed all the garrisons, strong and secure as I had made them.

⁴ My quaestor's accounts it was neither proper for me to send you, nor had they at that time been made up. It is my intention to deposit them at Apamea. As to my booty, with the exception of the city quaestors,^[66] in other words the Roman people, not a soul has touched or will touch a farthing of it.

At Laodicea I think I shall accept sureties for all the public money, so that both I and the people may be insured against the risks of marine transport.

You write to me about the 100,000 drachmae; in dealing with that I can make no arrangement in favour of anybody; all the money is handled as booty by the praefecti,^[67] while what has been assigned to myself is administered by the quaestor.

​⁵ What do I think about the legions decreed by the Senate for Syria? Well, I rather doubted before whether they would come; now, if the news that there is peace in Syria is received in time, I am quite sure they will not.

As to Marius, the successor to the province, I foresee that he will arrive late, because the Senate has decreed that he must not travel without the legions.

⁶ I have answered one of your letters, I now come to the second. You beg of me to recommend you as strongly as possible to Bibulus: I am perfectly willing to do so, but this seems a good opportunity for a word or two with you; you are the only man of all Bibulus's suite who never informed me how intensely Bibulus disliked me, and that without any apparent cause. It has been reported to me by scores of people that when there was great anxiety at Antioch, and great hopes of me and my army, he repeatedly declared that he would sooner suffer any hardship than be thought to have stood in need of my assistance; that you were keeping this back about your own praetor, from a sense of your duty to him as his quaestor, I did not so much resent, although I heard from time to time how you were being treated. But the man himself, when he wrote to Thermus about the Parthian war, never sent me a syllable, though he knew perfectly well that it was I who had to bear the brunt of that war. He did write to me, but only in reference to his son's augurship; and I, out of sheer pity, and because I had always been very friendly with Bibulus, took particular pains to write to him as courteously as possible. ⁷ Now if he is indiscriminately spiteful (and I have never thought that), I am the less offended as regards ​myself; but if he has a special antipathy to me, a letter from me will do you no good. Why, in the dispatch Bibulus sent to the Senate, he gives himself the whole credit for what was as much my business as his; he says that it was he who arranged that the exchange of the money should be to the advantage of the people^[68]; besides in reference to my refusal to employ Transpadane auxiliaries,^[69] which was entirely my own idea, that too, he writes, was a concession made by himself in favour of the people. On the other hand, where he himself was solely responsible, he takes me into partnership "When we," quoth he, "demanded more corn for the auxiliary cavalry." But what follows is the mark of a petty mind, starved and enfeebled by its own spitefulness—because the Senate gave Ariobarzanus the title of "king" through me, and commended him to me, our friend in his dispatch does not speak of him as "king" but as the "son of King Ariobarzanus." To make an appeal to men of that spirit only makes them worse. But there, I have humoured you, and written him a letter, on receipt of which you will do as you please.

¹ I rejoice exceedingly that my service to Rhodo^[71] and I any other efforts of mine on behalf of you and yours have earned your gratitude, very grateful man that ​you are, and you may rest assured that I grow more interested every day in your high position; and, indeed, you have yourself so enhanced it by your probity and clemency, that it seems incapable of improvement. ² But, meditating daily as I do on your methods, I am more and more satisfied with that advice of mine I originally offered to our friend Aristo when he came to see me, that you would be incurring serious hostility in many quarters if you branded with official disgrace a young man^[72] of great power and high birth, and a disgrace it certainly will be, there is no doubt of it; for you have nobody who stands above him in official rank. Now that young man, not to mention his nobility, takes precedence of those excellent men of unblemished record, your legates, by virtue of the very fact that he is a quaestor, and your own quaestor too. I am quite aware that there is nobody who can harm you by being angry. Still I don't like your having three brothers,^[73] men of the highest birth, prompt in action and not lacking in eloquence, all angry with you at once, especially when they have right on their side; and I see that they will be tribunes of the plebs, one after the other, for a period of three years.

³ But, as to the Republic, who knows what sort of weather is in store for it? My forecast is "squally." Why should I want you to face the terrors of the tribunes' wrath, especially when nobody could say a word against it if you promoted a quaestor over the heads of a quaestor's legates? If he proves himself worthy of his ancestors, as I hope and pray he will, the credit in a great measure will be yours; if he makes any mistake, it will be entirely his own affair, and not yours at all. As I am starting for Cilicia, I thought ​it my duty to write and tell you anything that occurs to me which I consider affects your interests. Whatever you may do, I pray for the gods' blessing upon it. But if you listen to me, you will avoid making enemies, and take thought for your tranquillity in the days to come.

¹ Marcus Tullius Cicero, Imperator, son of Marcus, grandson of Marcus, greets Gaius Caelius Caldus, son of Lucius, grandson of Gaius, Quaestor.

When I heard the very welcome news that I had drawn you as my quaestor, I hoped that the longer you were with me in the province, the better pleased I should be with that result of the drawing of lots; for it seemed to me of great importance that the bond forged between us by the lot should be further strengthened by personal intimacy. Later on, when I received no communication as to your arrival either from yourself or from anybody else, I began to fear that it would so fall out (and indeed I still fear it), that before you had reached the province I should be quitting the province. However, when in camp at Cilicia, I received on June 21, a letter you had sent me, and a most courteously worded letter it was, which made it easy for me to form a true estimate both of your sense of duty and your capacity. But it gave me no indication either of the place or the date of its dispatch, or of the time I was to expect ​you; and the carrier who delivered it was not the man to whom you had handed it, in which case he might have told me from what place or at what time it had been dispatched.

² Anyhow, uncertain as things were, I thought I should make a point of sending my orderlies and lictors to you with a letter; and if you receive it in time enough, you will do me a very great favour if you join me in Cilicia as soon as possible.

For what Curius, your cousin, and a man, as you know, to whom I am greatly attached, and C. Vergilius^[74] also, your kinsman and my very intimate friend, have written to me about you with such careful elaboration has, of course, great influence with me, as the studied recommendation of men who are emphatically my friends is bound to have; but your own letter, especially on the subject of your position, and our being thus associated, carries more weight with me than anything else. No more desirable quaestor could possibly have fallen to my lot. And that is why any such marks of distinction as can find their way from me to you, will so find their way, that the world may recognize that I have shown no lack of regard for your own and your ancestors' prestige. But I can the more easily effect this if you join me in Cilicia; and that I regard as of importance to me and to the state, and most of all to yourself.