Letters to his Friends/Book 3

¹ Were the state herself able to give you an account of her present condition, you would not learn it from her more easily than from your freedman Phania; so sagacious is he, and not only that, but also (in no unpleasant sense)^[2] inquisitive; he will, therefore, make everything plain to you; for that helps me to make my letter shorter, and is less risky in view of other matters. Now as regards my goodwill towards you, though you can learn it from the lips of that same Phania, I think none the less that I personally have some part to play in the expression of it.

You must convince yourself that you are very dear to me, both on account of the many charms of your character, your courtesy and kindliness, and also because I gather from your letter, and from what many have told me in conversation, that all that has ​passed from me to you has turned out to be very acceptable to you. And that being so, I shall assuredly guarantee to repair the enjoyment of the many days we have lost through the interruption of our intimacy^[3] by the acceptability, the frequency, and the magnitude of my services to you; and, as it is your wish too, I may say that I shall do so "not against Minerva's will"^[4]; and if I secure a statue of her from your collection, I shall entitle her, not Pallas only, but also Appias.^[5]

² Cilix, your freedman, I knew but slightly before; but ever since he delivered me your letter, so full as it was of affection and kindness, he has himself by his own words followed up in a wonderful way the courtesy with which you wrote. It was a delight to me to hear him holding forth as he told me all about your kindly feeling, and the remarks you made about me day after day. In short, in two days he became my intimate friend—not so much so, however, that I am likely to cease missing Phania very much; and talking of Phania, when you send him back to Rome, which I imagine you intend to do very soon, I should be glad if you would give him instructions as to everything you wish me to do or look after.

³ L. Valerius,^[6] the lawyer, I strongly recommend to you, and that too even if he is—well, no lawyer. For I wish to take sounder "precautionary measures" for him than he usually does for others. I am very fond of the man; he is of my household, and one of my most intimate friends. He is unfailing in his expressions of gratitude to you; but he also writes that what would carry the greatest weight with you is a letter from me. I beg of you again and again not to let him be disappointed in that expectation.

¹ Though it has come about both against my inclinations and contrary to my expectations that I am obliged to set out for a province with imperium,^[7] amid my many and varied annoyances and reflections the one consolation that suggests itself to me is, that you could have no better friend than I am as your successor, and that I could take over the province from nobody who would be more anxious to hand it over to me in the best possible order and with all difficulties smoothed away. And if you, too, have the same hope as regards my goodwill towards you, you will assuredly never be disappointed in that hope. I beg and beseech you again and again with the greatest earnestness, in the name of our very close connexion,^[8] and of your own incomparable kindliness, in whatever respect you can (and you can in very many respects) to look ahead and take measures for the protection of my interests.

² You see that by a decree of the Senate I am obliged to take a province.^[9] If, so far as you find it feasible in the circumstances,^[10] you hand it over to me as unencumbered with difficulties as you can, it will be the easier for me to run the whole race (if I ​may so call it) of my term of office. What you can effect in that connexion it is for you to judge; I earnestly beg you to do what occurs to you as being of importance to me. I should write to you at greater length, if your kindly feeling looked for a longer appeal, or our friendship permitted any such formality, or if the situation called for any words and did not speak for itself. I should like you to convince yourself of this, that if I am satisfied that you have made provision for my interests, the result will be a rich and never-ending harvest of satisfaction to yourself. Farewell.

¹ When I arrived at Brundisium on May 22 your legate Q. Fabius Vergilianus was on the spot to receive me; and, in accordance with your instructions, he brought to my notice what had suggested itself not only to myself, who was most concerned, but to the whole Senate—that there was need of a stronger garrison for your province. For practically all were of opinion that reinforcements should be enrolled in Italy for my legions and those of Bibulus.^[11] When Sulpicius as consul declared that he would not allow it, we protested, it is true, on many grounds, but so unanimous was the Senate on the point of our early departure that we had to comply, and we did so. As matters stand—and this is the request I made of you in the letter I put in the hands of your letter-carriers at Rome—I should be glad if you would make it your concern, in view of the close ​association of our aims, to devote your care and assiduity to the doing of everything that one who is handing over a province can do to smooth the way for a successor intimately connected with him officially, and personally a very true friend; so that all the world may grasp the fact that neither could I have found a predecessor more kindly disposed, nor you a better friend to succeed you in the province.

² That letter of which you sent me a copy, the letter you wished to be read out in the Senate, had given me to understand that you had dismissed a large number of soldiers; but that same Fabius has explained, that though it had been your intention to do so, when he himself left you, your troops were at their full strength. If that is so, you will do me a great kindness if you reduce as little as possible the already inadequate forces at your disposal; and I expect the decrees of the Senate passed on this question have been forwarded to you. As for myself, in consideration of my high esteem for you, I shall approve whatever you do; but you too, I am sure, will do what you discover to be most to my advantage. I am expecting my legate C. Pomptinus at Brundisium, and I think he will arrive before June 1. When he arrives, I shall seize the very first opportunity of sailing that is offered me.

¹ On June 4 being at Brundisium, I received your letter telling me that you had instructed L. Clodius^[12] ​as to the points you wished him to discuss with me. I am eagerly awaiting him, so that I may learn as soon as possible what message he is bringing from you.

My affection and anxiety to serve you, you have already, I trust, discovered from much that has occurred; I shall, however, make it clearer than ever by such acts as will enable me to give the most ample proof that your reputation and prestige are most precious to me. Q. Fabius Vergilianus and C. Flaccus, son of Lucius, and, more strongly than any, M. Octavius, son of Gnaeus, have convinced me that you think very highly of me, a fact which I had myself previously inferred from many clear proofs, but most of all from that book on Augural Law which you sent me with its very affectionate dedication, and a most charming gift it was.

² Speaking for myself, all the services due to you by virtue of our very close official relationship, will be consistently performed. For not only has my esteem for you increased daily from the time you began to show a special regard for me, but there has also been added my close intimacy with your relatives—for two of whom, of different ages, I have the highest esteem, Cn. Pompeius,^[13] the father-in-law of your daughter, and M. Brutus,^[14] your son-in-law—and the fact of our being members of the same College,^[15] especially as you have expressed your approval of it in such highly complimentary terms, has, I think, contributed no slight bond towards the linking together of our aims and purposes. But if I meet Clodius, when I have heard what he has to say, I will write to you at greater length, and spare no effort myself to see you as soon as possible. You ​write that your reason for staying in the province was that you might meet me; well, to speak frankly, that is a real pleasure to me.

¹ I came to Tralles on July 27. Awaiting me there with your letter and messages was L. Lucilius, a man than whom you could have sent nobody in the world either more friendly to myself, or, as I think, better suited to find out what I wanted to know, or more shrewd. Well, I read your letter with pleasure and listened to Lucilius with all due attention. For the present, for two reasons, firstly, because it is your own opinion too (for you write that you have come to the conclusion that what I wrote to you about our mutual good services, agreeable as it was to you, was nevertheless, since the record went so far back, quite unnecessary), and secondly, because as a matter of fact, when friendship has been established and loyalty tested, the recital of good services is superfluous; for those two reasons then I will omit that part of my address, but I will express my gratitude to you all the same, as I am bound to do. For I have noticed and ascertained from your correspondence that you have made it a principle in every respect to consult my interests, and by some means or other to make every arrangement and preparation which would enable me to carry out my "plan of campaign" with greater ease and freedom.

² When I say that this civility of yours is most gratify- ​ing to me, it naturally follows that I should like you to think that it will be, and already is, an urgent charge upon me to see to it that, in the first place you and all your people, and secondly the rest of the world also, may be able to recognize that I am most friendly disposed towards you; and it seems to me that those who are still not fully convinced of it, do not so much fail to understand the fact as object to our being on such friendly terms. But understand it they assuredly will: for neither will the characters be insignificant, nor the motives mean in the drama that is to be enacted. But I wish the performance of all this to be better than what I say or write.

³ My itinerary seems to have caused you considerable doubt as to whether you will see me in the province; well, this is how the matter stands. When I spoke with your freedman Phania at Brundisium, I came to a point in the conversation when I said that I would willingly come first to that part of the province to which I thought you were most anxious that I should come. Then he told me, that since you desired to quit the province on board a fleet, it would be extremely convenient to you if I put in to Sida,^[17] a sea-board part of the province, with my ships. I said I would do so, and I should have done so, had not our friend L. Clodius told me at Corcyra that that was the very last thing I should do; that you would be at Laodicea to meet me on my arrival. That meant a much shorter journey and was much more convenient for me, especially as I thought you preferred it so.

⁴ After that your plans were completely altered. As things now stand, it will be easiest for you to decide what can be done; what I propose to do ​myself I will explain to you. On July 31, I think I shall be at Laodicea, where I shall stay for a very few days, while I receive some money due to me on the Treasury Bill of Exchange.^[18] After that I shall make my way to the army, so that about August 13 I expect to be in the neighbourhood of Iconium. But if I make any mistake at the moment of writing (for I am far from what is now going on and the places I mention), as soon as I begin to advance, by as speedy and frequent communications as possible I shall ensure your being apprised of the whole programme of my dates and routes. As for laying any burden on your shoulders, I have not the courage, nor is it my duty, to do so. But so far as is possible without inconvenience to yourself, it is of great importance to each of us that I should see you before you leave. Even if any accident snatches the opportunity out of our grasp, still my every duty to you will be performed as punctiliously as if I had seen you. It is not my intention to send you any message by letter concerning my affairs until I have abandoned all hope of being able to confer with you in person.

⁵ You say that you requested Scaevola^[19] to take command of the province in your absence until my arrival; well, I saw him myself at Ephesus, and he was my intimate companion during the three days I stayed at Ephesus, and I got nothing out of him indicating that you had given him any commission at all. And I could have heartily wished that he had been able to comply with your desire; for I do not suppose he would have had any objection.

¹ When I compare your action with mine, though I claim no more credit than I give you in the matter of maintaining our friendship, still I find far more satisfaction in my own action than in yours. At Brundisium I inquired of Phania (whose fidelity to yourself I imagined I had thoroughly understood, as I also imagined I knew the place he held in your regard) into what part of the province he supposed you were most anxious that I should come first as your successor. He answered that I could do nothing more agreeable to you than make Sida the end of my voyage; now although to arrive there involved a loss of dignity, and was in many respects less convenient for me, in spite of all that, I told him that I would do so.

² Again when in Corcyra I met L. Clodius, a man so closely connected with you that when I conversed with him it seemed to me that I was conversing with you, I told him that I would make arrangements so as to come first to that part of the province which Phania had specified in his request. And then Clodius, when he had thanked me, earnestly begged of me to go straight on to Laodicea, saying that you wished to be in the part of the province I could most quickly reach,^[20] that you might depart most quickly. Indeed, had I not been such a successor as you particularly wished to meet, that you would have left before your successor had been appointed; and this certainly tallied with the letter I had ​received at Rome, which, as I thought, gave me a very clear idea of the hurry you were in to get away. My answer to Clodius was that I would do so, and, indeed, much more willingly than if I had been obliged to fulfil my promise to Phania. And so I changed my plan and immediately sent you a letter written with my own hand; and I gather from your letter that mine was delivered to you in plenty of time.

³ This is that action of mine with which I am so thoroughly satisfied; no action could have been more friendly. Now it is your turn to reflect upon your own. Not only were you not at the place where you could have had the earliest opportunity of seeing me, but you went off to where I could not even catch you up within the thirty days which were fixed, I think, by the Cornelian law^[21] as the limit of your stay in the province; with the result that your conduct appears to those who know nothing of our mutual feelings to be that of a stranger, to use the mildest possible term, and of one who wanted to run away from an interview, while mine on the other hand appears to be that of one closely attached to you and the best of friends.

⁴ And yet even before I came to the province, a letter from you was handed to me, in which, although you clearly indicated that you were setting out for Tarsus, you still gave me no uncertain hope that you would meet me; while in the meantime, I imagine, evil-minded persons,—for it is a widespread vice—who had yet got hold of some plausible grounds for their gossip, knowing nothing of my staunchness as a friend, were trying to alienate my goodwill from you by alleging that you were holding an assize at Tarsus, ​making various enactments, deciding actions, delivering judgements, though you might already have guessed that you had been superseded; doing things that were not usually done, they said, even by those who thought that they were being succeeded at an early date.

⁵ Now the talk of these people disturbed me not at all; nay more than that (I hope you will believe me) I considered that if you were busying yourself officially, I was being relieved of some irksome toil, and I rejoiced that a year's government of the province, a long time as it appeared to me, had now been reduced to a government of hardly more than eleven months, if one month's work had been taken off my shoulders before I arrived. One thing, to tell you the truth, does disturb me—that, our forces being so weak to start with, three cohorts, and those at their fullest strength, are absent, and that I do not know where they are. What annoys me most of all, however, is, that I do not know where I shall see you; and I was the less prompt in writing to you, because I have been daily expecting to see you in person; and meanwhile I have not received so much as a letter from you to inform me what you were doing or where I was likely to see you; so I have sent you D. Antonius, the commander of the veterans,^[22] a gallant officer of whom I have reason to think very highly, so that, if it be your pleasure, you may hand the cohorts over to him, in order that I may be able to achieve something appreciable while the season of the year is still in my favour. And in that regard both our friendship and your letter have led me to hope that I shall have the benefit of your counsel, and I do not despair of it even now. But really ​unless you write and tell me, it is impossible for me to have even the slightest idea when or where I shall see you.

⁶ For my part, I shall take care to make our friends and foes alike understand that I am most friendly disposed towards you. Of your feelings towards me you appear to have given our foes no slight grounds for thinking otherwise; it will be a great pleasure to me if you succeed in correcting that impression. And—to enable you to calculate at what spot you may meet me, and still observe the Cornelian law"^[23]—I arrived in the province on July 31; I am making my way into Cilicia through Cappadocia; I move my camp from Iconium on August 29. And now with these dates and this plan of my route to guide you, if you still think it incumbent upon you to meet me, it is for you to decide at what place you can most conveniently do so, and on what day.

¹ I will write to you more fully when I manage to get more leisure. I have written these words in a hurry, when Brutus's serving-men met me at Laodicea and told me that they were hastening to Rome, and so I gave them no letters except for you and for Brutus.

² A deputation from Appia^[24] have delivered to me a roll from you full of the most unfair complaints, ​because, as you say, I hindered their building operations by the letter I wrote. In the same despatch also you request me to release them from my objection and enable them to go on building as soon as possible, so that they may not find winter suddenly upon them; and at the same time you complain with much bitterness that I forbade them to exact a tax^[25] before I had investigated the matter and given them leave to do so, which you said practically meant putting a stop to their building, since I could only make the investigation after I returned from Cilicia for the winter.

³ On all these counts, listen to my reply and recognize the fairness of your remonstrance. In the first place, when I had been approached by men who declared that they were the victims of intolerable exactions, what unfairness was there in my writing that they^[26] should hold their hands until I had investigated the affair and what led up to it? Do you really suppose that I could do nothing before winter? for that is what you write. Really! as though I had to come to them, and not they to me, to hold an investigation. "All that distance?" you say. What? when you gave them the letter in which you pleaded with me not to hinder their building before winter, were you then under the impression that they would not come to me? Anyhow what they did was ludicrous; the letter they brought me, asking that it might be possible for them to do the work in the summer, that letter they did not put into my hands till after midwinter. But let me tell you firstly, those who object to pay the tax are far more numerous than those who press for its exaction, and secondly, that in spite of that I am going to do what, I take it, ​you wish me to do. So no more about the Appian deputation.

⁴ I was told in so many words by Lentulus's freedman, Pausanias, my own beadle,^[27] that you complained in conversing with him that I had not gone to meet you. O yes, of course I treated you with contempt, and my arrogance is inconceivable! Well, when your serving-man came to me about the second watch,^[28] and reported that you would arrive at Iconium before dawn, and that it was not certain by which road (for there were two), I sent Varro, your most intimate friend, by one road, and Q. Lepta, the commander of my engineers by the other, to meet you, and I instructed each of them to post away from you to me so as to give me time to come and meet you. Lepta came running to me, and reported that you had already passed the Camp. I hastened to Iconium. The rest you already know. Could I have possibly failed to meet you, firstly an Appius Claudius, secondly an imperator? Then, since it is an ancient custom, then (and this is the main thing) because you were my friend? And that too when in affairs of this kind it is my habit to act with a courtesy far more punctilious than is demanded by my public status and dignity. But no more of this.

⁵ Pausanias also kept telling me that you said:, "Why, of course! An Appius went to meet a Lentulus, and a Lentulus an Ampius^[29]: but a Cicero—no, he would not go to meet an Appius! " Now, I ask you, talking of these sillinesses, do you of all people—a man, in my estimation, of sound commonsense, of great erudition too and of wide experience in affairs—I recall your urbanity also, which the ​Stoics are right in regarding as a virtue—do you, I ask, suppose that any Appiism or Lentulism in the world weighs more with me than the distinctions conferred by virtue? Why, even before I had attained the honours which are most magnificent in the eyes of men, yet those names of yours never excited my admiration; no, it was the men who had bequeathed them to you that I thought great. But later, when I had so accepted and administered the highest offices of the empire as to feel that I had obtained all I desired in the way of both promotion and glory, I hoped that I had become, never, indeed, your superior, but, at any rate, your peer. And I declare that I never observed that any different opinion was held either by Cn. Pompey, whom I consider a better man than any who has ever existed, or by Lentulus, whom I consider a better man than myself. If you think otherwise, you will not go wrong if in order to appreciate the difference between nobility of birth, and nobility of worth, you were to study with a little more attention what is said on this subject by Athenodorus,^[30] the son of Sandon.

⁶ But to return to my point, I should like you to believe that I am not only your friend, but a very great friend of yours. I shall assuredly succeed by the performance of every service in my power in enabling you to realize the truth of what I say. If it is your object, however, to make it appear that you are less bound to further my interests in my absence than I strove to further yours, I release you from that anxiety:

But if you are a born frondeur,^[32] while you will not ​succeed in diminishing my zeal on your behalf, there is one thing in which you will not fail—in making me less concerned as to how you interpret my actions. I write thus to you more frankly than usual, relying on the consciousness of my services and goodwill; and that goodwill, based on deliberate conviction, I shall maintain undiminished so long as it is your pleasure that I should do so.

¹ Although, as far as I could understand from your letter, it seems that you will be at the gates of Rome^[34] when you read this letter of mine, and the utterly frivolous gossip of provincials has become flat and stale, nevertheless, seeing that you wrote to me at such length about the talk of unscrupulous men, I felt bound to make a brief reply to your letter.

² But the first two paragraphs of it I am obliged in 2 a way to pass over in silence; for there is nothing in them that is either definite or positive, unless it be that I had indicated by my looks and by my silence that you were no friend of mine, and that this might have been perceived both on the bench, when some business was being transacted, and at certain social gatherings. That all this amounts to nothing at all, I can understand, but though it is nothing, ​I fail to understand even what the statement in question is. Of this I am sure, that many distinctly laudatory speeches of mine have been delivered both on and off the bench, which were highly complimentary to you, and showed my great anxiety to demonstrate our intimacy, and that those speeches might well have been correctly reported to you. As far as the legates^[35] are concerned, what could have been in better taste or more equitable than my action in reducing the expenses of the most impecunious states, and that without in any way impairing your dignity, especially when it was done at the urgent request of the states themselves? For I was not aware at the time of the general scale of the deputations which were going to Rome on your account. When I was at Apamea, the leading men of many states reported to me that the amount of money decreed for the expenses was excessive, and that although the states were insolvent.

³ Upon that, many thoughts suggested themselves to me at once. In the first place, I never supposed that you, a man not only of common-sense, but also (to use the modern phrase) of "culture," derived any pleasure from that sort of deputation; and, if I mistake not, I argued at some length to that effect when on the bench at Synnada, pointing out firstly, that Appius Claudius had won credit in the eyes of the Senate and Roman people not on the strength of the testimony of the inhabitants of Midaeum (that was the state in which the matter was mentioned), but by doing what his nature prompted him to do;^[36] in the next place, that this is what I had seen happening to many ex-governors—deputations had come to Rome on their behalf, but I had no recollection of ​these deputations being allowed any special time or place to deliver their eulogy; that I was pleased with their eagerness to gratify you, because they were grateful to you for your good services, but it seemed to me that the whole principle of the thing was quite unjustified by necessity. However, I added, if they really wished to evince their sense of obligation to you by so doing, in that case if anybody should prove to have performed the function at his own expense, I should commend him; if the expense to the state were within the limits of the law, I should raise no objection; if it were unlimited, I should not allow it. Now what fault can be found with that? Unless it is what you add in your letter, that certain people have got the idea that my edict was, so to speak, deliberately framed for the purpose of obstructing those deputations of yours. Here, indeed, it appears to me that it is not so much those who argue in this way, that do me wrong, as the man who lends a willing ear to such arguments.

⁴ It was at Rome that I drew up the edict, and I added nothing to it but a clause which the publicani when they visited me in Samos asked me to transfer, word for word, from your edict to my own. The paragraph was very carefully drawn up, and relates to the reduction of the expenses of the states, and in it are certain innovations to the advantage of the states which give me much satisfaction; but this particular clause, which gave birth to the suspicion that I had made diligent search for something to cause you offence, is simply a transcript from a previous edict. I really was not so lacking in common-sense, as to imagine that the legates were being sent on their own private affairs; they were ​being dispatched to express their gratitude to you, but not as a private person, and not in their own private interests, but in those of the state, and not in a private place, but in the council chamber of the world—the Senate: and when I made an edict that nobody should set out for Rome without my permission, I did not extend my prohibition to those who were unable (as they said) to follow me all the way to camp or across the Taurus.^[37] That is the most ridiculous passage in your letter; for what reason had they for following me to camp or crossing the Taurus, when I arranged my journey from Laodicea right up to Iconium for the very purpose of enabling the magistrates and legates of all those assize districts^[38] which lie this side of Taurus, and of all the states there, to meet me? ⁵ Unless you mean to say that deputations did not begin to be sent until I had crossed the Taurus, and that is certainly not the case. For when I was at Laodicea, at Apamea, at Synnada, at Philomelium, and at Iconium (and I spent some time in each of those towns), all the deputations of that sort had already been constituted. And anyhow there is this also that I would have you know, that I made no decree respecting either the reduction or the repayment of the expenses of the deputations beyond what the leading men of the states demanded of me—that quite unnecessary expenses should not be piled upon the sale of the taxes^[39] and that bitterly resented exaction (you know all about it) of the poll-tax and the door-tax. When, however, moved by a sense of justice and of compassion also, I had taken upon myself to relieve the ​miseries of ruined states, ruined mainly, too, through the action of their own magistrates, it was impossible that, in the matter of that unnecessary expenditure, I should show no concern. And on your side, if tales of that sort about me were reported to you, you ought not to have believed them. If, on the other hand, this is the sort of thing which gives you pleasure—attributing to others the ideas that occur to yourself—you are introducing into the conversation of friends an element by no means generous. Why, if I had ever intended to disparage your reputation in the province, I should not have consulted your son-in-law, nor your freedman at Brundisium, nor your commander of engineers at Corcyra, as to the place where you wished me to meet you.

And that being so, you may well rid your style of speech (and you will have the support of very learned men who have written brilliant treatises on the Practice of Friendship) of all this kind of thing—"they argued so and so," "I, on the contrary, maintained so and so," "they stated so and so," "I contradicted them."

⁶ Do you suppose that I have never been told anything about you? Not even that, when you had expressed a wish that I should come to Laodicea, you yourself crossed the Taurus? That on the very days I was holding assizes at Apamea, Synnada, and Philomelium, you were holding them at Tarsus? I shall quote no more instances, lest I appear to imitate what I condemn in you. Thus much I will say, and I feel it; if you yourself feel what you declare that others are saying, you are seriously to blame; if on the other hand it is those others who say such things in your presence, you are still some​what to blame for listening to them. My behaviour in the whole course of our friendship will be found consistent and upright. But if anyone makes me out rather a trickster, what can be more artful than, although I have always defended you in your absence—and that too when I never imagined it would come to pass that I also should need your defence in my absence—that I should now make the mistake of putting it in your power to abandon me in my absence with full justification?

⁷ There is one kind of talk I omit from the above category, that in which as very often happens, something is said which I am pretty sure you would resent being said; I mean if any of your legates, or prefects, or military tribunes is abused; I assure you, however, that so far it has never happened in my hearing that even such remarks amounted to anything more offensive or coarse^[40] than that made to me by Clodius at Corcyra, when in that connexion he clamorously complained that your success would have been greater but for the unscrupulous conduct of others. Such remarks, both because they are so common, and because they do no harm, in my opinion, to your reputation, I have never provoked, but neither have I taken much trouble to check them. If anybody supposes that sincere reconciliation is an impossibility, he does not convict me of hypocrisy, but betrays his own; and at the same time he implies no worse an opinion of me than of you. But if anybody is displeased with my policy in the province, and fancies that he is being injuriously treated by a certain dissimilarity between my policy and yours, ​although both of us have acted conscientiously, but have not both followed the same line, that man I am not anxious to have for my friend.

⁸ Your liberality, characteristic of so great a nobleman, covered a wider field in the province; if mine was more circumscribed (though your own openhanded and bountiful nature had to be somewhat modified in your second year of office,^[41] owing to a certain unhappiness in the times), still, seeing that it has ever been my nature to fight shy of extravagance at the expense of others, and that the times have the same effect upon myself as upon others, men ought not to be surprised that

⁹ You have given me information about affairs in the City; that was not only gratifying to me in itself, but also because it showed that all my messages to you would have your attention. Among them is one to which I beg of you to give particular attention—to see to it that no addition is made to my duties here, in the way of either responsibility or length of tenure of office; and also to ask Hortensius, my fellow-augur and intimate friend, if he has ever either voted or done anything in my favour, to abandon also this proposal of his that I should hold office for two years; for nothing could be more unkind to me.

¹⁰ You wish to know about my affairs; well, I left Tarsus on October 7, and made for Amanus; I write this on the day following that on which I was encamped in the region of Mopsuhestia. If I succeed in doing anything, I shall write to you; and I shall never send a letter home to my people without adding one ​which I should like to be put into your hands. You ask about the Parthians; I don't think there were any Parthians; Arabs there were, partially equipped as Parthians, but it is said that they have all returned. There is not a single enemy, they tell me, in Syria. I should be glad if you would write to me as frequently as possible about your own affairs and mine, and the whole political situation; and as to that, I am the more anxious because your letter informs me that our friend Pompey is going to Spain.

¹ At last, after all, I have read a letter worthy of Appius Claudius—a letter full of kindly feeling, courtesy, and consideration. Evidently the very sight of your urban surroundings has given you back your pristine urbanity. For the letters you sent me en route before you took ship from Asia, one about my vetoing the departure of the legates, the other about the stoppage of the building operations of the Appians,^[43] I read with much pain. And so, conscious as I was of my unswerving goodwill towards you, I replied with a touch of temper. When, however, I read the letter you gave my freedman Philotimus, I recognized and understood that there were many in the province who were sorry that we entertain such feelings towards each other as we do; but when you approached the City, or rather as soon as you saw your friends, you discovered from them how loyal I had been to you in your absence, and how con- ​sistently regardful of you in the observance of every duty. So you may imagine how greatly I value those words in your letter, "If anything occurs that touches your dignity, although that can hardly happen, still, if it does, I shall do as much for you as you did for me." I am sure you will have no difficulty in doing so; for there is nothing that cannot be accomplished by cordiality and goodwill, or shall I rather say, affection.

² As for myself, though it had always been my own conviction, and I was frequently so informed in my friends' letters, I was none the less highly delighted with what you say in your letter about your having a hope by no means doubtful, indeed quite certain, of obtaining a triumph; not, indeed, for the reason that it would make it easier for me to obtain one myself; that is utilitarian philosophy;^[44] but honestly because your position and eminence are precious to me on their own account. For that reason, since you have more acquaintances than anybody else, whom you know to be setting out for this province—for practically all of them approach you to ask if you have any commission for them—you would do me a great kindness by sending me a line as soon as you have secured what you are confident of obtaining, and I sincerely hope you may. If the judicial discussions and obstructionism of the Long Bench,^[45] as our friend Pompey calls them, rob you and others of a day or two, for that is all they can do, your claims will none the less hold their ground. But if you love me, and would have me love you, do send me a letter, so that I may taste the joy of it at the earliest possible opportunity.

³ I should also be glad if you would pay off the ​arrears of what you promised and have already given me. Not only am I anxious to perfect myself in the study of augural law for its own sake, but you cannot think how delighted I am with your kind attentions and gifts. But you say you long to have something of the same sort from me; well, I must really consider by what style of composition I may best requite your kindness; for it would certainly be unlike me, who, to your frequent surprise, put such a lot of hard work into my writing, to make the mistake of letting you think that I had been slovenly in my writing, especially when I should probably be accused not only of slovenliness but also of ingratitude.^{[46] 4}That, however, I will see to. As to your other promise, I should be glad if in conformity with your loyalty and sincere consideration for me, and in the name of friendship that is of no recent date, but has stood the test of years, you would make it your care and spare no effort to secure my having a "thanksgiving" decreed me, and that in the most complimentary terms, and at as early a date as possible. I have been later altogether in sending my dispatch than I could have wished; and in that not only was I plagued with difficulties in finding a ship, but I believe that the Senate was prorogued at the very time my dispatch arrived.^[47] But it was at your instance and by your advice that I did so; and I think I acted aright in not sending my dispatch immediately upon my winning the title of imperator, but after the performance of other services and the completion of the summer campaign. You will, therefore, I am sure, attend to all this as you declare you will, and regard as commended to your care all there is of me, and all I have, and those belonging to me.

¹ When news was brought me of the reckless behaviour of those who were making trouble for you,^[48] the first announcement of it seriously disturbed me, since nothing could have happened to cause me greater surprise; when I had pulled myself together, however, it seemed to me that the subsequent situation could be very easily dealt with, because I had absolute confidence in yourself, and a good deal in your friends, and many considerations occurred to me to justify my expectation that all this distress of yours would actually redound to your honour. What caused me profound annoyance, was that by this measure of theirs, those who are jealous of you, had robbed you, as I could see, of a very sure and well-deserved triumph. But if you attach no more importance to the matter than I have always been convinced should be attached to it, you will be acting wisely, and, with the victory on your side, will enjoy in the vexation of your enemies the most well-deserved of triumphs. For I clearly foresee, that you, with all your energy, resources, and wisdom, will make your enemies bitterly regret their foolhardiness. As regards myself, I call the gods of heaven to witness this my promise and assurance to you, that in the ​maintenance of your prestige—I had rather use that word than "safety"—in this province, of which you were governor, I will play the part and discharge the duties of an intercessor by my importunity, of a kinsman by my efforts, of a popular favourite, I hope, by my influence with the states, of a commander-in-chief by my authority. There is no limit to what I would have you demand or expect of me; I will make your anticipations fall short of my services.

² Q. Servilius^[49] has delivered me a very short letter from you, and yet it seemed to me longer than it need have been; I felt you did me an injustice in thinking a request necessary. I could have wished that the unhappy occasion had never arisen for your being able to understand what value I set upon you, upon Pompey, whom, as I ought, I esteem more highly than any other man on earth, and upon Brutus—although in our daily intercourse you might have understood this as you are sure to understand it—but since the occasion has arisen, if I leave anything undone, I shall confess to have committed a crime and covered myself with disgrace.

³ Pomptinus,^[50] whom you have treated with remarkable and even extraordinary loyalty, a kindness to which I can myself testify, shows that he is as grateful and well-disposed towards you as he is in duty bound to be, for although he had been compelled by urgent private affairs to leave me much against my will, yet, when he saw it was to your interest, though in the act of embarking, he returned from Ephesus to Laodicea. Seeing that you are likely to meet with such acts of devotion in countless cases, I can have no doubt whatever that all this anxiety you are suffering will but enhance your ascendancy. If, ​however, you manage to bring off the election of censors, and if you perform the duties of your own censorship, as you ought and as you can, I feel sure you will be a permanent pillar of strength not only to yourself but to all your relatives. I would have you fight tooth and nail to prevent any extension of my period of office, so that when I have satisfied your claims upon me here, I may be able to demonstrate my goodwill towards you at home as well.

⁴ As to what you tell me of the devotion to you of all men of every class, I am as little surprised as I am greatly pleased that it has so fallen out; and I have had the same account of it from intimate friends of mine. I am, therefore, highly delighted not only that all due tribute is paid to you in particular, whose friendship is as great an honour as a pleasure to me, but also that there still survives in our state an attitude of devoted attachment, with practically no dissentients, to men of fortitude and energy; and that in itself in my own case has ever been the only reward I have gained by my laborious days and sleepless nights.

⁵ I am extremely surprised, however, that it has come about that the young man^[51] whom I only saved from ruin by the greatest exertions in two trials^[52] involving capital punishment, should have proved so utterly reckless as to forget, when he undertook to represent^[53] all your enemies, the patron of all his fortunes and of his whole career; especially when you had a handsome balance of distinctions, or shall I say safeguards, to your credit, while he, to say the least of it, had a heavy deficit in these respects. The silly and childish things he has been saying had already been fully reported to me by my dear friend ​M. Caelius; and you also have written a good deal about that same talk of his. Now for my own part I should have been more ready to break off a longstanding connexion with a man who had undertaken the representation of your enemies than to form any fresh connexion with him. You ought to have no doubt as to my devotion to you; it is obvious to everybody in the province, and it was obvious at Rome.

⁶ And yet there is a hint in your letter of a certain suspicion and doubt in your mind, about which this is not the right time to expostulate with you, but it is the time to clear myself, and I must. When did I ever stand in the way of any deputation being sent to Rome to eulogize you? Or how, if I were your public enemy, could I have done less to injure you, if your private enemy, how could I have shown my hostility more openly? But supposing I were as treacherous as they who heap such charges on my head, even then I am sure I should not have been such a fool as openly to parade my hostilities where I wished to keep my hatred dark, or on the other hand to betray an eager desire to do you harm by an act which would do you no harm at all. I remember some people coming to me, it must have been from Epictetus,^[54] to inform me that extravagant sums were being voted to meet the expenses of certain legates: my reply to them, which was not so much a command as an expression of opinion, was that sums for that purpose should be voted as nearly as possible in accordance with the Cornelian law.^[55] And as evidence that I did not obstinately insist even upon that, there are the accounts of the states, in which the amount each state desires is entered as paid over to your legates.

​⁷ Now see with what lies they have crammed you, these fellows of no substance at all!—that not only were the votes for the expenses cancelled, but the money was actually reclaimed and taken out of the pockets of the agents of those who had already started, and that that was the reason in the case of many, why they did not go at all. I should complain and remonstrate with you were it not that, as I wrote above, I preferred to clear myself in your eyes in the day of your trouble, than to make any charge against you, and considered that the more proper course. I shall, therefore, say nothing about you for believing what you did, but only a word or two about myself, to show why you should not have believed it. If you have satisfied yourself that I am an honourable man, worthy of that study and that learning to which I have devoted myself from boyhood, a man of adequate fortitude and of a wisdom that can compare with that of most in affairs of the greatest gravity, then, I say, you ought not to recognize as characteristic of me anything, I will not say disloyal and designing and deceitful in my friendship, but that is even low or meagre. ⁸ If, however, it pleases you to represent me as crafty and underhanded, what can possibly be less consistent with such a nature than to flout the friendliness of one in the zenith of his success, or to assail in a province the prestige of one whose high repute you have defended at home? Or to show a spirit of hostility where you can do no damage? Or to select an opportunity for your treachery, which, while it attracts the greatest publicity as an exhibition of hatred, gives least weight to the blow you would inflict. But what reason was there for my being so implacable towards you, when ​I had learnt from my own brother that you had been no enemy of mine even in those days^[56] when it was almost inevitable that you should act the part of one? When, however, a reconciliation eagerly sought on either side had been arranged between us, what single request of yours during your consulship^[57] did I fail to grant, whatever it was you desired me either to do or to support with my vote? What single commission did you give me when I escorted you to Puteoli that I did not execute more conscientiously than you even expected I would? ⁹ But if it be the main characteristic of the crafty man to submit everything to the test of selfish expediency, what, I ask you, could be more expedient for me, what better suited to my interests, than a close alliance with a man of preeminently noble birth and the highest official rank, whose resources and intellectual ability, whose children, and relations by marriage and by blood, might either confer upon me great distinction, or afford me great protection? And yet it is true that in seeking your friendship I did have my eye on all these advantages, and that was not a form of craftiness, but showed rather a considerable degree of wisdom. Moreover, how strong are the bonds that bind me to you—and I rejoice in the bondage—the similarity of our tastes, the sweetness of our intimacy, our joy in life, and in the way we live it, the mutual pleasure we find in conversation, and our deeper literary researches.^[58] But these are private bonds. What then of the public ties that bind us—a famous reconciliation, in which not even by inadvertency can a false step be made without raising the suspicion of insincerity?—-our common membership of a most majestic priesthood? In ​which, as our ancestors thought, not only could there be no violation of the laws of friendship without sacrilege, but it was unlawful for a man to be even elected priest, who was at enmity with any member of the College.

¹⁰ But not to mention such bonds, numerous and important as they are, what man has ever esteemed, or could, or should have esteemed another as highly as I do Pompey, the father-in-law of your daughter? For if kind actions have any value, it was to his efforts I consider that I owe the restoration to me of country, children, security, position, indeed my very self. If the charm of constant intimacy, what instance of closer friendship between consulars has ever occurred in our state? If the usual signs of affection and regard, what confidence has he not shown in me? What secret has he not shared with me? What matter affecting himself in the Senate has he preferred to be handled by any other in his own absence? In what respects has he not shown his desire that I should be honoured with the most handsome distinction? And, finally, how good-naturedly, how courteously did he take my impassioned defence of Milo—Milo, who occasionally opposed his own measures! With what heartiness he took precautions that I should not feel the tooth of that malice the occasion had provoked, when he protected me with his counsel, his authority, and finally with his troops! Indeed, in those days of danger such was his staunchness, such his high-mindedness, that he gave no credence, I will not say to some Phrygian or Lycaonian, as you did in the matter of the legates, but not even to men of the highest position in Rome, when they made malicious ​remarks about me. Since his son then is your son-in-law, and since, over and above this connexion by marriage, I know how dear and how delightful a companion you are to Cn. Pompeius, I ask you, what is my feeling towards you bound to be? Especially when he has written me such a letter that, had I been your enemy and not your devoted friend, I should have been propitiated by it, and submitted myself unreservedly to the wishes, yes, even to the nod, of one who had deserved so well of me.

¹¹ But no more on these topics; perhaps I have already dealt with them at unnecessary length. Now let me tell you what schemes I have started and put on a sound footing^[59] . . . And all this that I am doing, and intend to do, is in defence of your high position rather than to secure your personal safety. For I hope to hear at an early date that you have been elected censor; well, the duties of that magistracy demand very high courage and very sound judgement, and I am of opinion that you would do well to give more earnest and careful consideration to those duties than you do to my activities in your interest.

¹ While in camp on the river Pyramus, I have had two letters from you delivered to me at the same time, which Q. Servilius had sent me from Tarsus. In one of them the date given was April 5; the other, which I gathered to be the later of the two, was undated. ​I shall therefore reply to the earlier letter first—the letter in which you tell of your acquittal on the charge of maiestas.^[61] It is true that I had been informed about it long before in letters and messages and lastly by the general talk about it, for nothing could have been less of a secret—not that anybody could have thought it would have turned out otherwise, but as generally happens, no announcement affecting men of conspicuously high reputation can be kept dark—but anyhow your letter added to the pleasure which all that news had given me, not only because it spoke more distinctly and in richer detail than the ordinary gossip one hears, but because I thought my congratulations were better justified when I listened to you telling me your own story.

² Well then, far away as you were, I threw my arms around you in thought, and I really did kiss the letter, and then I congratulated myself too; for any tribute paid by the whole people, the Senate and the jurors to capacity, hard work, and integrity—though perhaps I flatter myself in imagining such virtues are to be found in me—I consider any such tribute is paid also to myself. But I was not so much surprised at the glorious result of your trial as at the distorted mental vision of your enemies. But you will say "bribery and corruption" or maiestas—what is the difference? None that really matters;^[62] for you never touched the one, and the latter,^[63] you have enhanced. But as a matter of fact maiestas (although Sulla never meant it to be so, lest the public denunciation of any man should be allowed to ​pass unpunished) is an ambiguous term;^[64] whereas "bribery and corruption" is so definite in meaning that either the prosecution or the defence must be scandalously false. For how can it fail to be proved whether an act of bribery was or was not committed? But who has ever suspected your successive public promotions? How sorry I am that I was not there! How I should have made them laugh!

³ But in your letter about your trial on the charge of maiestas there are two passages which pleased me exceedingly. One is your writing that your defence was undertaken by the Republic herself; and certainly, even if there were an abundant supply of honourable and courageous citizens, it would be her duty to protect such men, but all the more at the present time, because so great is the dearth of such men in every official rank, and at every stage of life, that, in her destitution the State should make the most of such guardians as yourself. And the second passage is your glowing tribute to the loyalty and friendly feeling of Pompey and Brutus. I rejoice that they have been so honourably fair and courteous to you; for not only are they your relatives and my very dear friends, but one of them is the chief man of every age and nation, and the other has long been the chief of our younger men,^[65] and will soon, I trust, be the chief of the state. As to the public disgracing of the venal witnesses by their several states, unless something has already been done through the agency ​of Flaccus,^[66]I shall take action myself on my homeward journey through Asia.

⁴ Now I come to your second letter. You send me a well outlined sketch-plan, as I may call it, of the crisis as it affects both of us, and of the general political situation, and I am very grateful for the insight you show in your letter; for I gather that the dangers are less than I feared, and the safeguards greater, if, as you write, all the strength of the state has put itself at the disposal of Pompey; and at the same time I recognized your promptitude and alertness in the defence of the Republic, and I derived extraordinary pleasure from the pains you took, I mean in being so kind as to send me word of the political situation, engrossed as you were in matters of such vast importance. For pray put away the "augural books" until we are both at leisure; I assure you that when I kept urging and pressing you by letter to fulfil your promises, I was under the impression that you had absolutely nothing to do while waiting outside the City. As it is, however, according to your own promise, instead of the "augural books" I shall look forward to having all your "orations" complete.

⁵ Decimus Tullius, whom you entrusted with a message for me, has not yet met me; and there is now not one of your people with me, except all my people, who are all equally yours. What letter of mine it is you describe as unduly choleric I cannot make out. I wrote to you twice, clearing myself carefully, and mildly rebuking you for having too readily believed what was said of me; and it seemed to me that kind of remonstrance was befitting in a friend; but if you do not like it, I shall not adopt it ​for the future. But if, as you write, the letter was badly expressed, you may be sure I never wrote it. Just as Aristarchus^[67] says that a line to which he objects is not Homer's, so you (I will have my little joke) must never suppose that what is badly expressed was written by me. Farewell, and in your censorship, if by this time you are censor, and I hope you are, let your thoughts dwell much upon your ancestor.^[68]

¹ First I shall congratulate you—for that is what the sequence of events demands—and then I shall turn to my own affairs. I do indeed congratulate you heartily on the result of the trial for bribery and corruption, and not so much on the fact of your acquittal, as to which nobody was in any doubt, but on this, that the better you are as a citizen, the more distinguished as a man, the more chivalrous as a friend, the richer you are in the graces of courage and energy, the more astonishing is it that not even in the secrecy of the ballot was there found hidden away any such ill-will as could venture to attack you—a transaction not characteristic of these days, nor of our modern men and manners. It is long since I have been so much surprised at anything.

² As regards myself, just assume for a moment the part I have to play, and imagine yourself in my place; if you have no difficulty in hitting upon the right thing to say, why, then consider my hesitancy unpardonable. ​I should be glad, however, if what has been arranged by my family without my knowledge turns out happily, as you so kindly and courteously pray it may, for myself and my dear Tullia.^[69] But that this should happen to be arranged at that particular time! I hope and pray that it may in any event be blessed with some degree of happiness—but anyhow, while I hope it may be so, I find more to comfort me in your wisdom and kind sympathy than in any feeling that the time was opportune.^[70] So how to manage a smooth ending to what I had begun to say, I cannot discover. I ought not to speak too gloomily of what you yourself so auspiciously bless, at the same time I do feel some prickings of conscience; but of one thing I am not afraid—that you will fail to understand clearly that what was done was done by others, to whom my instructions were, that, as I was going to be so far away, they should not ask my advice, but do what they thought best.

³ Here, however, the question suggests itself to me, "What then would you have done, had you been on the spot?" I should have ratified the engagement, but done nothing as regards the time of the marriage without your approval or without your advice. You see I am panting and puffing with my long struggle to find some way of defending what I am bound to defend without at the same time offending you. Relieve me then of this burden; it seems to me I have never had to deal with a more difficult case. Anyhow, of this you may be sure, that had I not already at that time most carefully settled everything without detriment to your very distinguished position, though I should have thought that no enhancement of my former devotion to you was ​possible, still, when this relationship between us was announced to me, I should have defended your position, not, of course, with greater devotion than before, but more energetically, more openly, and more markedly.^[71]

⁴ On quitting the province at the termination of my year of office, as my ship was approaching Sida, Q. Servilius being with me, a letter from my home address was put in my hands; that was on August 3. I at once assured Servilius, who seemed rather upset,^[72] that he might look forward to services from me on a larger scale in every respect. In short, while my goodwill towards you remains undiminished, my sincere desire to manifest it has greatly increased. For just as formerly the old feud between us urged me to be careful to avoid giving anybody grounds for suspecting the sincerity of your reconciliation, so now this fresh marriage connexion makes me anxious to avoid any semblance of abatement in the strength of my affection for you.

¹ When the question of your achievements was being I discussed, I supported your claim to honour as energetically as though I had a presentiment that the day would come when in similar circumstances I should have to ask for some show of zeal on your part. But to tell you the real truth, you have repaid me more than you received. Every correspondent without exception has explained to me, that not ​only by the weight of your public speeches and your voting in the Senate (quite enough for me, considering it was you), but also by your active assistance and your advice, by coming to my house and by interviewing my people, you left no act of courtesy for anybody else to do. Now all these efforts of yours are of far greater importance in my eyes than even the object you had in making them. For though the badges of virtue have been won by many a man who has no virtue in him, such sincere devotion on the part of such men as yourself can be won by virtue alone.

² What I therefore promise myself as the fruit of our friendship is that friendship itself, and nothing can be more richly fertile than that, especially in those pursuits to which we are both of us deeply attached. I avow myself both your partner in politics, as to which our opinions coincide, and your comrade in every-day life, closely bound to you by the arts and studies we cultivate in common. I could have wished that it had so chanced that you could esteem my family as highly as I esteem every member of yours. And yet some sort of psychic prescience bids me not despair of even that.^[73] But that has nothing to do with you; the responsibility lies on me. I should like you to be assured of this, and you will come to see it in time, that by this domestic revolution^[74] a substantial addition has been made to my sincere regard for you (though no addition seemed possible) rather than that it has been in the slightest degree impaired. As I write this I hope you are already censor. My letter is so much the shorter, and, as it has to meet the eye of a master of morals,^[75] more modest.