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Epistulae ad Familiares, Bk. Ltt.

stantly hears this sort of thing: "Is this the man by whom the city was... whom the Senate...?"[1] 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,[2] as Imperator at Issus (the place where, according to the story given you, as you have so often told me, by Clitarchus,[3] 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.[4]

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

  1. ↑ i.e., with the gaps filled up "by whom the City was saved? whom the Senate called 'Father of his country'?"
  2. ↑ Diodorus says that 6000 of the enemy must have fallen before a general could be called imperator and claim a triumph, Appian says 10,000. During the later republic the title was conferred by the soldiers for the most trifling successes. (Tyrrell.)
  3. ↑ Who accompanied Alexander on his expeditions, and wrote his life.
  4. ↑ i.e., that I should have a triumph; cf. § 2 above.
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