Page:Loeb Classical Library L205N (1958).djvu/281

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

Cicero's Letters to his Friends

Book IV

I

M. Cicero to Servius Sulpicius Rufus^[1]

Cumae, towards the end of April, 49 B.C.

¹ My intimate friend, Gaius Trebatius,^[2] has informed me by letter that you questioned him as to my whereabouts, and that you were vexed that owing to your indisposition you had missed seeing me when I approached the City walls; and that at the present moment you were anxious, if I could get nearer to you, to confer with me as to the duty of each of us. Would that it had been possible, Servius, for us to have had a talk before all was lost^[3]—there is no other word for it! We should assuredly have been of some service to the sinking state. For I had already learned in my absence that you, foreseeing

↑ Surnamed Lemonia after his tribe. He was born in 105, being thus a year older than Cicero, with whom in his youth he attended Molon's lectures on oratory in Rhodes, but afterwards devoted himself to jurisprudence. Early in the Civil War he was a somewhat tepid Pompeian, while his son was an ardent Caesarean. After Pharsalia he lived at Samos, where Brutus attended his lectures. In 46 Caesar made him Governor of Achaia. After the murder of Caesar he tried to reconcile the contending parties, and in 43 was sent by the Senate as an ambassador to Antony, who was then besieging Mutina, and there he died. Long, in the Dict. Biogr., says of him "perhaps of all the men of his age, or of any age, he was as an orator, a jurist, and an advocate without an equal or a rival."
↑ See vii. 6-22.
↑ "Before all was lost" is Tyrrell's happy rendering of salvis rebus.

247

[1] Surnamed Lemonia after his tribe. He was born in 105, being thus a year older than Cicero, with whom in his youth he attended Molon's lectures on oratory in Rhodes, but afterwards devoted himself to jurisprudence. Early in the Civil War he was a somewhat tepid Pompeian, while his son was an ardent Caesarean. After Pharsalia he lived at Samos, where Brutus attended his lectures. In 46 Caesar made him Governor of Achaia. After the murder of Caesar he tried to reconcile the contending parties, and in 43 was sent by the Senate as an ambassador to Antony, who was then besieging Mutina, and there he died. Long, in the Dict. Biogr., says of him "perhaps of all the men of his age, or of any age, he was as an orator, a jurist, and an advocate without an equal or a rival."

[2] See vii. 6-22.

[3] "Before all was lost" is Tyrrell's happy rendering of salvis rebus.

[1]

[2]

[3]