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Marcus Tullius Cicero >> Letters of Cicero
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XXI
To M. PORCLUS CATO (AT ROME)
(ASIA, SEPTEMBER)
"RIGHT glad am I to be praised "--says Hector, I think, in
Naevius--" by thee, reverend senior, who hast thyself been
praised." For certainly praise is sweet that comes from those who
themselves have lived in high repute. For myself, there is nothing I
should not consider myself to have attained either by the
congratulation contained in your letter, or the testimony borne to
me in your senatorial speech: and it was at once the highest
compliment and the greatest gratification to me, that you willingly
conceded to friendship, what you transparently conceded to truth.
And if, I don't say all, but if many were Catos in our state--in
which it is a matter of wonder that there is even one--what
triumphal chariot or laurel should I have compared with praise
from you? For in regard to my feelings, and in view of the ideal
honesty and subtihity of your judgment, nothing can be more
complimentary than the speech of yours, which has been copied
for me by my friends. But the reason of my wish, for I will not call
it desire, I have explained to you in a former letter. And even if it
does not appear to you to be entirely sufficient, it at any rate leads
to this conclusion--not that the honour is one to excite excessive
desire, but yet is one which, if offered by the senate, ought
certainly not to be rejected. Now I hope that that House,
considering the labours I have undergone on behalf of the state,
will not think me undeserving of an honour, especially one that has
become a matter of usage. And if this turns out to be so, all I ask of
you is that--to use your own most friendly words-- since you have
paid me what in your judgment is the highest compliment, you will
still "be glad" if I have the good fortune to get what I myself have
preferred. For I perceive that you have acted, felt, and written in
this sense: and the facts themselves shew that the compliment paid
me of a supplicatio was agreeable to you, since your name appears
on the decree: for decrees of the senate of this nature are, I am
aware, usually drawn out by the warmest friends of the man
concerned in the honour. I should, I hope, soon see you, and may it
be in a better state of political affairs than my fears forebode!
XXII
TO TRO (AT PATRAE)
BRUNDISIUM, 26 NOVEMBER.
CICERO and his son greet Tiro warmly. We parted from you, as
you know, on the 2nd of November. We arrived at Leucas on the
6th of November, on the 7th at Actium. There we were detained
till the 8th by a storm. Thence on the 9th we arrived at Corcyra
after a charming voyage. At Corcyra we were detained by bad
weather till the 15th. On the 16th we continued our voyage to
Cassiope, a harbor of Corcyra, a distance of 120 stades. There we
were detaine4 by winds until the 22nd. Many of those who in this
interval impatiently attempted the crossing suffered shipwreck. On
the 22nd, after dinner, we weighed anchor. Thence with a very
gentle south wind and a clear sky, in the coarse of that night and
the next day we arrived in high spirits on Italian soil at Hydrus, and
with the same wind next day--that is, the 24th of November--at io
o'clock in the morning we reached Brundisium, and exactly at the
same time as ourselves Terentia (who values you very highly)
made her entrance into the town. On the 26th, at Brundisium, a
slave of Cn. Plancius at length delivered to me the ardently
expected letter from you, dated the 13th of November. It greatly
lightened my anxiety: would that it had entirely removed it!
However, the physician Asclapo positively asserts that you will
shortly be well. What need is there for me at this time of day to
exhort you to take every means to re-establish your health? I know
your good sense, temperate habits, and affection for me: I am sure
you will do everything you can to join me as soon as possible. But
though I wish this, I would not have you hurry yourself in any way.
I could have wished you had shirked Lyso's concert, for fear of
incurring a fourth fit of your seven-day fever. But since you have
preferred to consuit your politeness rather than your health, be
careful for the future. I have sent orders to Curius for a douceur to
be given to the physician, and that he should advance you
whatever you want, engaging to pay the money to any agent he
may name. I am leaving a horse and mule for you at Brundisium.
At Rome I fear that the 1st of January will be the beginning of
serious disturbances. I shall take a moderate line in all respects. It
only remains to beg and entreat you not to set sail rashly--seamen
are wont to hurry things for their own profit: be cautious, my dear
Tiro: you have a wide and difficult sea before you. If you can, start
with Mescinius; he is usually cautious about a sea passage: if not,
travel with some man of rank, whose position may give him
influence over the ship-owner. If you take every precaution in this
matter and present yourself to us safe and sound, I shall want
nothing more of you. Good-bye, again and again, dear Tiro! I am
writing with the greatest earnestness about you to the physician, to
Curius, and to Lyso. Good-bye, and God bless you.
XXIII
To L. PAPIRIUS PAETUS (AT NAPLES)
TUSCULUM (JULY)
I WAS charmed with your letter, in which, first of all, what I loved
was the tenderness which prompted you to write, in alarm lest
Silius should by his news have caused me any anxiety. About this
news, not only had you written to me before--in fact twice, one
letter being a duplicate of the other--shewing me clearly that you
were upset, but I also had answered you in full detail, in order that
I might, as far as such a business and such a crisis admitted, free
you from your anxiety, or at any rate alleviate it. But since you
shew in your last also how anxious you are about that matter--
make up your mind to this, my dear Paetus: that whatever could
possibly be accomplished by art--for it is not enough nowadays to
contend with mere prudence, a sort of system must be elaborated--
however, whatever could be done or effected towards winning and
securing the goodwill of those men I have done, and not, I think, in
vain. For I receive such attentions, such politenesses from all
Caesar's favourites as make me believe myself beloved by them.
For, though genuine love is not easily distinguished from feigned,
unless some crisis occurs of a kind to test faithful affection by its
danger, as gold in the fire, there are other indications of a general
nature. But I only employ one proof to convince me that I am
loved from the heart and in sincerity--namely, that my fortune and
theirs is of such a kind as to preclude any motive on their part for
pretending. In regard, again, to the man who now possesses all
power, I see no reason for my being alarmed: except the fact that,
once depart from law, everything is uncertain; and that nothing can
be guaranteed as to the future which depends on another man's
will, not to say caprice. Be that as it may, personally his feelings
have in no respect been wounded by me. For in that particular
point I have exhibited the greatest self-control. For, as in old times
I used to reckon that to speak without reserve was a privilege of
mine, since to my exertions the existence of liberty in the state was
owing, so, now that that is lost, I think it is my duty to say nothing
calculated to offend either his wishes or those of his favourites.
But if I want to avoid the credit of certain keen or witty epigrams, I
must entirely abjure a reputation for genius, which I would not
refuse to do, if I could. But after all Caesar himself has a very keen
critical faculty, and, just as your cousin Servius--whom I consider
to have been a most accomplished man of letters--had no difficulty
in saying: "This verse is not Plautus's, this is--" because he had
acquired a sensitive ear by dint of classifying the various styles of
poets and habitual reading, so I am told that Caesar, having now
completed his volumes of bons mots, if anything is brought to him
as mine, which is not so, habitually rejects it. This he now does all
the more, because his intimates are in my company almost every
day. Now in the course of our discursive talk many remarks are let
fall, which perhaps at the time of my making them seem to them
wanting neither in literary flavour nor in piquancy. These are
conveyed to him along with the other news of the day: for so he
himself directed. Thus it comes about that if he is told of anything
besides about me, he considers that he ought not to listen to it.
Wherefore I have no need of your DEnomaus, though your
quotation of Accius's verses was very much on the spot. But what
is this jealousy, or what have I now of which anyone can be
jealous? But suppose the worst. I find that the philosophers, who
alone in my view grasp the true nature of virtue, hold that the wise
man does not pledge himself against anything except doing wrong;
and of this I consider myself clear in two ways, first in that my
veiws were most absolutely correct; and second because, when I
found that we had not sufficient material force to maintain them, I
was against a trial of strength with the stronger party. Therefore, so
far as the duty of a good citizen is concerned, I am certainly not
open to reproach. What remains is that I should not say or do
anything foolish or rash against the men in power: that too, I think,
is the part of the wise man. As to the rest--what this or that man
may say that I said, or the light in which he views it, or the amount
of good faith with which those who continually seek me out and
pay me attention may be acting--for these things I cannot be
responsible. The result is that I console myself with the
consciousness of my uprightness in the past and my moderation in
the present, and apply that simile of Accius's not to jealousy, but to
fortune, which I hold--as being inconstant and frail--ought to be
beaten back by a strong and manly soul, as a wave is by a rock.
For, considering that Greek history is full of examples of how the
wisest men endured tyrannies either at Athens or Syracuse, when,
though their countries were enslaved, they themselves in a certain
sense remained free--am I to believe that I cannot so maintain my
position as not to hurt anyone's feelings and yet not blast my own
character?
I now come to your jests, since as an afterpiece to Accius's
DEnomaus, you have brought on the stage, not, as was his wont, an
Atellan play, but, according to the present fashion, a mime. What's
all this about a pilot-fish, a denarius, and a dish of salt fish and
cheese? In my old easy-going days I put up with that sort of thing:
but times are changed. Hirthms and Dolabella are my pupils in
rhetoric, but my masters in the art of dining. For I think you must
have heard, if you really get all news, that their practice is to
declaim at my house, and mine to dine at theirs. Now it is no use
your making an affidavit of insolvency to me: for when you had
some property, petty profits used to keep you a little too close to
business; but as things are now, seeing that you are losing money
so cheerfully, all you have to do, when entertaining me, is to
regard yourself as accepting a "composition"; and even that loss is
less annoying when it comes from a friend than from a debtor. Yet,
after all, I don't require dinners superfluous in quantity: only let
what there is be first-rate in quality and recherche. I remember you
used to tell me stories of Phamea's dinner. Let yours be earlier, but
in other respects like that. But if you persist in bringing me back to
a dinner like your mother's, I should put up with that also. For I
should like to see the man who had the face to put on the table for
me what you describe, or even a polypus--looking as red as Iupiter
Miniatus. Believe me, you won't dare. Before I arrive the fame of
my new magnificence will reach you: and you will be awestruck at
it. Yet it is no use building any hope on your hors d'aeuvre. I have
quite abolished that: for in old times I found my appetite spoilt by
your olives and Lucanian sausages. But why all this talk? Let me
only get to you. By all means--for I wish to wipe away all fear
from your heart--go back to your old cheese-and-sardine dish. The
only expense I shall cause you will be that you will have to have
the bath heated. All the rest according to my regular habits. What I
have just been saying was all a joke.
As to Selicius's villa, you have managed the business carefully and
written most wittily. So I think I won't buy. For there is enough salt
and not enough savour.
XXIV
To L. PAPIRIUS PAETUS (AT NAPLES)
TUSCULUM (JULY)
BEING quite at leisure in my Tusculan villa, because I had sent
my pupils to meet him, that they might at the same time present
me in as favourable a light as possible to their friend, I received
your most delightful letter, from which I learnt that you approved
my idea of having begun--now that legal proceedings are abolished
aiid my old supremacy in the forum is lost--to keep a kind of
school, just as Dionysius, when expelled from Syracuse, is said to
have opened a school at Corinth. In short, I too am delighted with
the idea, for I secure many advantages. First and foremost, I am
strengthening my position in view of the present crisis, and that is
of primary importance at this time. How much that amounts to I
don't know: I only see that as at present advised I prefer no one's
policy to this, unless, of course, it had been better to have died. In
one's own bed, I confess it might have been, but that did not occur:
and as to the field of battle, I was not there. The rest indeed--
Pompey, your friend Lentulus, Afranius--perished ingloriously.
But, it may be said, Cato died a noble death. Well, that at any rate
is in our power when we will: let us only do our best to prevent its
being as necessary to us as it was to him. That is what I am doing.
So that is the first thing I had to say. The next is this: I am
improving, in the first place in health, which I had lost from giving
up all exercise of my lungs. In the second place, my oratorical
faculty, such as it was, would have completely dried up, had I not
gone back to these exercises. The last thing I have to say, which I
rather think you will consider most important of all, is this: I have
now demolished more peacocks than you have young pigeons!
You there revel in Haterian law-sauce, I here in Hirtian hot-sauce.
Come then, if you are half a man, and learn from me the maxims
which you seek: yet it is a case of "a pig teaching Minerva." But it
will be my business to see to that: as for you, if you can't find
purchasers for your foreclosures and so fill your pot with denaril,
back you must come to Rome. It is better to die of indigestion
here, than of starvation there. I see you have lost money: I hope
these friends of yours have done the same. You are a ruined man if
you don't look out. You may possibly get to Rome on the only
mule that you say you have left, since you have eaten up your pack
horse. Your seat in the school, as second master, will be next to
mine: the honour of a cushion will come by-and-by.
XXV
To L. PAPIRIUS PAETUS (AT NAPLES)
ROME (AUGUST)
I WAS doubly charmed by your letter, first because it made me
laugh myself, and secondly because I saw that you could still
laugh. Nor did I in the least object to being overwhelmed with
your shafts of ridicule, as though I were a light skirmisher in the
war of wits. What I am vexed at is that I have not been able, as I
intended, to run over to see you: for you would not have had a
mere guest, but a brother-in-arms. And such a hero! not the man
whom you used to do for by the hors d'aeuvre. I now bring an
unimpaired appetite to the egg, and so the fight is maintained right
up to the roast veal. The compliments you used to pay me in old
times "What a contented person !" "What an easy guest to entertain
!" are things of the past. All my anxiety about the good of the state,
all meditating of speeches to be delivered in the senate, all getting
up of briefs I have cast to the winds. I have thrown myself into the
camp of my old enemy Epicurus not, however, with a view to the
extravagance of the present day, but to that refined splendour of
yours I mean your old style when you had money to spend (though
you never had more landed estate). Therefore prepare! You have to
deal with a man, who not only has a large appetite, but who also
knows a thing or two. You are aware of the extravagance of your
bourgeois gentilhomtne. You must forget all your little baskets and
your omelettes. I am now far advanced in the art that I frequently
venture to ask your friend Verrius and Camillus to dinner--what
dandies! how fastidious! But think of my audacity: I even gave
Hirtius a dinner, without a peacock however. In that dinner my
cook could not imitate him in anything but the hot sauce.
So this is my way of life nowadays: in the morning I receive not
only a large number of "loyalists," who, however, look gloomy
enough, but also our exultant conquerors here, who in my case are
quite prodigal in polite and affectionate attentions. When the
stream of morning callers has ebbed, I wrap myself up in my
books, either writing or reading. There are also some visitors who
listen to my discourses under the belief of my being a man of
learning, because I am a trifle more learned than themselves. After
that all my time is given to my bodily comfort. I have mourned for
my country more deeply and longer than any mother for her only
son. But take care, if you love me, to keep your health, lest I
should take advantage of your being laid up to eat you out of house
and home. For I am resolved not to spare you even when you are
ill.
XXVI
To AULUS CAECINA (IN EXILE)
ROME (SEPTEMBER)
I AM afraid you may think me remiss in my attentions to you,
which, in view of our close union resulting from many mutual
services and kindred tastes, ought never to be lacking. In spite of
that I fear you do find me wanting in the matter of writing. The
fact is, I would have sent you a letter long ago and on frequent
occasions, had I not, from expecting day after day to have sonic
better news for you, wished to fill my letter with congratulation
rather than with exhortations to courage. As it is, I shall shortly, I
hope, have to congratulate you: and so I put off that subject for a
letter to another time. But imi this letter I think that your courage--
which I am told and hope is not at all shaken--ought to be
repeatedly braced by the authority of a man, who, if not the wisest
in the world, is yet the most devoted to you: and that not with such
words as I should use to console one utterly crushed and bereft of
all hope of restoration, but as to one of whose rehabilitation I have
no more doubt than I remember that you had of mine. For when
those men had driven me from the Republic, who thought that it
could not fall while I was on my feet, I remember hearing from
many visitors from Asia, in which country you then were, that you
were emphatic as to my glorious and rapid restoration. If that
system, so to speak, of Tuscan augury which you had inherited
from your noble and excellent father did not deceive you, neither
will our power of divination deceive me; which I have acquired
from the writings and maxims of the greatest savants, and, as you
know, by a very diligent study of their teaching, as well as by an
extensive experience in managing public business, and from the
great vicissitudes of fortune which I have encountered. And this
divination I am the more inclined to trust, from the fact that it
never once deceived me in the late troubles, in spite of their
obscurity and confusion. I would have told you what events I
foretold, were I not afraid to be thought to be making up a story
after the event Yet, after all, I have numberless witnesses to the
fact that I warned Pompey not to form a union with Caesar, and
afterwards not to sever it. By this union I saw that the power of the
senate would be broken, by its severance a civil war be provoked.
And yet I was very intimate with Caesar, and had a very great
regard for Pompey, but my advice was at once loyal to Pompey
and in the best interests of both alike. My other predictions I pass
over; for I would not have Caaesar think that I gave Pompey
advice, by which, if he had followed it, Caesar himself would have
now been a man of illustrious character in the state indeed, and the
first man in it, but yet not in possession of the great power he now
wields. I gave it as my opinion that he should go to Spain; and if
he had done so, there would have been no civil war at all. That
Caesar should be allowed to stand for the consulship in his
absence I did not so much contend to be constitutional as that,
since the law had been passed by the people at the instance of
Pompey himself when consul, it should be done. The pretext for
hostilities was given. What advice or remonstrance did I omit,
when urging that any peace, even the most inequitable, should be
preferred to the most righteous war? My advice was overruled, not
so much by Pompey--for he was affected by it--as by those who,
relying on him as a military leader, thought that a victory in that
war would be highly conducive to their private interests and
personal ambitions. The war was begun without my taking any
active part in it; it was forcibly removed from Italy, while I
remained there as long as I could. But honour had greater weight
with me than fear: I had scruples about failing to support Pompey's
safety, when on a certain occasion he had not failed to support
mine. Accordingly, overpowered by a feeling of duty, or by what
the loyalists would say, or by a regard for my honor--whichever
you please--like Amphiarus in the play, I went deliberately, and
fully aware of what I was doing, "to ruin full displayed before my
eyes." In this war there was not a single disaster that I did not
foretell. Therefore, since, after the manner of augurs and
astrologers, I too, as a state augur, have by my previous predictions
established the credit of my prophetic power and knowledge of
divination in your eyes, my prediction will justly claim to be
believed. Well, then, the prophecy I now give you does not rest on
the flight of a bird nor the note of a bird of good omen on the
left--according to the system of our augural college--nor from the
normal and audible pattering of the corn of the sacred chickens. I
have other signs to note; and if they are not more infallible than
those, yet after all they are less obscure or misleading. Now omens
as to the future are observed by me in what I may call a twofold
method: the one I deduce from Caesar himself, the other from the
nature and complexion of the political situation. Caesar's
characteristics are these: a disposition naturally placable and
clement--as delineated in your brilliant book of "Grievances"--and
a great liking also for superior talent, such as your own. Besides
this, he is relenting at the expressed wishes of a large number of
your friends, which are well-grounded and inspired by affection.
not hollow and self-seeking. Under this head the unanimous
feeling of Etruria will have great influence on him.
Why, then--you may ask--have these things as yet had no effect?
Why, because he thinks if he grants you yours, he cannot resist the
applications of numerous petitioners with whom to all appearance
he has juster grounds for anger. "What hope, then," you will say,
"from an angry man?" Why, he knows very well that he will draw
deep draughts of praise from the same fountain, from which he has
been already--though sparingly--bespattered. Lastly, he is a man
very acute and farseeing: he knows very well that a man like
you--far and away the greatest noble in an important district of
Italy, and in the state at large the equal of anyone of your
generation, however eminent, whether in ability or popularity or
reputation among the Roman people--cannot much longer be
debarred from taking part in public affairs. He will be unwilling
that you should, as you would sooner or later, have time to thank
for this rather than his favour.
So much for Caesar. Now I will speak of the nature of the actual
situation. There is no one so bitterly opposed to the cause, which
Pompey undertook with better intentions than provisions, as to
venture to call us bad citizens or dishonest men. On this head I am
always struck with astonishment at Caesar's sobriety, fairness, and
wisdom. He never speaks of Pompey except in the most respectful
terms. "But," you will say, "in regard to him as a public man his
actions have often been bitter enough." Those were acts of war and
victory, not of Caesar. But see with what open arms he has
received us! Cassius he has made his legate; Brutus governor of
Gaul; Sulpicius of Greece; Marcellus, with whom he was more
angry than with anyone, he has restored with the utmost
consideration for his rank. To what, then, does all this tend? The
nature of things and of the political situation will not suffer, nor
will any constitutional theory--whether it remain as it is or is
changed--permit, first, that the civil and personal position of all
should not be alike when the merits of their cases are the same;
and, secondly, that good men and good citizens of unblemished
character should not return to a state, into which so many have
returned after having been condemned of atrocious crimes.
That is my prediction. If I had felt any doubt about it I would not
have employed it in preference to a consolation which would have
easily enabled me to support a man of spirit. It is this. If you had
taken up arms for the Republic--for so you then thought--with the
full assurance of victory, you would not deserve special
commendation. But if, in view of the uncertainty attaching to all
wars, you had taken into consideration the possibility of our being
beaten, you ought not, while fully prepared to face success, to be
yet utterly unable to endure failure. I would have urged also what a
consolation the consciousness of your action, what a delightful
distraction in adversity, literature ought to be. I would have
recalled to your mind the signal disasters not only of men of old
times, but of those of our own day also, whether they were your
leaders or your comrades. I would even have named many cases of
illustrious foreigners: for the recollection of what I may call a
common law and of the conditions of human existence softens
grief. I would also have explained the nature of our life here in
Rome, how bewildering the disorder, how universal the chaos: for
it must needs cause less regret to be absent from a state in
disruption, than from one well-ordered. But there is no occasion
for anything of this sort. I shall soon see you, as I hope, or rather as
I clearly perceive, in enjoyment of your civil rights. Meanwhile, to
you in your absence, as also to your son who is here--the express
image of your soul and person, and a man of unsurpassable
firmness and excellence--I have long ere this both promised and
tendered practically my zeal, duty, exertions, and labours: all the
more so now that Caesar daily receives me with more open arms,
while his intimate friends distinguish me above everyone. Any
influence or favour I may gain with him I will employ in your
service. Be sure, for your part, to support yourself not only with
courage, but also with the brightest hopes.
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