Publius Cornelius Dolabella

Reading notes

• Ad Atticum 7.8 §3 but he is being instructed to change his name

  A condition of the bequest required the heir to assume the testatrix's name (a testamentary adoption of sorts); Cicero idly debates whether a young nobleman should change his name to inherit under a woman's will.

• Ad Atticum 7.13 §3 when Dolabella comes to mind, I breathe a little

  P. Cornelius Dolabella, Tullia's husband, was a partisan of Caesar; his standing in the Caesarian camp gave Cicero some reassurance that Tullia and Terentia might be safe even if Rome fell to Caesar.

• Ad Atticum 10.10 §1 I bore in mind my son-in-law

  Cicero's son-in-law was P. Cornelius Dolabella, Tullia's husband, who had thrown in his lot with Caesar; the kinship is Cicero's standing excuse to Caesar's men for not joining Pompey outright.

• Ad Atticum 11.12 §4 the splendid performances of my son-in-law

  Bitter sarcasm: Cicero's son-in-law was P. Cornelius Dolabella, then tribune at Rome, whose demagogic agitation for cancellation of debts had provoked rioting. His conduct, and his treatment of Tullia, were a fresh grief on top of Cicero's political ruin.

• Ad Atticum 13.10 §2 As to Dolabella

  Publius Cornelius Dolabella, Cicero's former son-in-law, then a partisan of Caesar; he was pressing Cicero to compose some public, political piece on his behalf. Cicero weighs how to satisfy him.

• Ad Atticum 13.13 §2 for Dolabella

  Publius Cornelius Dolabella, Cicero's ex-son-in-law and a Caesarian, who kept pressing Cicero for some literary or political composition. Cicero cannot think what to give him.

• Ad Atticum 13.29 §2 the Dolabella debt

  Money owed by Cicero's former son-in-law P. Cornelius Dolabella, here treated as a readily collectable asset (a "nomen") that could supply ready cash for Clodia's cheaper gardens.

• Ad Atticum 13.47 §1 What a tiresome schoolmaster!

  Cicero groans at Dolabella, who came to him for instruction in rhetoric and declamation; the "schoolmaster" jest inverts their roles, since it is the pupil who imposes on the teacher's time.

• Ad Atticum 14.18 §1 Dolabella's exploit

  Dolabella, consul-suffect in 44 BC, won Cicero's praise for violently suppressing the altar-cult that sprang up at the spot where Caesar's body was burned. The same Dolabella is also Cicero's debtor (he had married and divorced Cicero's daughter Tullia and owed back her dowry), which sours the praise here.

• Ad Atticum 14.19 §5 something great of Dolabella's action (an exploit, [Greek: praxin])

  Cicero reaches for the Greek praxis ("deed, exploit") to weigh Dolabella's suppression of the Caesar-altar cult; he adds, half in jest, that the exploit will count for even more once Dolabella pays back the dowry he owes.

• Ad Atticum 14.22 §1 my own pupil --- who is dining with me today

  Dolabella, Cicero's former son-in-law and rhetorical protege, whom Cicero calls his "pupil"; the bitter joke is that this pupil is now infatuated with Caesar's memory ("the man whom our Brutus wounded").

• Ad Atticum 15.1 §2 Dolabella, I hope, is at home

  P. Cornelius Dolabella, Cicero's former son-in-law (Tullia's last husband) and Antony's colleague as consul in 44 BC; Cicero still hoped to use his goodwill, especially over the Buthrotum business.

• Ad Atticum 15.8 §1 to Dolabella alone

  Publius Cornelius Dolabella, Cicero's former son-in-law and consul in 44 BC after Caesar's death; as one of the two consuls he could authorise Cicero's embassy.

• Ad Atticum 15.11 §4 Dolabella has appointed me his legate

  Publius Cornelius Dolabella, consul of 44 BC (and Cicero's former son-in-law), named Cicero a legate on his staff; the appointment gave Cicero a legal pretext to travel abroad as he pleased.

• Ad Atticum 15.14 §2 CICERO TO DOLABELLA, CONSUL, HIS FRIEND, GREETING

  The formal heading of an enclosed letter: Publius Cornelius Dolabella, one of the consuls of 44 BC (having taken Caesar's place after the Ides) and Cicero's former son-in-law, here thanked for his help in the Buthrotum affair.

• Ad Atticum 15.18 §1 written also to Dolabella

  P. Cornelius Dolabella, consul of 44 BC and Cicero's former son-in-law; Cicero, as Dolabella's legate, needs his approval and the loan of transport mules to leave Italy.

• Ad Atticum 16.3 §5 Dolabella's name is among them

  P. Cornelius Dolabella, Cicero's former son-in-law and consul in 44 BC, here figures as a debtor whose name appears in the tangled reckoning of money owed to Cicero.

• Ad Atticum 16.11 §2 I shall pare away the heaping praise of Dolabella

  P. Cornelius Dolabella, Cicero's former son-in-law and consul in 44 BC; having soured on him, Cicero will cut back the flattering passages about him in the speech.

• Ad Atticum 16.15 §1 If Dolabella had not treated me

  P. Cornelius Dolabella, Cicero's former son-in-law (the last husband of his daughter Tullia); after Tullia's death he was bound to repay her dowry, and his refusal is the "outrageous" treatment that has now turned Cicero against him.

• Ad M. Brutum 1.2 §1 Dolabella

  P. Cornelius Dolabella, suffect consul of 44 BC and son-in-law of Cicero, had been declared a public enemy after murdering the Caesarian governor Trebonius in Asia; by the time of this letter he was retreating through Syria.

• Ad M. Brutum 1.6 §3 Dolabella has been cut down and put to flight

  This preliminary report of Dolabella's defeat proved premature or partial; he was not definitively cornered until later in 43 BC, when he was besieged at Laodicea by Cassius and took his own life.

• Ad M. Brutum 1.11 §1 falling in with Dolabella in Achaia

  P. Cornelius Dolabella, declared a public enemy by the Senate in early 43 BC, was passing through Greece with troops on his way to Syria; he later besieged and captured Smyrna, where he killed C. Trebonius.

• Ad Familiares 2.13 §2 the recklessness of our friend Dolabella

  P. Cornelius Dolabella had by this point become engaged to Cicero's daughter Tullia; the 'recklessness' likely refers to his turbulent personal conduct or an early legal scrape, details of which are lost.

• Ad Familiares 2.16 §5 my Dolabella, or rather ours

  P. Cornelius Dolabella, Cicero's son-in-law; Cicero uses the affectionate possessive "ours" (nostrum) to signal that Caelius too was close to Dolabella, who had incurred financial embarrassments ("the troubles he had brought on himself by his generosity") before the war.

• Ad Familiares 2.16 §7 Dolabella's affair

  Cicero had apparently drafted some document or formula concerning Dolabella's financial affairs in a previous letter; he urges Caelius to pursue it as if it were his own business, underscoring his anxiety about his son-in-law's precarious situation.

• Ad Familiares 6.11 §1 Dolabella up till now I had only held in high regard

  P. Cornelius Dolabella, Cicero's son-in-law (he married Tullia in 50 BC); though the marriage was troubled and later dissolved, Dolabella was a Caesarian officer who used his influence to secure the pardon and return of Trebianus, earning Cicero's deep gratitude here.

• Ad Familiares 6.11 §1 not having failed him in his dangers

  Cicero had defended Dolabella against a charge of adultery brought by P. Valerius Triarius (54 or 50 BC); Dolabella owed him the debt of an acquittal, and this letter acknowledges that the balance has now been more than repaid.

• Ad Familiares 8.16 §2 your son-in-law --- the excellent man

  P. Cornelius Dolabella, who had married Cicero's daughter Tullia in 50 BC and was an active Caesarian; Caelius enlists his standing with Cicero as one more reason not to join Pompey.

• Ad Familiares 9.7 §2 Dolabella is on his way

  P. Cornelius Dolabella, Cicero's son-in-law (married to Tullia) and a partisan of Caesar, was returning and would be a source of fresh news. Cicero caps this with the Greek tag 'many pupils outdo their teachers,' a wry compliment to his volatile son-in-law.

• Ad Familiares 9.9 §1 DOLABELLA S. D. CICERONI.

  This is the one letter in book 9 not written by Cicero: P. Cornelius Dolabella, his son-in-law (married to Tullia), writes from Caesar's camp. A reckless young Caesarian patrician, Dolabella here urges his father-in-law, who had joined Pompey, to abandon the losing republican cause.

• Ad Familiares 9.11 §1 since, as I think, I shall be seeing you in a short time

  Although Dolabella had divorced Tullia not long before her death --- one of the strains in this son-in-law relationship --- he and Cicero remained on warm terms, and Cicero still looked to his consolation and company; Dolabella had written offering sympathy.

• Ad Familiares 9.11 §2 you are sustaining battles on my account

  Dolabella had evidently been defending Cicero's reputation against detractors in Rome. Cicero replies that he values not the refutation of his critics so much as the proof it gives of Dolabella's affection --- a graceful tribute amid the awkwardness of their connection after the divorce.

• Ad Familiares 9.12 §2 that your moderation and your gravity may put to shame the injustice of others

  Cicero urges Dolabella to bear some wrong (iniuria) with philosophic self-command. The reference is obscure, but it points to the troubles of the young man's career under Caesar; Cicero's exhortation to wise endurance is the consolatory note he often strikes to his volatile son-in-law.

• Ad Familiares 9.13 §2 These two men, then, I commend to you in such terms that I could not commend them with greater care

  This is a formal letter of commendatio (recommendation), a staple of Roman patronage. Cicero asks Dolabella, as an influential Caesarian, to use his weight to win pardon and return for the two stranded Cales men --- the kind of favour Cicero, sidelined under the dictatorship, increasingly had to seek through better-connected friends.

• Ad Familiares 9.14 §1 CICERO DOLABELLAE CONSVLI SVO

  P. Cornelius Dolabella was Cicero's son-in-law (husband of Tullia); the salutation styles him 'consul,' which fits his suffect consulship of 44 BC rather than 45 BC, under which the letter is conventionally filed. The whole letter congratulates Dolabella on his deed as consul (his violent suppression of the pro-Caesarian disorders in the Forum after the assassination), so it most plausibly belongs to spring 44 BC.

• Ad Familiares 9.14 §7 I have read your speech to the assembly

  The contio was a public meeting of the people addressed by a magistrate; Dolabella's speech justified his harsh suppression (he had the rioters who built an altar to Caesar thrown from the Tarpeian rock or crucified). Cicero praises its measured, step-by-step rhetoric for making the severity seem warranted by 'everyone's consent.'

• Ad Familiares 12.1 §1 my dear Dolabella has done so brilliantly

  As consul in 44 BC P. Cornelius Dolabella violently demolished the altar and column to Caesar that had sprung up in the Forum and dispersed the mob around it; Cicero applauds him here, before Dolabella turned to Caesarian and murdered Trebonius.

• Ad Familiares 12.4 §2 he was so quick to succeed you

  Dolabella had been assigned Syria as his province, displacing Cassius almost as soon as Cassius arrived; critics mocked the haste, and opinion held he ought to be barred from the province.

• Ad Familiares 12.8 §2 About Dolabella we were hearing here what we wanted to hear

  P. Cornelius Dolabella, the Caesarian who had murdered Trebonius, was the republican enemy in the East; Cicero hopes for word that Cassius has crushed him (he was besieged at Laodicea in Syria).

• Ad Familiares 12.12 §1 after Trebonius was foully murdered, seized Asia

  Dolabella tortured and killed C. Trebonius, the tyrannicide governor of Asia, at Smyrna in January 43 BC, then took over the province; the Senate declared him a public enemy.

• Ad Familiares 12.15 §2 the decree of the Senate by which you had judged Dolabella an enemy

  After Dolabella murdered Trebonius the Senate passed a senatus consultum declaring him a hostis (public enemy), stripping him of legal standing; allied states were thereby bound to treat him as such.

• Ad Familiares 14.9 §1 both about Dolabella's health and about Tullia's

  Publius Cornelius Dolabella was Tullia's third husband, married in 50 BC; the union was already strained and would end in divorce in 46 BC. This terse note from Brundisium (December 48 BC) shows Cicero worn down by exile, illness in the family, and his political ruin after Pharsalus.

• Ad Familiares 14.13 §1 what that fellow's power is at the moment

  The unnamed 'that fellow' is Tullia's husband P. Cornelius Dolabella, then a turbulent tribune-elect / Caesarian agitator at Rome; Cicero leaves him pointedly anonymous because the family was debating divorcing him.

• Ad Familiares 14.18 §1 you can be safe through Dolabella

  P. Cornelius Dolabella, Tullia's husband since 50 BC, had thrown in with Caesar; Cicero reckons his son-in-law's standing might shield the women if they stayed in Rome. The letter was written from Formiae on 22 January 49 BC, days after Caesar crossed the Rubicon.

• Ad Familiares 16.12 §5 our Dolabella is on Caesar's side

  Publius Cornelius Dolabella, Cicero's son-in-law (married to Tullia), had joined Caesar -- an awkwardness Cicero registers ruefully even as he sides with Pompey.

• Eleventh Philippic §1 Dolabella and Antony

  Publius Cornelius Dolabella, Caesar's son-in-law and suffect consul of 44 BC, here paired with Antony as the twin monsters of the age; he had seized the province of Asia on his way to Syria.

• Thirteenth Philippic §5 you judged his colleague --- the partner of his every crime --- a public enemy

  Antony's consular colleague of 44 BC was P. Cornelius Dolabella, declared an enemy after he tortured and killed Trebonius in Asia. Cicero treats Antony and Dolabella as confederates in a single plan of murder.

• Second Philippic §75 How then did Dolabella arrive?

  P. Cornelius Dolabella, Cicero's former son-in-law and Antony's consular colleague in 44 BC; Cicero contrasts his service in Caesar's Spanish campaign with Antony's failure to follow.