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Liber Querelarum
also: Querelarum liber, Book of Complaints, Book of Laments
A lost political pamphlet by A. Caecina, written in exile after the Pompeian defeat; it attacked Caesar or lamented the state of the republic and was considered so dangerous that Caecina's son feared circulating it. It is repeatedly referenced in Fam. 6.5-6.8 and in Caesar's mild character as rendered in 6.6.8.
Reading notes
- Ad Familiares 6.6 §8 your famous book of
Caecina's Liber Querelarum (Book of Complaints), a lost political pamphlet written in exile attacking Caesar or lamenting the state of the republic after Pharsalus; it was so inflammatory that Caecina's son feared sending it to Cicero. Caesar's reaction to its characterisation of him is the central interpretive problem of both this letter and 6.7.
- Ad Familiares 6.7 §1 I am to this day still paying the penalty of my pen
Caecina refers to his ongoing exile as the direct consequence of his pamphlet (the Liber Querelarum), which had attacked Caesar or the Caesarian side; the Latin 'stili poenas' literally means 'the penalties of the stylus,' a vivid formulation for literary prosecution.
- Ad Familiares 6.7 §3 this kind of writing ought to be not merely unfettered but full-speed and high-flying
Caecina's literary-critical apology for his pamphlet: he argues that the genre of encomiastic or polemical prose demands freedom and energy, but that political fear obliged him to write so cautiously that the result was inevitably feeble. The image of a staircase with missing steps is one of the most vivid metaphors in the Ciceronian correspondence.