Ad Atticum 2.7
Ad Atticum 2.7
Headnote
Cicero to Atticus, written at Antium in mid-April 59 BC. The letter is dominated (§2) by the question of Publius Clodius’s free legation: Clodius, having achieved his transfer to the plebs, has been offered a thin diplomatic commission to Tigranes of Armenia rather than the fat money-collecting legateship he expected. Cicero is sharpening himself to attack the legation in public; the prospect of the triumvirs quarrelling among themselves about it is “our one hope of safety.” §4 contains the famous Sophocles tag: Cicero is now ready, having been forced from the ship of state with the rudder “not laid aside but snatched away,” “to hear, even under the roof, the heavy raindrop with a sleeping mind” — the line that will run through the corpus from this point as Cicero’s emblem of forced philosophical retirement.
About the geography we shall reflect again and again. As to the speeches — you ask me for two; one of them I had no wish to write [text uncertain], the other lest I praise the man whom I did not love. But this too we shall see. Finally something will appear, lest I quite seem to have been idle.
de geographia etiam atque etiam deliberabimus. orationes autem a me duas postulas; quarum alteram non libebat mihi scribere †qui absciram†, alteram, ne laudarem eum quem non amabam. sed id quoque videbimus. denique aliquid exstabit, ne tibi plane cessasse videamur.
What you write to me about Publius is most pleasing to me, and I should be glad if, when you come, you bring with you everything you have hunted out by every track; and meanwhile, if you understand or suspect anything, write it. Especially what he is going to do about the legation. Indeed, before I read your letter, I was eager to “go for the man” — not, by Hercules, that I might put off the case with him (for I am of wonderful eagerness for litigation), but it seemed to me that, if there was any popular favour for him in his having been made a plebeian, he was about to lose it. For what? You went over to the plebs that you might go to greet Tigranes? Tell me, do the kings of Armenia not return greetings to patricians? What more? I had whetted myself for goading this legation of his. If he despises that — and if, as you write, this annoys both the proposers and the augurs of the curiate law — it is an outstanding spectacle. And by Hercules, to speak the truth, our Publius has been treated with some contempt: first because, when he had once been the only man at Caesar’s house, now he could not even be one of the twenty; next because one legation had been spoken of, another given. That fat one for collecting moneys is being kept, I take it, for Drusus of Pisaurum, or for the priest Vatinius; this thin courier-legation is given to a man whose tribunate is being kept for the season of those men. Light him up, please, what you can. Our one hope of safety is in the dissensions among them; some beginnings of which I have felt in Curio. Now also Arrius rages that the consulship has been snatched from him; Megabocchus and this bloodthirsty youth are most hostile. And then let there be added, let there be added, that quarrel of the augurate. I hope I shall be sending you many fine letters about these matters.
de Publio quae ad me scribis sane mihi iucunda sunt, eaque etiam velim omnibus vestigiis indagata ad me adferas cum venies, et interea scribas si quid intelleges aut suspicabere, et maxime de legatione quid sit acturus. equidem ante quam tuas legi litteras, †in† hominem ire cupiebam, non me hercule ut differrem cum eo vadimonium (nam mira sum alacritate ad litigandum), sed videbatur mihi, si quid esset in eo populare quod plebeius factus esset, id amissurus. quid enim? ad plebem transisti ut Tigranem ires salutatum? narra mihi, reges Armenii patricios resalutare non solent? quid quaeris? acueram me ad exagitandam hanc eius legationem. quam si ille contemnit, et si, ut scribis, bilem id commovet et latoribus et auspicibus legis curiatae, spectaculum egregium. hercule verum ut loquamur, subcontumeliose tractatur noster Publius, primum qui, cum domi Caesaris quondam unus vir fuerit, nunc ne in viginti quidem esse potuerit; deinde alia legatio dicta erat, alia data est. illa opima ad exigendas pecunias Druso, ut opinor, Pisaurensi an epuloni Vatinio reservatur; haec ieiuna tabellari legatio datur ei cuius tribunatus ad istorum tempora reservatur. incende hominem, amabo te, quod potes. una spes est salutis istorum inter istos dissensio; cuius ego quaedam initia sensi ex Curione. iam vero Arrius consulatum sibi ereptum fremit; Megabocchus et haec sanguinaria iuventus inimicissima est. accedat vero, accedat etiam ista rixa auguratus. spero me praeclaras de istis rebus epistulas ad te saepe missurum.
But I should like to know what that is which you obscurely throw out: that already even some of the five-men are talking. What can it be? For if there is anything, there is more good in it than I had thought. And these things I should like you to consider — that I am not asking you in the practical way kata to praktikon, as if my spirit longed to do something in the commonwealth. I have long been weary of steering, even when it was permitted; now indeed, when I am being forced to leave the ship, with the rudder not laid aside but snatched away, I wish to gaze at their shipwrecks from the land. I wish, as your friend Sophocles says, “to hear, even under the roof, the heavy raindrop with a sleeping mind” kan hypo stegēi pyknēs akouein psakados heudousēi phreni.
sed illud quid sit scire cupio, quod iacis obscure iam etiam ex ipsis quinque viris loqui quosdam. quidnam id est? si est enim aliquid, plus est boni quam putaram. atque haec sic velim existimes non me abs te κατὰ τὸ πρακτικὸν quaerere, quod gestiat animus aliquid agere in re publica. iam pridem gubernare me taedebat, etiam cum licebat; nunc vero cum cogar exire de navi non abiectis sed ereptis gubernaculis, cupio istorum naufragia ex terra intueri, cupio, ut ait tuus amicus Sophocles, κἂν ὑπὸ στέγῃ πυκνῆσ ἀκούειν ψακάδοσ εὑδούσῃ φρενί.
About the wall, see what is needed. The Castricius slip we shall correct, and yet Quintus had written to me of HS 17,000, not HS 30,000 to your sister. Terentia sends greetings. Cicero bids you give the same answer to Aristodemus about himself as you gave about your sister’s son, his brother. About the Amalthea, as you remind me, we shall not neglect it. See that you keep well.
de muro quid opus sit videbis. Castricianum mendum nos corrigemus, et tamen ad me Quintus HS cciↃↃ IↃↃ scripserat, †non ad sororem tuam HS xxx. a.† Terentia tibi salutem dicit. Cicero tibi mandat ut Aristodemo idem de se respondeas quod de fratre suo, sororis tuae filio, respondisti. de Ἀμαλθείᾳ quod me admones non neglegemus. cura ut valeas.