Ad Atticum 3.16
Ad Atticum 3.16
Headnote
Cicero to Atticus, written from Thessalonica on the twelfth day before the Kalends of September (21 August) 58 BC, two days after the long Att. 3.15. A short note: the whole shape of his next move (Epirus, Cyzicus, or somewhere else) hinges on the reports out of Rome from the Kalends of August that have not yet arrived. The closing observation of the letter is acute — Atticus’s letters re-read seem to undo at the second reading the hope they had brought at the first; which means he is doing his best both to console and to tell the truth. Cicero asks for plain truth.
The whole of my route is left uncertain by the expectation of your letters dispatched on the Kalends of August. For if there is hope, we shall make for Epirus; if not, we shall follow Cyzicus or some other place. Your own letters — the more often I read them, the less hope they make in me: when they have been read, the very thing they brought as hope they undo. So that one easily sees you are obliged both to console and to tell the truth. I ask you, plainly: whatever you shall know to be so, write to me as it is; whatever you shall think, so write. Sent the twelfth day before the Kalends [of September].
totum iter mihi incertum facit exspectatio litterarum vestrarum Kal. Sextil. datarum. nam si spes erit, Epirum, si minus, Cyzicum aut aliud aliquid sequemur. tuae quidem litterae quo saepius a me leguntur, hoc spem faciunt mihi minorem; quae cum lectae sunt, tum id quod attulerunt ad spem infirmant, ut facile appareat te et consolationi servire et veritati. itaque te rogo plane ut ad me quae scies ut erunt, quae putabis ita scribas. data xii Kal.