Ad Atticum 5.20
Ad Atticum 5.20
Headnote
Cicero to Atticus, written somewhere in Cilicia — probably at Tarsus, on the way back from Pindenissus to winter quarters at Laodicea — between the twelfth and the fourth days before the Kalends of January (21–29 December) 51 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. in Cilicia inter a. d. xii et iv K. Ian. a. 703 (51)). The long closing letter of Ad Atticum book 5: the work of an entire proconsular year gathered into one despatch and sent off to the man for whom the whole correspondence is intended as its first audience. The book that began at Brundisium in May with the dread of having to govern at all ends here at Pindenissus in December with the army being demobilised into winter quarters and the writer composing the official letter to the Senate that will follow.
The letter is structurally a composite. The opening section is the bare military headline: the fall of Pindenissus on the morning of the Saturnalia after a fifty-seven day investment, with the jocular aside that its name will mean nothing to Atticus and the self-mocking acknowledgement (en epitome) that this whole campaign cannot be made to sound like Aetolia. Sections 2 to 4 then back-fill the narrative from Iconium through the Amanus to Issus to Pindenissus, turning aside in section 4 to settle the rival Bibulus in a single famous one-liner (coepit loreolam in mustaceo quaerere — “he began to look for his little laurel in a baker’s tart”). The Saturnalia plunder is distributed to the soldiers — the horses kept back — and the slaves auctioned off on the third day of the feast. Section 6 is the great private passage: Cicero on his own integrity in the province, not as continentia but as the deepest personal pleasure he has ever known — “I did not know myself, and did not know well enough what I could do in this line.” The Greek-tag scaffolding (Momus, en epitome, pephusiomai, lampra, aprositon, adorodoketon) is dense, intimate, and confidential: the inside-Atticus voice Cicero uses with no one else. Sections 7 to 10 swing out to Roman news — Caesar’s prospects, the new political shape Atticus has just reported, Quintus the nephew’s coming-of-age toga, the wardship of young Brutus, the household at Ephesus, and the standing business of the boy in the house of Pammenes. The private letter does what the public one will not be able to: ledger the year as a whole.
On the morning of the Saturnalia the people of Pindenissus surrendered themselves to me, on the fifty-seventh day from the day on which we began to besiege them. “The devil!” you will say — “who in the world are these Pindenissites? I have never heard the name.” What am I to do? Could I turn Cilicia into Aetolia or Macedonia? Take it now from me that with this army — and in this country — so great a piece of work could not have been brought off. Here it is in summary: which is what you grant me in your most recent letter. How I arrived at Ephesus you know — you sent me your own congratulations on the splendour of that day, than which nothing has ever pleased me more. From there, in the towns through which we passed, having been received with wonderful welcome, we came to Laodicea on the day before the Kalends of Sextilis. There we delayed two days, were very much in the limelight, and by the honour of our reception undid all the earlier wrongs of the country; the same again at Colossae; then we stayed five days at Apamea, three at Synnada, five at Philomelium, ten at Iconium. Nothing more even than that jurisdiction, nothing milder, nothing more grave.
Saturnalibus mane se mihi Pindenissitae dediderunt septimo et quinquagesimo die postquam oppugnare eos coepimus. qui malum! isti Pindenissitae qui sunt? inquies; nomen audivi numquam. quid ego faciam? num potui Ciliciam Aetoliam aut Macedoniam reddere? hoc iam sic habeto nec hoc exercitu nec hic tanta negotia geri potuisse. quae cognosce ἐν ἐπιτομῇ; sic enim concedis mihi proximis litteris. Ephesum ut venerim nosti, qui etiam mihi gratulatus es illius diei celebritatem qua nihil me umquam delectavit magis. inde in oppidis iis †quae erant† mirabiliter accepti Laodiceam pridie Kal. Sextilis venimus. ibi morati biduum perinlustres fuimus honorificisque verbis omnis iniurias revellimus superiores, quod idem Colossis, dein Apameae quinque dies morati et Synnadis triduum, Philomeli quinque dies, Iconi decem fecimus. nihil ea iuris dictione aequabilius, nihil lenius, nihil gravius.
Then I came into camp on the seventh day before the Kalends of September. On the third day I held the muster of the army at Iconium. From this camp, when grave reports of the Parthians began to arrive, I pushed on into Cilicia by way of that part of Cappadocia which touches Cilicia, with this design: that Armenian Artavasdes, and the Parthians themselves, should reckon themselves shut off from Cappadocia. When I had kept the camp for five days at Cybistra of Cappadocia, I was informed for certain that the Parthians were far off from that approach into Cappadocia, and that they were threatening Cilicia more nearly. So at once I made the march into Cilicia by the Gates of the Taurus. I came to Tarsus on the third day before the Nones of October.
inde in castra veni a. d. VII Kalendas Septembris. A. d. III exercitum lustravi apud Iconium. ex his castris, cum graves de Parthis nuntii venirent, perrexi in Ciliciam per Cappadociae partem eam quae Ciliciam attingit, eo consilio ut Armenius Artavasdes et ipsi Parthi Cappadocia se excludi putarent. cum dies quinque ad Cybistra Cappadociae castra habuissem, certior sum factus Parthos ab illo aditu Cappadociae longe abesse, Ciliciae magis imminere. itaque confestim iter in Ciliciam feci per Tauri pylas. Tarsum veni a. d. III Nonas Octobris.
From there I hurried on to the Amanus, which divides Syria from Cilicia along the watershed: a mountain country full of our eternal enemies. There, on the third day before the Ides of October, we cut down a great number of the enemy. Strongholds, sound as they were, we took — Pomptinus coming up at night, ourselves at morning — and fired them. We were hailed as imperators. We held camp for a few days in the very place where Alexander had pitched against Darius at Issus — an imperator no little better than either you or I. Having stayed there five days, after the Amanus had been overrun and laid waste, we set off. In the meantime — for you know how there is talk of panic-fears, and likewise of the empty alarms of war — on the rumour of our coming, Cassius (who was being held shut up in Antioch) took courage, and the Parthians took fright. So as they were withdrawing from the town Cassius pursued them and managed it well. In that flight the Parthian general Osaces took a wound with great authority on his side, and died of it a few days afterwards. Our name stood high in Syria.
inde ad Amanum contendi qui Syriam a Cilicia in aquarum divertio dividit; qui mons erat hostium plenus sempiternorum. hic a. d. iii Idus Octobr. magnum numerum hostium occidimus. castella munitissima nocturno Pomptini adventu, nostro matutino cepimus, incendimus. imperatores appellati sumus. castra paucos dies habuimus ea ipsa quae contra Darium habuerat apud Issum Alexander, imperator haud paulo melior quam aut tu aut ego. ibi dies quinque morati direpto et vastato Amano inde discessimus. interim (scis enim dici quaedam πανικά, dici item τὰ κενὰ τοῦ πολέμου ) rumore adventus nostri et Cassio qui Antiochia tenebatur animus accessit et Parthis timor iniectus est. itaque eos cedentis ab oppido Cassius insecutus rem bene gessit. qua in fuga magna auctoritate Osaces dux Parthorum vulnus accepit eoque interiit paucis post diebus. erat in Syria nostrum nomen in gratia.
In the meantime Bibulus arrived; he was eager, I take it, to be on equal terms with us by means of this empty title. In the same Amanus he began to look for his little laurel in a baker’s tart. But he lost the whole first cohort, and the chief centurion — a man of his own rank, Asinius Dento — and the rest of that cohort, and Sex. Lucilius, the son of T. Gavius Caepio, a rich and splendid man, a tribune of the soldiers. He had taken a heavy blow indeed, both for what it was and for the moment of it. We pressed on to Pindenissus, which was the most strongly walled town of the Eleutherocilicians in all memory, and was in arms. Wild men, fierce, prepared in every respect for self-defence. We hemmed them in with rampart and ditch; with a huge mound, mantlets, a most lofty tower, a great supply of artillery, many archers, with great labour and great apparatus, with many of our own wounded but the army whole, we finished the business. A merry Saturnalia indeed for the men — to whom (the horses excepted) we made over the rest of the plunder. The slaves were being sold off on the third day of Saturnalia. As I write this, the bidding at the tribunal stands at HS 120,000. From here I am handing over to my brother Quintus the army, to be led off to winter quarters in an ill-pacified country; I myself am withdrawing to Laodicea.
venit interim Bibulus; credo, voluit appellatione hac inani nobis esse par. in eodem Amano coepit loreolam in mustaceo quaerere. at ille cohortem primam totam perdidit centurionemque primi pili nobilem sui generis Asinium Dentonem et reliquos cohortis eiusdem et Sex. Lucilium, T. Gavi Caepionis locupletis et splendidi hominis filium, tribunum militum. sane plagam odiosam acceperat cum re tum tempore. nos ad Pindenissum, quod oppidum munitissimum Eleutherocilicum omnium memoria in armis fuit. feri homines et acres et omnibus rebus ad defendendum parati. cinximus vallo et fossa; aggere maximo, vineis, turre altissima, magna tormentorum copia, multis sagittariis, magno labore, apparatu multis sauciis nostris, incolumi exercitu negotium confecimus. hilara sane Saturnalia militibus quoque quibus equis exceptis reliquam praedam concessimus. mancipia venibant Saturnalibus tertiis. cum haec scribebam, in tribunali res erat ad HS c_x_x_. hinc exercitum in hiberna agri male pacati deducendum Quinto fratri dabam; ipse me Laodiceam recipiebam.
So much for what is current. But let me come back to what is past. As to what you most strenuously urge upon me, and what is worth more than all else — that on which you take such pains, that we may give satisfaction even to your Ligurian Momus [fault-finder] — I will die if anything could be done more elegantly. I do not even any more call it continentia, that virtue which seems to resist mere pleasure. In my whole life I have never been affected by any pleasure so great as I am by this integrity; and it is not the renown — which is great — that delights me, so much as the thing in itself. What more would you have? It was worth it. I did not know myself, and did not know well enough what I could do in this line. I am rightly puffed up. Nothing is dearer to me than this. Meanwhile here are the bright doings. Ariobarzanes lives and reigns by my labours: in counsel and authority, and because I made myself inapproachable to his plotters, not merely incorruptible —- I have saved the king and the kingdom. Meanwhile from Cappadocia not so much as a single hair. Brutus, who was downcast, I have raised up as much as I could — a man I love no less than you do, almost as much, I was going to say, as I love you. And further, I hope that for the whole year of our command there will not be a single farthing of expense to the province.
haec adhuc. sed ad praeterita revertamur. quod me maxime hortaris et quod pluris est quam omnia, in quo laboras ut etiam Ligurino Μώμῳ satis faciamus, moriar si quicquam fieri potest elegantius. nec iam ego hanc continentiam appello, quae virtus voluptati resistere videtur. ego in vita mea nulla umquam voluptate tanta sum adfectus quanta adficior hac integritate, nec me tam fama quae summa est quam res ipsa delectat. quid quaeris? fuit tanti. me ipse non noram nec satis sciebam quid in hoc genere facere possem. recte πεφυσίωμαι. nihil est praeequis carius. interim haec λαμπρά. Ariobarzanes opera mea vivit, regnat; ἐν consilio et auctoritate et quod insidiatoribus eius ἀπρόσιτον me non modo ἀδωροδόκητον praebui regem regnumque servavi. interea e Cappadocia ne pilum quidem. Brutum abiectum quantum potui excitavi; quem non minus amo quam tu, paene dixi quam te. atque etiam spero toto anno imperi nostri terruncium sumptus in provincia nullum fore.
There you have everything. Now I am preparing to send a public despatch to Rome. It will be fuller than if I had sent it from the Amanus. To think that you will not be at Rome! But the whole thing turns on what is to be on the Kalends of March. I am afraid lest, when the matter of the provinces comes up, if Caesar resists, I shall be kept on. If you were there, I should fear nothing.
I come back to city news, which, long unaware of it, I have at last gathered from your most welcome letters, on the fifth day before the Kalends of January. Your freedman Philogenes took every care to have them brought through, by a very long and not very safe road. Those you say you gave to Laenius’s slaves I had not received. Pleasant the news about Caesar, both what the Senate decreed and what you hope for. If he gives way to all this, we are safe. That Seius was singed in the Plaetorian conflagration I take less ill. Why Lucceius was so vehement against Q. Cassius, and what was done, I am eager to know.
redeo ad urbana quae ego diu ignorans ex tuis iucundissimis litteris a. d. v Kal. Ianuarias denique cognovi. eas diligentissime Philogenes, libertus tuus, curavit perlonga et non satis tuta via perferendas. nam quas Laeni pueris scribis datas non acceperam. iucunda de Caesare et quae senatus decrevit et quae tu speras. quibus ille si cedit, salvi sumus. incendio Plaetoriano quod Seius ambustus es minus moleste fero. Lucceius de Q. Cassio cur tam vehemens fuerit et quid actum sit aveo scire.
When I have come to Laodicea, I am bidden to give the plain toga to Quintus, your sister’s son; whom I shall school the more carefully. Deiotarus — whose great auxiliaries I made much use of — was, as he wrote, on the point of coming to me with the boys to Laodicea. I await also your Epirote letter, that I may have a reckoning not only of your business but also of your leisure. Nicanor is on duty, and is liberally treated by me. I think I shall send him to Rome with the public despatch, both so that it may be the more diligently delivered, and so that he may report back to me with certain news of you, and from you. That Alexis so often adds the salutation to me is gratifying; but why does he not do in his own letter what my Alexis does in writing to you? For Phemio a horn [lyre] is being sought. But enough of this. Take care of yourself, and let me know when you are thinking of Rome. Again and again, farewell.
ego cum Laodiceam venero, Quinto sororis tuae filio togam puram iubeor dare; cui moderabor diligentius. Deiotarus cuius auxiliis magnis usus sum ad me, ut scripsit, cum Ciceronibus Laodiceam venturus erat. tuas etiam Epiroticas exspecto litteras, ut habeam rationem non modo negoti verum etiam oti tui. Nicanor in officio est et a me liberaliter tractatur. quem, ut puto, Romam cum litteris publicis mittam, ut et diligentius perferantur et idem ad me certa de te et a te referat. Alexis quod mihi totiens salutem adscribit est gratum; sed cur non suis litteris idem facit quod meus ad te Alexis facit? Phemio quaeritur κέρασ. sed haec hactenus. cura ut valeas et ut sciam quando cogites Romam. etiam atque etiam vale.
Your people and your interests I had commended most carefully to Thermus, both in person at Ephesus and now by letter; and I have understood that the man himself is most devoted to you. As for what I wrote you before about the house of Pammenes, please see to it, by every means, that what the boy holds by your favour and mine is not in any way wrested from him. I think it honourable for both of us; and to me it will be most welcome.
tua tuosque Thermo et praesens Ephesi diligentissime commendaram et nunc per litteras ipsumque intellexi esse perstudiosum tui. tu velim, quod antea ad te scripsi, de domo Pammeni des operam ut quod tuo meoque beneficio puer habet cures ne qua ratione convellatur. utrique nostrum honestum existimo; tum mihi erit pergratum.