Ad Atticum 7.2
Ad Atticum 7.2
Headnote
Cicero to Atticus, written from Brundisium on the fifth day before the Kalends of December 50 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. Brundisi v K. Dec. a. 704 (50)). This is the first letter from Italian soil after the homeward voyage from Cilicia: the crossing from Epirus was easy, the proconsul is back, and Atticus has been ill at Rome. The book-opening joke is technical — a soft south-easterly wind from Onchesmos whose name happens to fall into a spondaic hexameter, which Cicero offers Atticus to pass off as his own.
The body of the letter braids together everything Cicero has been carrying since he landed. Atticus’s quartan fevers: Terentia met him at the forum the moment he came through the gate with a report from Trebula that the second fever has broken. The bundle of letters waiting at Brundisium, some in Atticus’s hand and some in the hand of Alexis (who imitates his patron so well Cicero loves the script for the resemblance). Tiro, left sick at Patrae — the boy Cicero calls probus, of the soundest character, and to whom he is about to write the letter that follows this one in the collection. Manius Curius’s will sealed with the signets of the three Ciceros and the praetorian cohort, with Atticus named heir of an as and Cicero of a quarter-as. The young Marcus’s irrepressible desire to see the river Thyamis. The report Atticus had sent of Pompey’s conversation at Naples about the triumph — the news that warmed Cicero most.
The political temper rises sharply in the second half. The triumph itself: Cicero had not coveted one until Bibulus’s preposterous dispatches were rewarded with a supplicatio of the most lavish kind, and the inequity is now intolerable — the disgrace, he tells Atticus, is nostrum, ours, binding the two of them together. Then a flash of resentment against Cato, who had refused him the supplicatio while voting Bibulus twenty days, and on whose snub Caesar (who is writing him flattering letters and promising everything) is openly gloating. And finally the runaway slave Chrysippus, the one he had liked for the boy’s sake — the offence is the flight, not the petty thefts. The letter closes with the one news that keeps the panic at bay: the Parthians have suddenly left Bibulus half-alive, and the danger that mattered last summer is, for the moment, off the board.
We reached Brundisium on the seventh day before the Kalends of December, enjoying your sailing luck: such a pretty little spondaic breeze blew us from Epirus — the gentlest Onchesmite. That ending-in-spondees hexameter, if you like, you may pass off as your own to anyone you please.
Brundisium venimus vii Kalend. Decembr. usi tua felicitate navigandi; ita belle nobis flavit ab Epiro lenissimus Onchesmites. hunc σπονδειάζοντα si cui voles τῶν pro tuo vendito.
Your health throws me into the deepest disquiet; for your letters intimate that you are not at all well. And, knowing your constitution as I do, I suspect that there is something rather more violent at work which is forcing you to give ground and all but breaking you. Yet your man Pamphilus tells me that one of the quartans has gone and the other is coming on more lightly. Terentia, who in fact reached the Brundisium gate at the very hour I made port and who met me in the forum, was telling me that Lucius Pontius had said to her at the Trebulan villa that this one too has gone. If that is so, it is what I most pray for, by Hercules, and I trust that your good sense and self-discipline are what have brought it about.
valetudo tua me valde conturbat; significant enim tuae litterae te prorsus laborare. ego autem, cum sciam quam sis fortis, vehementius esse quiddam suspicor quod te cogat cedere et prope modum infringat. etsi alteram quartanam Pamphilus tuus mihi dixit decessisse et alteram leviorem accedere. Terentia vero, quae quidem eodem tempore ad portam Brundisinam venit quo ego in portum mihique obvia in foro fuit, L. Pontium sibi in Trebulano dixisse narrabat etiam eam decessisse. quod si ita est, est quod maxime me hercule opto idque spero tua prudentia et temperantia te consecutum.
I come to your letters; of which I received six hundred at one time, each more delightful than the last — the ones, that is, in your own hand. For I loved the hand of Alexis only because it came so near in resemblance to yours; the letters themselves I did not love, because they told me you were unwell. Since the subject has come up: I left Tiro sick at Patrae — a young man, as you know, of the soundest character (and add anything you like to that). I have seen no better. So I miss him keenly; and although he seemed not to be in a serious way, all the same I am anxious, and I have my greatest hope in the diligence of Manius Curius, of whom Tiro wrote to me and of whom many have brought me word. Curius himself sensed how much you wanted me to make a friend of him, and on that score I am exceedingly pleased. By Hercules, the urbanity in the man is the kind one easily warms to — autochthonous, native to him. I am bringing back his will sealed with the signets of the three Ciceros and of the praetorian cohort. He has made you his heir of an as and me of a quarter-as, openly. At Actium, on Corcyra, Alexio entertained me lavishly. Quintus Cicero could not be prevented from seeing the Thyamis.
venio ad epistulas tuas; quas ego sescentas uno tempore accepi, aliam alia iucundiorem, quae quidem erant tua manu. nam Alexidis manum amabam quod tam prope accedebat ad similitudinem tuae, litteras non amabam quod indicabant te non valere. cuius quoniam mentio facta est, Tironem Patris aegrum reliqui, adulescentem, ut nosti (et adde, si quid vis), probum. nihil vidi melius. itaque careo aegre et, quamquam videbatur se non graviter habere, tamen sum sollicitus maximamque spem habeo in M’. Curi diligentia de qua ad me scripsit Tiro et multi nuntiarunt. Curius autem ipse sensit quam tu velles se a me diligi et eo sum admodum delectatus. et me hercule est quam facile diligas αὐτόχθων in homine urbanitas. eius testamentum deporto trium Ciceronum signis obsignatum cohortisque praetoriae. fecit palam te ex libella, me ex terruncio. in Actio Corcyrae Alexio me opipare muneratus est. Q. Ciceroni obsisti non potuit quo minus Thyamim videret.
I am glad your little daughter is a joy to you and that you approve the natural character of the bond toward one’s children. For if this is not natural, then there can be no natural bond between one human being and another — and when that is taken away, the fellowship of life is taken away with it. Bene eveniat! says Carneades coarsely, and yet more wisely than our Lucius and Patron, who, since they refer everything to themselves, never suppose that anything is done for another’s sake; and when they say that a good man must be good lest he suffer harm — not because the thing is right by nature — they fail to understand that they are describing the cunning man, not the good one. But this, I think, belongs to those books of mine which you have given me heart for by your praise.
filiola tua te delectari laetor et probari tibi φυσικὴν esse τὴν πρὸσ τὰ τέκνα. etenim si haec non est, nulla potest homini esse ad hominem naturae adiunctio; qua sublata vitae societas tollitur. bene eveniat! inquit Carneades spurce sed tamen prudentius quam Lucius noster et Patron qui, cum omnia ad se referant, numquam quicquam alterius causa fieri putent et, cum ea re bonum virum oportere esse dicant ne malum habeat non quo id natura rectum sit, non intellegant se de callido homine loqui non de bono viro. sed haec, opinor, sunt in iis libris quos tu laudando animos mihi addidisti.
I return to the matter. How I was waiting for the letter you had given to Philoxenus! For you had written that it contained an account of Pompey’s conversation at Naples. Patron delivered it to me at Brundisium; he had picked it up, I imagine, at Corcyra. Nothing could have been more welcome. For it was about the commonwealth, about the opinion that great man holds of my integrity, about the goodwill he showed in the conversation he had concerning the triumph. But the most welcome thing of all was this: I understood that you had gone to him to take the measure of his disposition toward me. That, I say, is what came to me as most welcome.
redeo ad rem. quo modo exspectabam epistulam quam Philoxeno dedisses! scripseras enim in ea esse de sermone Pompei Neapolitano. eam mihi Patron Brundisi reddidit; Corcyrae, ut opinor, acceperat. nihil potuit esse iucundius. erat enim de re publica, de opinione quam is vir haberet integritatis meae, de benevolentia quam ostendit eo sermone quem habuit de triumpho. sed tamen hoc iucundissimum quod intellexi te ad eum venisse ut eius animum erga me perspiceres. hoc mihi, inquam, accidit iucundissimum.
As for the triumph, no desire for it ever took hold of me before those most impudent letters of Bibulus — which were followed by the most lavish supplication possible. From a man by whom, if the deeds had really been done that he wrote of, I should be glad and would back the honour; but as it is, that the man who never put a foot outside his gate so long as the enemy was on this side of the Euphrates should be honoured, while I, in whose army the hopes of his army rested, should not obtain the same — this is a disgrace to us. To us, I say, joining you to it. So I shall try everything, and, I trust, succeed. If you were in health, certain things would already be settled for me; but, as I trust, you will be.
de triumpho autem nulla me cupiditas umquam tenuit ante Bibuli impudentissimas litteras quas amplissime supplicatio consecuta est. a quo si ea gesta essent quae scripsit, gauderem et honori faverem; nunc illum qui pedem porta quoad hostis cis Euphratem fuit non extulerit honore augeri, me in cuius exercitu spem illius exercitus habuit idem non adsequi dedecus est nostrum, nostrum, inquam, te coniungens. itaque omnia experiar et, ut spero, adsequar. quod si tu valeres, iam mihi quaedam explorata essent; sed, ut spero, valebis.
About the little debt of Numerius, I am much obliged to you. I am eager to know what Hortensius has been doing, and what Cato is up to — who, by the way, behaved shabbily toward me out of plain ill will. He bore witness in my favour as to integrity, justice, clemency, and good faith — which I was not seeking; what I was asking, he refused. So how Caesar, in the letter in which he congratulates me and promises me everything, gloats over the ungrateful Cato’s affront to me! And yet this same Cato voted Bibulus twenty days. Forgive me; I cannot bear it and I will not.
de raudusculo Numeriano multum te amo. Hortensius quid egerit aveo scire, Cato quid agat; qui quidem in me turpiter fuit malevolus. dedit integritatis, iustitiae, clementiae, fidei mihi testimonium quod non quaerebam; quod postulabam id negavit. itaque Caesar iis litteris quibus mihi gratulatur et omnia pollicetur quo modo exsultat Catonis in me ingratissimi iniuria! at hic idem Bibulo dierum xx. ignosce mihi; non possum haec ferre nec feram.
I want to answer all your letters, but it is not necessary; for I shall soon see you. One thing, though, about Chrysippus — for about the other I am less astonished, a labourer of a man; though even of him nothing could be more disgraceful. But that Chrysippus, whom I willingly looked on and held in honour for some little learning he had, should slip away from the boy without my knowledge! I pass over the many other things I hear, I pass over the thefts; the flight I cannot pass over, which seemed to me the most criminal thing of all. So I have invoked that old formula of Drusus the praetor, as they tell it, against the man who being free refused the same oath: that I have never declared those people free — especially as there was no one present from whom they might be properly claimed. You will take this as you see fit; I shall agree with you. To one of your most eloquent letters I have not yet replied — the one in which you discuss the dangers facing the commonwealth. What was I to write back? I was very much shaken. But that I should be in no great fear, the Parthians see to: they have suddenly left Bibulus half-alive.
cupio ad omnis tuas epistulas, sed nihil necesse est; iam enim te videbo. illud tamen de Chrysippo— nam de altero illo minus sum admiratus, operario homine; sed tamen ne illo quidem quicquam improbius. Chrysippum vero quem ego propter litterularum nescio quid libenter vidi, in honore habui discedere a puero insciente me! mitto alia quae audio multa, mitto furta; fugam non fero qua mihi nihil visum est sceleratius. itaque usurpavi vetus illud Drusi, ut ferunt, praetoris in eo qui eadem liber non iuraret, me istos liberos non addixisse, praesertim cum adesset nemo a quo recte vindicarentur. id tu, ut videbitur, ita accipies; ego tibi adsentiar. uni tuae disertissimae epistulae non rescripsi in qua est de periculis rei publicae. quid rescriberem? valde eram perturbatus. sed ut nihil magno opere metuam Parthi faciunt qui repente Bibulum semivivum reliquerunt.