Ad Atticum 8.9
Ad Atticum 8.9
Headnote
Cicero to Atticus, written from the Formian villa on the fifth day before the Kalends of March 49 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in Formiano v K.\ Mart.\ a.\ 705 (49)). Cicero’s much-discussed letter urging Caesar toward peace — written some weeks earlier — is now circulating in copies, and Caesar has answered it in a piece of correspondence that he in turn has posted publicly. The first half of this letter is Cicero’s defence of what he had written and an attempt to put the political tactics into focus; the second half closes on the news of Caesar’s envoy slipping through Formiae by night, and the appalling speed with which Caesar is advancing on Brundisium.
Sections 1–2 work through the embarrassment of public correspondence in a civil war. Cicero is not sorry his letter has been read — on the contrary, he wants it on the record that he stood for peace — but the published reply has carried in it Pompey’s formula pro tuis rebus gestis amplissimis, the very words in which Pompey had once meant to move Cicero’s own second consulship and triumph; and Atticus and his friends have gone out cheerfully to greet Caesar at the fifth milestone. The signs by which loyalty might be told from pretence, Cicero writes, are getting muddled. Section 3 reports the daily company of Lepidus and the steady flow of letters from Tullus, weighs Atticus’s advice against theirs, and reaches the despairing antithesis at the heart of the letter: one man (Caesar) winning applause in the foulest cause, the other (Pompey) earning offence in the best. Section 4 is the night dispatch: the younger Balbus hurrying through Formiae to suborn the consul Lentulus with the promise of a province, and Pompey, travelling light from Luceria, perhaps already at Brundisium. Caesar, Cicero ends, is a teras of vigilance, speed, and energy.
That you write my letter has been put about in public, I do not take ill — indeed, I myself have given copies to many. For things have already happened, and others are hanging over us, such that I want it on the record where I have stood on the question of peace. And when I was urging peace on him — a man of his particular sort — I saw no easier way to move him than by saying that what I was urging would befit his wisdom. If I called that wisdom admirable when I was urging him to save his country, I have no fear of being thought a flatterer toward a man at whose feet, in such a cause, I would gladly have thrown myself. As for the other matter, if you have any time to give it, what I want him to think about is not peace but myself and my own duty. For when I bear witness that I have been no part of the war, even though that has been clear from the facts, I have nevertheless written it so that I should carry more authority in giving advice; and the same is the point of my approving his cause.
epistulam meam quod pervulgatam scribis esse non fero moleste, quin etiam ipse multis dedi describendam. ea enim et acciderunt iam et impendent, ut testatum esse velim de pace quid senserim. cum autem ad eam hortarer eum praesertim hominem, non videbar ullo modo facilius moturus quam si id quod eum hortarer convenire eius sapientiae dicerem. eam si admirabilem dixi quom eum ad salutem patriae hortabar, non sum veritus ne viderer adsentari quoi tali in re libenter me ad pedes abiecissem. qua autem est aliquid impertias temporis, non est de pace sed de me ipso et de meo officio ut aliquid cogitet. nam quod testificor me expertem belli fuisse, etsi id re perspectum est, tamen eo scripsi quo in suadendo plus auctoritatis haberem; eodemque pertinet quod causam eius probo.
But why all this now? If only something had been achieved by it! I should be willing to have that letter of mine read out at a public assembly — granted that the man himself, writing back to him, posted up in public the letter in which stands the phrase “for your most ample achievements in office” (more ample than his own, than Africanus’s? so the moment required it); and granted that you two, gentlemen of your standing, went out to the fifth milestone to a man who is just now taking himself back into the City — what is he doing, what about to do? — and not only went out in numbers, but congratulated him with a glad face. Are we, then, doing wrong? You yourselves, by no means; and yet the signs by which true will could be told from pretence are getting muddled. As to the senate’s decrees that I see being passed — but I am opening up more than I had meant to.
sed quid haec nunc? utinam aliquid profectum esset! ne ego istas litteras in contione recitari velim, si quidem ille ipse ad eundem scribens in publico proposuit epistulam illam in qua est pro tuis rebus gestis amplissimis (amplioribusne quam suis, quam Africani? ita tempus ferebat), si quidem etiam vos duo tales ad quintum miliarium quid nunc ipsum de se recipienti, quid agenti, quid acturo? quanto autem ferocius ille causae suae confidet, cum vos, cum vestri similis non modo frequentis sed laeto vultu gratulantis viderit! num igitur peccamus? minime vos quidem; sed tamen signa conturbantur quibus voluntas a simulatione distingui posset. quae vero senatus consulta video? sed apertius quam proposueram.
I want to be at Arpinum on the day before the Kalends, and then to wander round our little farms, which I had given up expecting ever to see again. Your noble eugenē counsels — and, given the times, not incautious for all that — have my warm approval. Lepidus, indeed (for he and I generally pass whole days together syndiēmereuomen, which delights him), has never thought leaving Italy a good plan; Tullus much less still — for his letters keep arriving by way of others. But the opinions of those men moved me less; they had given the republic fewer pledges. Yours, by Hercules, weighs powerfully on me; for it carries with it both a way of recovering the time still left and of safeguarding the present. But, I beg you — what could be more wretched than this: one man hunting applause in the foulest of causes, the other earning offence in the best? one to be reckoned the preserver of his enemies, the other the deserter of his friends? And, by Hercules, much as we love our Cnaeus — as we both do, and ought to — this one thing I cannot praise, that he is not coming to the help of such men. For if he was afraid, what more cowardly? If, as some think, he reckoned his cause would be the better for their slaughter, what more unjust? But let us drop this; we only make the pain worse by going over it.
ego Arpini volo esse pridie Kal., deinde circum villulas nostras errare quas visurum me postea desperavi. εὐγενῆ tua consilia et tamen pro temporibus non incauta mihi valde probantur. Lepido quidem (nam fere συνδιημερεύομεν, quod gratissimum illi est) numquam placuit ex Italia exire, Tullo multo minus. crebro enim illius litterae ab aliis ad nos commeant. sed me illorum sententiae minus movebant; minus multa dederant illi rei publicae pignora. tua me hercule auctoritas vehementer movet; adfert enim et reliqui temporis reciperandi rationem et praesentis tuendi. sed obsecro te, quid hoc miserius quam alterum plausus in foedissima causa quaerere, alterum offensiones in optima? alterum existimari conservatorem inimicorum, alterum desertorem amicorum? et me hercule quamvis amemus Gnaeum nostrum, ut et facimus et debemus, tamen hoc quod talibus viris non subvenit laudare non possum. nam sive timuit, quid ignavius? sive, ut quidam putant, meliorem suam causam illorum caede fore putavit, quid iniustius? sed haec omittamus; augemus enim dolorem retractando.
On the sixth day before the Kalends, in the evening, the younger Balbus came to me, hurrying by a back road to the consul Lentulus — sent by Caesar with a letter, with instructions, with the promise of a province, to bring him back to Rome. I do not think he can be persuaded, unless there is a meeting. The same man said that Caesar wants nothing more than to catch up with Pompey — this I believe — and be reconciled. That I do not believe; and I am afraid that all this clemency is being heaped up toward the Cinnan kind of cruelty. The elder Balbus, for his part, writes to me that Caesar wants nothing so much as to live without fear under Pompey as first man. You, I take it, believe this. But while I am writing these lines on the fifth day before the Kalends, Pompey might already have reached Brundisium: travelling light, he had gone ahead of his legions on the eleventh day before the Kalends from Luceria. Still, this prodigy teras acts with terrifying watchfulness, speed, and energy. What will come of it I plainly do not know.
vi Kal. vesperi Balbus minor ad me venit occulta via currens ad Lentulum consulem missu Caesaris cum litteris, cum mandatis, cum promissione provinciae, Romam ut redeat. quoi persuaderi posse non arbitror, nisi erit conventus. idem aiebat nihil malle Caesarem quam ut Pompeium adsequeretur (id credo) et rediret in gratiam. id non credo et metuo ne omnis haec clementia ad Cinneam illam crudelitatem conligatur. Balbus quidem maior ad me scribit nihil malle Caesarem quam principe Pompeio sine metu vivere. tu, puto, haec credis. sed cum haec scribebam v Kalend., Pompeius iam Brundisium venisse poterat; expeditus enim antecesserat legiones xi K. Luceria. sed hoc τέρασ horribili vigilantia, celeritate, diligentia est. plane quid futurum sit nescio.