Ad Atticum 9.6
Ad Atticum 9.6
Headnote
Cicero to Atticus, written from the Formian villa on 11 March 49 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in Formiano v Id.\ Mart.\ a.\ 705 (49)). The letter begins without news from Brundisium and is overtaken, mid- composition, by the news itself: a dispatch from Capua, copied into the body of the letter, reports that Pompey sailed on 4 March with the consuls, the friendly tribunes, and thirty thousand troops, with their wives and children and the ships he could not use cut up or burned behind him.
Sections 1–2 deal with day-to-day movements: Lentulus the consul thought to have crossed already, six cohorts at Alba defected to Curius, Caesar marching for Rome, Cicero deciding (on Atticus’s advice) not to slip off to Arpinum for his son’s coming-of-age ceremony but to receive Caesar at Formiae; Domitius is at Cosa, poised to sail, and Cicero hopes the destination is Pompey rather than Spain. The interrupted-letter device at section 3 carries the news that ends the deliberation: Pompey has gone. Section 4 is the corresponding explosion: “before, I was anxious; now I am on fire with grief.” He casts himself again in Homer’s words — this time Agamemnon’s distraught night-vigil from Iliad 10 — and admits the women of his household preferred the course he did not take. Sections 5–6 turn to Atticus’s earlier letters, which he is now re-reading from the beginning; the early ones warned him not to throw himself away, the recent ones approved his staying. Furnius has just arrived from Caesar with a letter; Cicero is trying to obtain leave to absent himself when Pompey’s name comes up in the Senate, and quotes Iliad 10.224 — “two going together” — in lament that Atticus’s illness has kept him from his side. Section 7 closes on the two miscalculations of the past months: hoping for a settlement, and then recognizing that Pompey’s war was to be a cruel one — “any outcome whatever I shall bear more bravely than this grief.”
From Brundisium, so far, we have nothing. From Rome, Balbus has written that he believes Lentulus the consul has now crossed over, and that he was not intercepted by the younger Balbus, because he had already heard this at Canusium; that from there he wrote to him. The six cohorts that had been at Alba have gone over to Curius by the Via Minucia: Caesar wrote this to him, and in a short time he himself will be in the neighborhood of the City. Therefore I shall make use of your advice and not hide myself at Arpinum at this time — although, since I wanted to give my dear young Cicero the toga of manhood at Arpinum, I had been going to leave precisely this excuse to Caesar. But perhaps on that very ground he will be offended: why not rather at Rome? And yet, if he must be met, here is the best place. Then we shall see to the rest: that is, to where, and by what road, and when.
nos adhuc Brundisio nihil. Roma scripsit Balbus putare iam Lentulum consulem tramisisse nec eum a minore Balbo conventum, quod is hoc iam Canusi audisset; inde ad se eum scripsisse; cohortesque sex quae Albae fuissent ad Curium via Minucia transisse; id Caesarem ad se scripsisse et brevi tempore eum ad urbem futurum. ergo utar tuo consilio neque me Arpinum hoc tempore abdam, etsi, Ciceroni meo togam puram quom dare Arpini vellem, hanc eram ipsam excusationem relicturus ad Caesarem. sed fortasse in eo ipso offendetur, cur non Romae potius. ac tamen si est conveniendus, hic potissimum. tum reliqua videbimus, id est et quo et qua et quando.
Domitius, I hear, is in the territory of Cosa, and indeed, they say, ready to sail. If for Spain, I do not approve; if to join Cnaeus, I praise it. Anywhere, certainly, rather than that he should look upon Curtius — whom I, his patron, cannot look at. What of the others? But, I think, let us keep quiet, that we may not bring evidence against our own fault, who, while we loved the City, that is to say our country, and while we were thinking the matter would be patched up, have so conducted ourselves as to be plainly cut off and taken captive.
Domitius, ut audio, in Cosano est et quidem, ut aiunt, paratus ad navigandum, si in Hispaniam, non probo, si ad Gnaeum, laudo; quovis potius certe quam ut Curtium videat quem ego patronus aspicere non possum. quid alios? sed, opinor, quiescamus, ne nostram culpam coarguamus qui, dum urbem, id est patriam, amamus dumque rem conventuram putamus, ita nos gessimus ut plane interclusi captique simus.
After the letter was already written, a letter was brought from Capua of the following content: “Pompey has crossed the sea with all the soldiers he had with him. The number of men is thirty thousand, and the two consuls, and the tribunes of the people, and the senators who were with him, all of them, with their wives and children. He is said to have embarked on the fourth day before the Nones of March. From that day there have been north winds. The ships he did not use they are said either to have cut to pieces or to have burned.” On this matter a letter has been brought to Capua to Lucius Metellus, tribune of the people, by Clodia his mother-in-law, who herself crossed.
scripta iam epistula Capua litterae sunt adlatae hoc a exemplo: Pompeius mare transiit cum omnibus militibus quos secum habuit. hic numerus est hominum milia triginta et consules duo et tribuni pl. et senatores qui fuerunt cum eo omnes cum uxoribus et liberis. conscendisse dicitur a. d. iiii Nonas Martias. ex ea die fuere septemtriones venti. navis quibus usus non est omnis aut praecidisse aut incendisse dicunt. de hac re litterae L. Metello tribuno pl. Capuam adlatae sunt a Clodia socru quae ipsa transiit.
Before, I was anxious and ground down with care, as the matter itself, of course, compelled, because I could unfold nothing by deliberation; but now, since Pompey and the consuls have gone out of Italy, I am not ground down: I am on fire with grief. “Nor is my heart steadfast, but I am distraught” oude moi etor empedon, all’ alaluktemai. I am not, I tell you, believe me, in possession of my senses; so great a disgrace I seem to myself to have let in. That I should not have gone first with Pompey, whatever his counsel was; and then, with the loyal men, however rashly the cause was begun? Especially when the very persons for whose sake I was committing myself to fortune more timidly — my wife, my daughter, the young Ciceros — preferred my following that course, and thought this one shameful and unworthy of me. As for my brother Quintus, he kept saying that whatever pleased me he thought right, and was following it with a mind entirely composed.
ante sollicitus eram et angebar, sicut res scilicet ipsa cogebat, quom consilio explicare nihil possem; nunc autem postquam Pompeius et consules ex Italia exierunt, non angor sed ardeo dolore, οὐδέ μοι ἦτορ ἔμπεδον, ἀλλ’ ἀλαλύκτημαι. non sum, inquam, mihi crede, mentis compos; tantum mihi dedecoris admisisse videor. mene non primum cum Pompeio qualicumque consilio usus est, deinde cum bonis esse quamvis causa temere instituta? praesertim cum ii ipsi quorum ego causa timidius me fortunae committebam, uxor, filia, Cicerones pueri me illud sequi mallent, hoc turpe et me indignum putarent. nam Quintus quidem frater quicquid mihi placeret id rectum se putare aiebat, id animo aequissimo sequebatur.
Your letters I now read from the first. They restore me a little. The earliest warn me and beg me not to throw myself away; the most recent show that you rejoice that I have stayed. When I read them, I seem less shameful to myself — but only so long as I am reading. Then the grief surges up again, and the sense of disgrace aischrou. For which reason I beseech you, my Titus, snatch this grief from me, or at least lessen it, by consolation, by counsel, by whatever means you can. But what could you do? Or what could any human being? Scarcely a god, now.
tuas nunc epistulas a primo lego. hae me paulum recreant. primae monent et rogant ne me proiciam, proximae gaudere te ostendunt me remansisse. eas cum lego, minus mihi turpis videor, sed tam diu dum lego. deinde emergit rursum dolor et αἰσχροῦ. quam ob rem obsecro te, mi Tite, eripe mihi hunc dolorem aut minue saltem aut consolatione aut consilio aut quacumque re potes. quid tu autem possis? aut quid homo quisquam? vix iam deus.
For my part, I am working at the thing you advise and hope can be done: that Caesar may grant me to be absent when anything against Cnaeus is brought on in the Senate. But I fear I shall not obtain it. Furnius has come from him. And, that you may know what sort of people we are following: he reports that the son of Quintus Titinius is with Caesar — but that Caesar gives me greater thanks than I should wish. What he asks of me, in his few words but with force en dunamei — learn from his own letter. Wretched me, that you were not well! We would have been together; counsel, at any rate, would not have failed me: “the two going on together” sun te du’ erchomeno….
equidem illud molior quod tu mones sperasque fieri posse, ut mihi Caesar concedat ut absim cum aliquid in senatu contra Gnaeum agatur. sed timeo ne non impetrem. venit ab eo Furnius. ut quidem scias quos sequamur, Q. Titini filium cum Caesare esse nuntiat, sed illum maiores mihi gratias agere quam vellem. quid autem me roget paucis ille quidem verbis sed ἐν δυνάμει, cognosce ex ipsius epistula. me miserum quod tu non valuisti! una fuissemus; consilium certe non defuisset; σύν τε δύ’ ἐρχομένω —.
But let us not do over what is done; let us prepare for what is left. These two things have deceived me up to now: first, the hope of a composition, which once made, I wanted to use to live a private life, to free our old age from anxiety; then, I came to understand that the war undertaken by Pompey was cruel and destructive. I thought it the part, by Hercules, of a better citizen and man to be subjected to any punishment than not only to preside over but even to take part in that cruelty. It seems even to have been better to die than to be with these men. To these matters, then, give thought, my Atticus, or rather think them through. Any outcome whatever I shall bear more bravely than this grief.
sed acta ne agamus, reliqua paremus. me adhuc haec duo fefellerunt, initio spes compositionis, qua facta volebam uti populari vita, sollicitudine senectutem nostram liberare; deinde bellum crudele et exitiosum suscipi a Pompeio intellegebam. melioris medius fidius civis et viri putabam quovis supplicio adfici quam illi crudelitati non solum praeesse verum etiam interesse. videtur vel mori satius fuisse quam esse cum his. ad haec igitur cogita, mi Attice, vel potius excogita. quemvis eventum fortius feram quam hunc dolorem.