Ad Atticum 9.10
Ad Atticum 9.10
Headnote
Cicero to Atticus, written from the Formian villa on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of April 49 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in Formiano xv K.\ Apr.\ a.\ 705 (49)). This is the day after the long letter answering three of Atticus’s together, and the day on which — as it turned out — Pompey was sailing from Brundisium for Epirus, ending the Italian war. Cicero does not yet know it. The letter is a wakeful, semi- private meditation, written “with no theme proposed,” as if to converse with the absent friend; it is among the most personal in the whole correspondence.
Sections 1–3 are the meditation proper. Cicero diagnoses himself as having been amens from the start in not following Pompey to the end like “one common soldier in the ranks” (tamquam unus manipularis). He saw Pompey on 17 January, full of dread, and never liked him after; the famous love-analogy compares Pompey’s flight to a beloved grown filthy, insipid, indecorous, who estranges affection. “Now the love comes back up”; “like that bird, I gaze out upon the sea and long to fly away.” Yet his hesitation was not rashness but reasoned: he ran through the historical exempla — Tarquin, Coriolanus, Themistocles, Hippias, Sulla, Marius, Cinna — and could not see himself leading Getae, Armenians, Colchians against Rome, or starving Italy. The sun has fallen out of the world (the image is Atticus’s own, from some earlier letter); as long as Pompey was in Italy, hope was alive. “These things, these things, have failed me.”
Sections 4–10 are an extraordinary technical move: Cicero unrolls the sealed volume of Atticus’s letters and walks through them in dated order, quoting each in turn, to demonstrate to Atticus — and to himself — that every step he has taken was taken on Atticus’s authority. From 10 K Febr to 7 Id. Mart, eight letters are paraded one by one: Atticus had said Pompey would be acting alogist\=os if he left Italy; that Cicero must then return to the City and not call his stay a foreign tour; that the war was being made aspondos, without truce; that no patriot and statesman (philopatris, politikos) should flee with him; that flight is shameful (Pompey, Cicero remarks, has been “yearning-to-be-a-Sulla, yearning-to- proscribe” for two years past); that if Lepidus and Volcacius remained in Italy, Cicero too should remain — and let himself be beaten in the contest with Pompey rather than reign with Caesar in the coming filth. If Lepidus and Volcacius left, Atticus had thrown up his hands (apor\=o); whatever happened, whatever Cicero did, must be accepted (sterkteon). Section 10 closes on Peducaeus’s parallel approval, on Cicero’s need not for self-justification (adversus me nihil opus est) but for outside witnesses, and on the wakeful consolation of having reread everything Atticus wrote him.
I had nothing to write. For neither had I heard anything new, and to all of yours I had written back the day before. But since distress was depriving me not only of sleep, but would not even let me lie awake without the highest pain, I set myself to write to you this something or other, with no theme proposed, as if to talk with you — which is the one thing in which I find rest.
nihil habebam quod scriberem. neque enim novi quicquam audieram et ad tuas omnis rescripseram pridie. sed cum me aegritudo non solum somno privaret verum ne vigilare quidem sine summo dolore pateretur, tecum ut quasi loquerer, in quo uno acquiesco, hoc nescio quid nullo argumento proposito scribere institui.
I seem to myself to have been out of my mind from the start, and this one thing tortures me — that, when Pompey was slipping in every matter, or rather hurtling down, I did not follow him like one common soldier in the ranks. I saw the man on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of February: he was full of dread. That very day I felt what he was about. Never afterward did he please me, nor did he ever stop committing one fault after another. To me, all this while, he wrote nothing; he thought of nothing but flight. What more is there? As, in love-affairs en tois erōtikois, things filthy, insipid, indecorous estrange the lover, so the ugliness of his flight and carelessness turned me away from love. For he did nothing worthy that I should join myself as the companion of his flight. Now the love comes back up; now I cannot bear the longing; now no books, no letters, no learning is of use to me. Day and night, like that bird, I gaze out upon the sea and long to fly away. I am paying, I am paying the penalty for my rashness. And yet what rashness was it? what have I done that was not most carefully weighed? For if nothing but flight had been the object, I should have fled most willingly; but the kind of war — the most cruel and the greatest, the like of which men do not yet see what it will be — this I shuddered at. What threats against the towns, what against good men by name, what, in short, against all who had remained! How often the line: “Sulla could; cannot I?”
amens mihi fuisse videor a principio et me una haec res torquet quod non omnibus in rebus labentem vel potius ruentem Pompeium tamquam unus manipularis secutus sim. vidi hominem xiiii K. Febr. plenum formidinis. illo ipso die sensi quid ageret. numquam mihi postea placuit nec umquam aliud in alio peccare destitit. nihil interim ad me scribere, nihil nisi fugam cogitare. quid quaeris? sicut ἐν τοῖσ ἐρωτικοῖσ alienant immundae, insulsae, indecorae, sic me illius fugae neglegentiaeque deformitas avertit ab amore. nihil enim dignum faciebat qua re eius fugae comitem me adiungerem. nunc emergit amor, nunc desiderium ferre non possum, nunc mihi nihil libri, nihil litterae, nihil doctrina prodest. ita dies et noctes tamquam avis illa mare prospecto evolare cupio. do, do poenas temeritatis meae. etsi quae fuit illa temeritas? quid feci non consideratissime? si enim nihil praeter fugam quaereretur, fugissem libentissime, sed genus belli crudelissimi et maximi quod nondum vident homines quale futurum sit perhorrui. quae minae municipiis, quae nominatim viris bonis, quae denique omnibus qui remansissent! quam crebro illud Sulla potuit, ego non potero?
But these things have stuck with me. Tarquin acted ill who led Porsena and Octavius Mamilius against the fatherland; impiously, Coriolanus, who sought aid from the Volscians; rightly, Themistocles, who preferred to die; criminally, Hippias the son of Pisistratus, who fell in the battle of Marathon bearing arms against his fatherland; while Sulla, Marius, Cinna acted rightly, indeed perhaps by right — but what was more cruel than their victory, what more deadly? This kind of war I fled, and the more so because I saw even crueler things being thought of and prepared. Was I, whom certain men have called the preserver of this city, whom they have called its parent, to lead against it the forces of the Getae and the Armenians and the Colchians? Was I to bring famine, devastation, upon my fellow citizens, upon Italy? I considered, first, that this man is mortal, and then, that he can be quenched in many ways; but our city and our people I thought we ought to save for immortality, so far as it lay in us. And still a certain hope sustained me, that some agreement would be reached rather than that this man should commit so much wickedness or that man so much disgrace. Now the whole matter is altered, my whole mind altered. The sun, as it is said in some letter of yours, seems to me to have fallen out of the world. As they say of one who is sick that, while there is breath, there is hope, so I, as long as Pompey was in Italy, did not stop hoping. These things, these things, have failed me; and, to speak the truth, my age, now bending down from long labours to leisure, has been softened by the pleasure of my domestic affairs. Now, if the experiment must be made even at peril, I shall certainly make it, so that I may fly away from here. Perhaps I ought to have done it earlier; but the things you wrote held me back, and above all your authority.
mihi autem haeserunt illa. male Tarquinius qui Porsenam, qui Octavium Mamilium contra patriam, impie Coriolanus qui auxilium petiit a Volscis, recte Themistocles qui mori maluit, nefarius Hippias Pisistrati filius qui in Marathonia pugna cecidit arma contra patriam ferens; at Sulla, at Marius, at Cinna recte, immo iure fortasse; sed quid eorum victoria crudelius, quid funestius? huius belli genus fugi et eo magis quod crudeliora etiam cogitari et parari videbam. me quem non nulli conservatorem istius urbis, quem parentem esse dixerunt Getarum et Armeniorum et Colchorum copias ad eam adducere? me meis civibus famem, vastitatem inferre Italiae? hunc primum mortalem esse, deinde etiam multis modis posse exstingui cogitabam, urbem autem et populum nostrum servandum ad immortalitatem, quantum in nobis esset, putabam, et tamen spes quaedam me sustentabat fore ut aliquid conveniret potius quam aut hic tantum sceleris aut ille tantum flagiti admitteret. alia res nunc tota est, alia mens mea. sol, ut est in tua quadam epistula, excidisse mihi e mundo videtur. ut aegroto, dum anima est, spes esse dicitur, sic ego, quoad Pompeius in Italia fuit, sperare non destiti. haec, haec me fefellerunt et, ut verum loquar, aetas iam a diuturnis laboribus devexa ad otium domesticarum me rerum delectatione mollivit. nunc si vel periculose experiundum erit, experiar certe ut hinc avolem. ante oportuit fortasse; sed ea quae scripsisti me tardarunt et auctoritas maxime tua.
For when I had come to this point, I unrolled the volume of your letters which I keep under seal and guard most carefully. There was, then, in the one you sent on the tenth day before the Kalends of February, this passage: “But let us see what Gnaeus is doing, and where his calculations are tending. If that man leaves Italy, he will be acting wholly badly and, as I judge, without reckoning alogistōs; but then, and only then, will our counsels have to be changed.” This you write on the fourth day after we left the City. Then on the eighth day before the Kalends of February: “Only let our Gnaeus not leave Italy as he left the City — without reckoning alogistōs.” On the same day you give another letter, in which you answer me, who was consulting you, very plainly. The wording is as follows. “But I come to your question. If Gnaeus quits Italy, I think you must return to the City; for what end can there be to a wandering abroad?” This stuck plainly with me; and now too I see an unending war joined to the most wretched flight, which you call by the soft name of a “foreign tour” hypokorizēi.
nam cum ad hunc locum venissem, evolvi volumen epistularum tuarum quod ego sub signo habeo servoque diligentissime. erat igitur in ea quam x K. Febr. dederas, hoc modo, sed videamus et Gnaeus quid agat et illius rationes quorsum fluant. quod si iste Italiam relinquet, faciet omnino male et, ut ego existimo, ἀλογίστωσ, sed tum demum consilia nostra commutanda erunt. hoc scribis post diem quartum quam ab urbe discessimus. deinde viii K. Febr., tantum modo Gnaeus noster ne, ut urbem ἀλογίστωσ reliquit, sic Italiam relinquat. eodem die das alteras litteras quibus mihi consulenti planissime respondes. est enim sic, sed venio ad consultationem tuam. si Gnaeus Italia cedit, in urbem redeundum puto; quae enim finis peregrinationis? hoc mihi plane haesit, et nunc ita video infinitum bellum iunctum miserrima fuga quam tu peregrinationem ὑποκορίζῃ.
Then follows the oracle chrēsmos of the sixth day before the Kalends of February: “I, if Pompey remains in Italy and the matter does not come to an agreement, think the war will be longer; but if he leaves Italy, I judge that a war without truce aspondon is being prepared for the next generation.” Am I then to be made a sharer, an ally, a helper in this war, when it is both without truce aspondon and against fellow citizens? Then on the seventh day before the Ides of February, when you were now hearing more about Pompey’s plans, you close a certain letter in this way: “I, indeed, would not be your authority, if Pompey leaves Italy, that you flee too. For you will be acting at the greatest risk, and you will be of no use to the commonwealth; whereas you will be able to be of use to it later, if you remain.” What patriot philopatrin and statesman politikon would not be moved by the authority of a prudent man and a friend admonishing him so?
sequitur χρησμὸσ vi K. Februarias, ego si Pompeius manet in Italia nec res ad pactionem venit, longius bellum puto fore; sin Italiam relinquit, ad posterum bellum ἄσπονδον strui existimo. huius igitur belli ego particeps et socius et adiutor esse cogor quod et ἄσπονδον est et cum civibus? deinde vii Idus Febr., cum iam plura audires de Pompei consilio, concludis epistulam quandam hoc modo, ego quidem tibi non sim auctor, si Pompeius Italiam relinquit, te quoque profugere. summo enim periculo facies nec rei publicae proderis; quoi quidem posterius poteris prodesse, si manseris. quem φιλόπατριν ac πολιτικὸν hominis prudentis et amici tali admonitu non moveret auctoritas?
Next, on the third day before the Ides of February, you answer me again, as I was consulting you, thus: “As to what you ask of me, whether I would defend flight or think delay the more useful: I, for my present part, think a sudden departure and headlong setting-off pernicious and dangerous both for you and for Gnaeus himself, and consider that it is better that you be apart and on watch; but, by Hercules, I think it is shameful for us to be thinking of flight.” This shameful thing our Gnaeus has been thinking of for two years past. Thus his mind has long now been yearning-to-be-a-Sulla, yearning-to-proscribe. Then, I take it, when you had written something to me in more general terms genikōteron, and I had thought you were signifying something to me about my quitting Italy, you carefully repudiate this on the eleventh day before the Kalends of March: “I have not, by any letter, signified that, if Gnaeus leaves Italy, you should leave with him; or, if I did so signify — I say not that I was inconsistent, but that I was mad.” In the same letter, in another place: “Nothing is left but flight; of which I do not at all think you ought to be a sharer, nor have I ever thought it.”
deinceps iii Idus Febr. iterum mihi respondes consulenti sic, quod quaeris a me fugamne defendam an moram utiliorem putem, ego vero in praesentia subitum discessum et praecipitem profectionem cum tibi tum ipsi Gnaeo inutilem et periculosam puto et satius esse existimo vos dispertitos et in speculis esse; sed medius fidius turpe nobis puto esse de fuga cogitare. hoc turpe Gnaeus noster biennio ante cogitavit. ita sullaturit animus eius et proscripturit iam diu. inde, ut opinor, cum tu ad me quaedam γενικώτερον scripsisses et ego mihi a te quaedam significari putassem ut Italia cederem, detestaris hoc diligenter xi K. Mart., ego vero nulla epistula significavi, si Gnaeus Italia cederet, ut tu una cederes, aut si significavi, non dico fui inconstans sed demens. in eadem epistula alio loco, nihil relinquitur nisi fuga, cui te socium neutiquam puto esse oportere nec umquam putavi.
The whole of this deliberation, however, you unroll more carefully in the letter sent on the eighth day before the Kalends of March: “If Manius Lepidus and Lucius Volcacius remain, I think you must remain; in such a way that, if Pompey is safe and has come to a stand somewhere, you should leave this Necyia nekuian and let yourself be beaten in the contest with him more easily than reign with this other man in that confusion which is plainly going to come.” You argue many things consistent with this opinion. Then at the end: “What if,” you say, “Lepidus and Volcacius depart? Plainly, I am at a loss aporō. So whatever turns out, and whatever you do, I shall think must be accepted sterkteon.” If you doubted then, certainly now you do not doubt, with those men remaining.
totam autem hanc deliberationem evolvis accuratius in litteris viii Kal. Mart. datis, si M’. Lepidus et L. Volcacius remanent, manendum puto, ita ut, si salvus sit Pompeius et constiterit alicubi, hanc νέκυιαν relinquas et te in certamine vinci cum illo facilius patiaris quam cum hoc in ea quae perspicitur futura colluvie regnare. multa disputas huic sententiae convenientia. inde ad extremum, quid si inquis Lepidus et Volcacius discedunt? plane ἀπορῶ. quod evenerit igitur et quod egeris id στερκτέον putabo. si tum dubitaras, nunc certe non dubitas istis manentibus.
Then in the flight itself, on the fifth day before the Kalends of March: “In the meantime, I have no doubt that you will be staying at the Formian villa. There you will wait out what is to come to mellon karadokēseis most conveniently.” And on the Kalends of March, when he had been at Brundisium for the fifth day now, “Then we shall be able to deliberate — with the matter, of course, not whole, but certainly less broken than if you had flung yourself in alongside him.” Then on the fourth day before the Nones of March, when you were writing briefly because you were at the very moment of seizure hypo tēn lēpsin, still you put this: “Tomorrow I shall write more, and to all your points; this, however, I shall say — that I do not regret my advice about your staying. Although I am in great anxiety, still, because I think there is less evil in it than in that setting-off, I keep my opinion, and rejoice that you have stayed.”
deinde in ipsa fuga v Kal. Martias, interea non dubito quin in Formiano mansurus sis. commodissime enim τὸ μέλλον ibi καραδοκήσεισ. atque K. Mart., cum ille quintum iam diem Brundisi esset, tum poterimus deliberare non scilicet integra re sed certe minus infracta quam si una proieceris te. deinde iiii Non. Martias, ὑπὸ τὴν λῆψιν cum breviter scriberes, tamen ponis hoc, cras scribam plura et ad omnia; hoc tamen dicam, non paenitere me consili de tua mansione, et quamquam magna sollicitudine, tamen quia minus mali puto esse quam in illa profectione, maneo in sententia et gaudeo te mansisse.
And when I was already in real anguish, and afraid that some disgrace had been admitted on my part, on the third day before the Nones of March: “Still, I do not bear it ill that you are not with Pompey. Afterwards, if it shall be needful, it will not be difficult; and to him, at whatever time it comes about, it will be welcome asmeniston. But this I say with the proviso that, if this man here carries out everything in the manner he began — sincerely, with moderation, with prudence — then I shall examine the matter strictly, and shall provide for our advantage with more deliberate care.”
cum vero iam angerer et timerem ne quid a me dedecoris esset admissum, iii Nonas Mart., tamen te non esse una cum Pompeio non fero moleste. postea, si opus fuerit, non erit difficile, et illi, quoquo tempore fiet, erit ἀσμένιστον; sed hoc ita dico si hic qua ratione initium fecit eadem cetera aget, sincere, temperate, prudenter, valde videro et consideratius utilitati nostrae consuluero.
On the seventh day before the Ides of March you write that our Peducaeus too approves my having kept quiet — and his authority weighs much with me. With these writings of yours I console myself, in such a way that I think no fault has so far been committed by me. Only, do you defend your authority: against me there is no need, but I am in want of other witnesses. If I have done no wrong, I shall defend what remains. Encourage me to it, and help me throughout with your thinking. Here nothing was yet being heard about Caesar’s return. By this letter, however, I have achieved this much: I have read through all yours, and have found rest in that.
vii Idus Martias scribis Peducaeo quoque nostro probari quod quierim, cuius auctoritas multum apud me valet. his ego tuis scriptis me consolor ut nihil a me adhuc delictum putem. tu modo auctoritatem tuam defendito; adversus me nihil opus est sed consciis egeo aliis. ego si nihil peccavi, reliqua tuebor. ad ea tute hortare et me omnino tua cogitatione adiuva. hic nihildum de reditu Caesaris audiebatur. ego his litteris hoc tamen profeci, perlegi omnis tuas et in eo acquievi.