HermitshCicero by Claude

Letter · 4 May 49 BC · in Cumano

Ad Atticum 10.11

Ad Atticum 10.11

Headnote

Cicero to Atticus, written from the Cuman villa on the fourth day before the Nones of May 49 BC — 4 May (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ in Cumano iv Non.\ Mai.\ a.\ 705 (49)). The previous letter (10.10) had been sealed but held back; Philotimus then arrived with a letter from Atticus, and the present one is the reply. The bulk of the letter is family business between the two brothers and their dependants, set against the financial squeeze of the civil war. On Quintus: Cicero defends him — nothing in his brother is festering or two-faced ([Greek: hypoulon]), nothing that one conversation could not put right; he loves all his people, Cicero himself most. On Quintus’s son: indulged, yes, and turned a bit fierce and arrogant by it, but the deeper faults are his own root and not from Cicero’s softness. The money paragraph is a quick, frank window onto the cash crunch: Q.~Axius will not pay back the thirteen thousand sesterces Cicero lent his son, pleading the times; Lepta and others do the same; Cicero hears Quintus complain of being pressed for a twenty-thousand debt and wonders at it — but defends him as neither slow nor tight-fisted by nature.

Section 4 returns to the immediate crisis. Antony arrived at the neighbouring villa yesterday evening; an interview is imminent, though Antony may just send word, and Cicero is now doing everything covertly. The escape plan — a small boat from the Bay of Naples to Sicily or Malta — pulls at him: he remembers being sick with anxiety even on an undecked Rhodian galley ([Greek: aphrakt\=o(i)]) in summer; what will a tiny skiff in early May do to him? Trebatius was there and reported “monsters” from Caesar’s camp, including the possibility of Balbus (Caesar’s Spanish banker-agent, not a senator) entering the Senate. The closing paragraph is an apologetic postscript about a stiff exchange of letters with the banker Vettienus: Vettienus had written peremptorily ([Greek: apotom\=os]) about Cicero’s money, Cicero wrote back with too much heat ([Greek: thumik\=oteron]) and addressed him as “master of the mint” because Vettienus had styled him “consul”; Atticus is asked to smooth it over.

My last letter was already sealed when I decided not to give it to the man I had settled on, since he was an outsider; so it was not sent off that day. Meanwhile Philotimus arrived and delivered me a letter from you. What you write about my brother in it — there is not much firmness in any of it, but there is nothing hypoulon, nothing festering underneath, nothing two-faced, nothing that is not pliable toward good, nothing you could not, with a single conversation, bring round to wherever you please. In short: he holds all his own people dear, even those at whom he flares up rather often, and me dearer than he holds himself. As for his writing one thing to you about the boy and another to the mother about her son, I do not fault him for that. What you say about Quintus and about my sister is distressing, the more so because our circumstances are such that I cannot doctor any of it; I most certainly would doctor it; but you see in what evils and in what desperation of affairs we are.
obsignata iam epistula superiore non placuit ei dari cui constitueram quod erat alienus. itaque eo die data non est. interim venit Philotimus et mihi a te litteras reddidit. quibus quae de fratre meo scribis, sunt ea quidem parum firma sed habent nihil ὕπουλον, nihil fallax, nihil non flexibile ad bonitatem, nihil quod non quo velis uno sermone possis perducere; ne multa, omnis suos, etiam quibus irascitur crebrius, tamen caros habet, me quidem se ipso cariorem. quod de puero aliter ad te scripsit et ad matrem de filio, non reprehendo. de Quinto et de sorore quae scribis molesta sunt eoque magis quod ea tempora nostra sunt ut ego iis mederi non possim. nam certe mederer; sed quibus in malis et qua in desperatione rerum simus vides.
Those matters about the money accounts are not of such a kind — for I hear it often from the man himself — that he does not wish to do well by you, and to take pains in it. But when in this flight of mine Quintus Axius is not repaying me the thirteen thousand sesterces I lent his son in cash, and pleads the times as his excuse, and when Lepta does the same, and the others, I sometimes wonder at hearing him say he is being pressed about some twenty thousand from I do not know whom. For surely you can see what straits we are in. Even so, he gives strict instructions that the business be attended to for you. Or do you suppose him slow or tight-fisted in that sort of thing? No man is less so.
illa de ratione nummaria non sunt eius modi (saepe enim audio ex ipso) ut non cupiat tibi praestare et in eo laboret. sed si mihi Q. Axius in hac mea fuga HS X_I_I_I_ non reddit quae dedi eius filio mutua et utitur excusatione temporis, si Lepta, si ceteri, soleo mirari de nescio quis HS X_X_ cum audio ex illo se urgeri. vides enim profecto angustias. curari tamen ea tibi utique iubet. an existimas illum in isto genere lentulum aut restrictum? nemo est minus.
About my brother, enough. About his son — his father has always indulged him, certainly; but indulgence does not make a man a liar or a miser, or unloving to his own; it perhaps makes him fierce, arrogant, and aggressive. So the boy has his share of those traits as well that grow from being indulged; but they are tolerable — what am I to say? — in this generation of his. As for those other faults of his, which to me, who love him, are more wretched than these very evils we are caught in, they are not from any softness of mine. They have their own roots; which I would tear up, certainly, if I were allowed. But the times are such that I have to endure everything. My own boy I keep easily in hand; nothing is more manageable than he is. It is rather out of pity for him that the plans I have so far adopted are the more languid; and the more the boy wants me to be safe, the more I fear that I shall turn out cruel to him.
de fratre satis. de eius filio indulsit illi quidem suus pater semper sed non facit indulgentia mendacem aut avarum aut non amantem suorum, ferocem fortasse atque adrogantem et infestum facit. itaque habet haec quoque quae nascuntur ex indulgentia, sed ea sunt tolerabilia (quid enim dicam?) hac iuventute; ea vero, quae mihi quidem qui illum amo sunt his ipsis malis in quis sumus miseriora, non sunt ab obsequio nostro. nam suas radices habent; quas tamen evellerem profecto, si liceret. sed ea tempora sunt ut omnia mihi sint patienda. ego meum facile teneo; nihil est enim eo tractabilius. quoius quidem misericordia languidiora adhuc consilia cepi et quo ille me certiorem vult esse eo magis timeo ne in eum exsistam crudelior.
But Antony arrived yesterday evening. He may come to me at any moment now — or perhaps he will not even do that, since he has written what he wants done. You will know straight away what has been done. We deal in nothing now except covertly. About the boys, what am I to do? Am I to commit them to some small craft? What sort of frame of mind do you suppose I shall be in while sailing? I remember how anxious I was that summer when I sailed with the boy in that Rhodian aphraktō(i), an undecked galley; what sort of state do you think I shall be in, in a small skiff and at this harsh season of the year? What a wretched business every way one turns it! Trebatius was with me, a thoroughly good man and good citizen. What monsters that man reported — immortal gods! Is even Balbus thinking of coming into the Senate? But I shall give him a letter to you tomorrow. As you say, I take Vettienus to be a friend of mine; with him — because he had written to me rather apotomōs, peremptorily, about handling the money — I had joked back rather thumikōteron, with some heat. You can smooth that down if he has taken it otherwise than he should have. As for my addressing him as “master of the mint,” it was because he had addressed me as “consul.” But since he is a decent fellow, and fond of me, let him be a friend of mine in turn. Farewell.
sed Antonius venit heri vesperi. iam fortasse ad me veniet aut ne id quidem, quoniam scripsit quid fieri vellet. sed scies continuo quid actum sit. nos iam nihil nisi occulte. de pueris quid agam? parvone navigio committam? quid mihi animi in navigando censes fore? recordor enim aestate cum illo Rhodiorum ἀφράκτῳ navigans quam fuerim sollicitus; quid duro tempore anni actuariola fore censes? o rem undique miseram! Trebatius erat mecum, vir plane et civis bonus. quae ille monstra, di immortales! etiamne Balbus in senatum venire cogitet? sed ei ipsi cras ad te litteras dabo. Vettienum mihi amicum, ut scribis, ita puto esse. cum eo, quod ἀποτόμωσ ad me scripserat de nummis curandis, θυμικώτερον eram iocatus. id tu, si ille aliter acceperit ac debuit, lenies. monetali autem adscripsi, quod ille ad me pro cos. sed quoniam est homo et nos diligit, ipse quoque a nobis diligatur. vale.

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