HermitshCicero by Claude

Letter · 17 March 45 BC · Asturae

Ad Atticum 12.21

Ad Atticum 12.21

Headnote

Cicero to Atticus, written from Astura on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of April 709 AUC — 17 March 45 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr.\ Asturae xvi K.\ Apr.\ a.\ 709 (45)). Two days after 12.20, and the longest letter of the cluster. The first section is an indignant roll-call: Brutus, in a returned letter, has suggested that Cato was the first speaker on the punishment of the Catilinarian conspirators, and that the consulars before him had been more lenient than the praetorian-rank Caesar. Cicero recites the consulars one by one — Catulus, Servilius, the Luculli, Curio, Torquatus, Lepidus, Gellius, Volcacius, Figulus, Cotta, Lucius Caesar, Gaius Piso, Manius Glabrio, Silanus and Murena — to correct the record. He put the question on Cato’s motion because Cato had embraced the same matter in more luminous words and at greater length; the division was taken on Cato’s motion because Cato had moved that the proceedings be entered into the public record. Brutus’s compliment that he was “the best of consuls” Cicero cuts to the bone: “what enemy ever spoke more meagrely?”

The remainder is the now-familiar cluster of practical and personal business. The Roman gardens for the fanum are to be pursued (Drusus, Lamia, Cassius are possible vendors). Terentia is handled in a single hard sentence: “If anything cheats us, I would rather have it her fault to be sorry for than mine.” Ovia’s 100,000-sesterce debt is to be wound up through Eros. The letter closes on the deepest note of the cluster: Atticus has summoned Cicero to the Forum, but Cicero refuses on principle. “What is the Forum to me without the courts, without the senate-house, while there run into my sight men I cannot look at with composure?” The therapy is his philosophical reading and writing — “the act of a brave invalid, to take his medicine” — and he begs Atticus not to call him back from those remedies, lest he relapse. The daggered crux in 5 (aut quatenus) is preserved at the obelus; the construction of the clause remains uncertain, but the broad sense (“and do not allow me to be away, or with what licence they grant”) is clear enough that the argument carries.

I have read Brutus’s letter and send it back to you. What he writes by way of reply to your queries shows little judgment. But he must look to it himself. There is one point, though, on which his ignorance is shameful. He thinks Cato spoke first to the motion on the punishment — whereas all had spoken before him except Caesar; and since Caesar’s own opinion, delivered while he was of praetorian rank, was so severe, Brutus supposes that the consulars, Catulus, Servilius, the Luculli, Curio, Torquatus, Lepidus, Gellius, Volcacius, Figulus, Cotta, Lucius Caesar, Gaius Piso, Manius Glabrio, and even Silanus and Murena, the consuls-elect, spoke more gently. Why then did I put the question on Cato’s motion? Because in more luminous words and at greater length he had embraced the same matter. But on this point he praises me for having brought it forward, not for having uncovered it, for having pressed it on, in short for having pronounced judgment myself before I put the question. And because Cato had carried all this to the skies in praise and had moved that it be entered into the record, the division was taken on his motion. The man here even thinks he is paying me a high compliment by writing that I was “the best of consuls.” What enemy ever spoke more meagrely? And as to the rest, look how he has answered you! All he asks is that you correct the decree of the senate. He would have done as much had he been prompted by a copyist. But these matters again he must look to himself.
legi Bruti epistulam eamque tibi remisi sane non prudenter rescriptum ad ea quae requisieras. sed ipse viderit. quamquam illud turpiter ignorat. Catonem primum sententiam putat de animadversione dixisse quam omnes ante dixerant praeter Caesarem et, cum ipsius Caesaris tam severa fuerit qui tum praetorio loco dixerit, consularium putat leniores fuisse, Catuli, Servili, Lucullorum, Curionis, Torquati, Lepidi, Gelli, Volcaci, Figuli, Cottae, L. Caesaris, C. Pisonis, M’. Glabrionis, etiam Silani, Murenae designatorum consulum. cur ego in sententiam Catonis? quia verbis luculentioribus et pluribus rem eandem comprehenderat. me autem hic laudat quod rettulerim, non quod patefecerim, quod cohortatus sim, quod denique ante quam consulerem ipse iudicaverim. quae omnia quia Cato laudibus extulerat in caelum perscribendaque censuerat, idcirco in eius sententiam est facta discessio. hic autem se etiam tribuere multum mi putat quod scripserit optimum consulem. quis enim ieiunius dixit inimicus? ad cetera vero tibi quem ad modum rescripsit! tantum rogat de senatus consulto ut corrigas. hoc quidem fecisset, etiam si a librano admonitus esset. sed haec iterum ipse viderit.
About the gardens, since you approve, get something done. You know my finances. If indeed something also comes loose from Faberius, the business is nothing. But even without him I think I can manage to stretch to it. The gardens of Drusus are certainly for sale, perhaps also those of Lamia and Cassius. But this when we are face to face.
de hortis quoniam probas, effice aliquid. rationes meas nosti. si vero etiam a Faberio aliquid recedit nihil negoti est. sed etiam sine eo posse videor contendere. venales certe sunt Drusi, fortasse etiam Lamiani et Cassiani. sed coram.
About Terentia I cannot write more aptly than you write. Let our obligation be paramount. If anything cheats us, I would rather have it her fault to be sorry for than mine.
de Terentia non possum commodius scribere quam tu scribis. officium sit nobis antiquissimum. si quid nos fefellerit, illius malo me quam mei paenitere.
The 100,000 sesterces owed to Ovia, the wife of Gaius Lollius, must be seen to. Eros says it cannot be done without me — because, I suppose, some valuation has to be received and given. I wish he had told you. For if the matter is, as he wrote me, all arranged, and he is not lying about that as well, it could have been wound up through you. Look into it and wind it up, please.
Oviae C. Lolli curanda sunt HS C. negat Eros posse sine me, credo, quod accipienda aliqua sit et danda aestimatio. vellem tibi dixisset. si enim res est ut mihi scripsit parata nec in eo ipso mentitur, per te confici potuit. id cognoscas et conficias velim.
As for your summoning me to the Forum, you summon me to the place from which I fled even when my affairs were going well. For what is the Forum to me without the courts, without the senate-house, while there run into my sight men I cannot look at with composure? And as to your writing that men require it of me that I be at Rome and do not allow me to be away, aut quatenus\ that they grant me, know that it has long been so with me that I count you alone more than all of them put together. Nor do I undervalue myself: I would much rather stand by my own judgment than by that of all the rest. Yet I do not go further than the most learned of mankind concede to me; and all their writings, whatever they are upon this matter, I have not only read — which by itself was the act of a brave invalid, to take his medicine — but have transferred into my own writings as well, which surely was no act of a stricken and broken mind. From these remedies do not call me back into that throng, or I shall fall back.
quod me in forum vocas, eo vocas unde etiam bonis meis rebus fugiebam. quid enim mihi foro sine iudiciis, sine curia, in oculos incurrentibus iis quos animo aequo videre non possum? quod autem a me homines postulare scribis ut Romae sim neque mihi ut absim concedere †aut quatenus† eos mihi concedere, iam pridem scito esse, cum unum te pluris quam omnis illos putem. ne me quidem contemno meoque iudicio multo stare malo quam omnium reliquorum. neque tamen progredior longius quam mihi doctissimi homines concedunt; quorum scripta omnia quaecumque sunt in eam sententiam non legi solum, quod ipsum erat fortis aegroti, accipere medicinam, sed in mea etiam scripta transtuli, quod certe adflicti et fracti animi non fuit. ab his me remediis noli in istam turbam vocare, ne recidam.

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Ad Atticum 12.21

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