HermitshCicero by Claude

Letter · 11 April 43 BC · Romae

Ad M. Brutum 2.2

Ad M. Brutum 2.2

Headnote

Cicero to M. Junius Brutus, written from Rome — Perseus dateline Scr. Romae iii Id. Apr. a. 711 (43), i.e.\ 11 April 43 BC. The date is internally corroborated by the reference in section 3 to a Senate session held a.\ d.\ v Idus Aprilis (9 April), which Cicero now relates as a recent event. The dateline matches the meta date. The letter is days from the battle of Forum Gallorum (14 April) and Mutina has not yet been relieved: the besieged Decimus Brutus is the “Brutus” on whose extrication “all our hope lies” (section 2). Section 1 reports the contents of a letter from L. Munatius Plancus, governor of Transalpine Gaul, who has at last declared firmly for the Senate; against him is set Lepidus, governor of Nearer Spain and Narbonensis, “your kinsman” (M. Brutus’s wife Porcia was a half-sister of Lepidus’s wife) — whose brother L. Aemilius Paullus had been on the proscription list prepared for Caesar’s funeral, the family fracture lying just under Cicero’s elegant antithesis about “the men he most hates as his nearest relations.”

Section 3 is the heart of the letter and a revealing piece of senatorial reportage. P.\ Servilius Isauricus — a consular, a Caesarian by descent, and the same Servilius whose motion of 27 April will appear in 1.5 — has fought Cicero over the senatorial honours for Plancus, has been beaten in the contest, and at the critical moment a dispatch from Cn.\ Cornelius Lentulus Spinther in Asia arrived, announcing Cassius’s seizure of the legions in Syria; Cicero read it out in session to crushing effect (cecidit Servilius, complures praeterea). The half-finished sentence at the end — “It is a great prodigy in the commonwealth, but in respect of which * * *” — breaks off in the manuscript with a clear lacuna. The phrase magnum monstrum in re publica refers to Servilius, whose rage Cicero reads as politically diagnostic; what completed the sentence is lost. Throughout, the voice is the most intimate available: a senior statesman, the day after a Senate floor-fight, writing privately to a younger ally about who has just been broken on the floor and how.

Plancus’s outstanding feeling for the commonwealth, his legions, auxiliaries, and forces, you could see from his letter, of which I expect a copy has been sent to you. As for Lepidus, your kinsman — who next to his brother counts as his nearest relations the men he most hates — his lightness and inconstancy, and a mind always inimical to the commonwealth, are by now, I believe, plain to you from your own friends’ letters.
Planci animum in rem publicam egregium, legiones, auxilia, copias ex litteris eius quarum exemplum tibi missum arbitror perspicere potuisti. Lepidi, tui necessari, qui secundum fratrem adfinis habet quos oderit proximos, levitatem et inconstantiam animumque semper inimicum rei publicae iam credo tibi ex tuorum litteris esse perspectum.
What troubles us is expectation, †which† has by now been brought wholly to its last crisis. For all our hope lies in extricating Brutus, on whose account we were strongly afraid.
nos exspectatio sollicitat, †quae† est omnis iam in extremum adducta discrimen. est enim spes omnis in Bruto expediendo, de quo vehementer timebamus.
Here I have my hands full with that madman Servilius, whom I endured longer than my dignity allowed — but I endured him for the commonwealth’s sake, so as not to give to the desperate citizens a man, indeed scarcely sane, but for all that of noble blood, to whom they might rally; which they do all the same. But still I did not think him to be alienated from the commonwealth. I have made an end of bearing him. For he had begun to be of such insolence as to count no man free. In the case of Plancus, however, he flared up with extraordinary indignation, contended with me for two days, and was so broken by me that I hope he will be more moderate for ever after. And in this very contest, with the matter at its height, on the fifth day before the Ides of April a letter was delivered to me in the Senate from our friend Lentulus, about Cassius, about the legions, about Syria. As soon as I had read it out, Servilius collapsed, and several others besides — for there are some men of mark, more than a few, whose convictions are wholly base. But Servilius took it most bitterly that the Senate had voted with me about Plancus. It is a great prodigy in the commonwealth, but in respect of which * * *.
ego hic cum homine furioso satis habeo negoti, Servilio; quem tuli diutius quam dignitas mea patiebatur, sed tuli rei publicae causa, ne darem perditis civibus hominem parum sanum illum quidem sed tamen nobilem quo concurrerent, quod faciunt nihilo minus; sed eum alienandum a re publica non putabam. finem feci eius ferendi. coeperat enim esse tanta insolentia ut neminem liberum duceret. in Planci vero causa exarsit incredibili dolore mecumque per biduum ita contendit et a me ita fractus est ut eum in perpetuum modestiorem sperem fore. atque in hac contentione ipsa, cum maxime res ageretur, a. d. v Idus Aprilis litterae mihi in senatu redditae sunt a Lentulo nostro de Cassio, de legionibus, de Syria. quas statim cum recitavissem, cecidit Servilius, complures praeterea; sunt enim insignes aliquot qui improbissime sentiunt. sed acerbissime tulit Servilius adsensum esse mihi de Planco. Magnum illud monstrum in re publica est, sed quo * * *.

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Ad M. Brutum 2.2

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