Ad Familiares 4.3
Ad Familiares 4.3
Headnote
Cicero to Servius Sulpicius Rufus, in Achaia, written at Rome ahead of the sixth day before the earlier intercalary Kalends of 46 BC — the Perseus dateline gives Romae ante vi K. intercal. priores a. 708 (46). Sulpicius, the distinguished jurist and Cicero’s old consular colleague of 51 BC, is now Caesar’s governor of Achaia and has been sending letters home that read — so Cicero’s friends report — as the writing of a man too taken up with public misery and his own absence to take any pleasure in his own goods. Cicero, who admires Sulpicius’s learning and probity above almost any living contemporary’s, writes a consolation modelled on the Greek philosophical tradition he has been steeping himself in through the silent years of 46.
The letter has three movements that the sections track. The first builds Sulpicius’s claim to clear conscience: he, more than anyone, foresaw and warned against the civil war from the consul’s chair in 51, and the political ruin that has come is not his work but the work of those who refused to listen. The second concedes how thin such consolation feels — quasi parietinis rei publicae, “as it were among the ruined walls of the state” — and offers in its place the standing Cicero now gives Sulpicius in the eyes of Caesar and of every citizen: a lamp still burning among extinguished lights. The third turns to philosophy as the remaining shelter, and announces, in passing, the programme that will produce the philosophical works of the next two years: “once I saw that there was no place left for that art to which I had given my study, neither in the Senate-house nor in the Forum, I have turned all my care and labor to philosophy.” The closing paragraph on the young Servius — studying philosophy with Cicero at Rome — is the personal warrant for everything that has gone before.
That you are deeply troubled, and that in our common miseries you are wrung by a peculiar grief of your own, is what many report to me daily. I am hardly surprised at it, and in some way I recognize my own feeling in it; yet I grieve that a man endowed with wisdom almost unique should take less pleasure in his own goods than pain in the misfortunes of others. As for me — though I yield to no one in the trouble I have drawn from the ruin and the plague of the state — still many things now console me, and above all the consciousness of my own counsels. For long beforehand, as if from some watchtower, I saw the coming storm; nor did I see it of my own foresight only, but far more on your warning and your prophecy. For though I was absent for the greater part of your consulship, even at a distance I knew what your judgement was as to guarding against this ruinous war and warning of it, and I myself was present in the first months of your consulship, when you most carefully warned the Senate, gathering up all the civil wars, that they should fear what they remembered, and should know that, since earlier men, with no such precedent recorded in the state before them, had nevertheless been so cruel, whoever should later crush the state by arms would be far more intolerable. For what is done by precedent men think also done by right; and they add and contribute, of their own, something more — indeed much more.
vehementer te esse sollicitum et in communibus miseriis praecipuo quodam dolore angi multi ad nos cotidie deferunt. quod quamquam minime miror et meum quodam modo agnosco, doleo tamen te sapientia praeditum prope singulari non tuis bonis delectari potius quam alienis malis laborare. me quidem, etsi nemini concedo, qui maiorem ex pernicie et peste rei publicae molestiam traxerit, tamen multa iam consolantur maximeque conscientia consiliorum meorum. multo enim ante tamquam ex aliqua specula prospexi tempestatem futuram, neque id solum mea sponte, sed multo etiam magis monente et denuntiante te. etsi enim afui magnam partem consulatus tui, tamen et absens cognoscebam, quae esset tua in hoc pestifero bello cavendo et praedicendo sententia, et ipse adfui primis temporibus tui consulatus, cum accuratissime monuisti senatum conlectis omnibus bellis civilibus, ut et illa timerent, quae meminissent, et scirent, cum superiores nullo tali exemplo antea in re publica cognito tam crudeles fuissent, quicumque postea rem publicam oppressisset armis, multo intolerabiliorem futurum. nam, quod exemplo fit, id etiam iure fieri putant, ipsi aliquid atque adeo multa addunt et adferunt de suo.
You must remember, then, that those who did not follow your authority and counsel perished through their own folly, when by your prudence they could have been kept safe. You will say: “What consolation is that to me, in such darkness, and as it were among the ruined walls of the state?” The grief, to be sure, scarcely admits consolation: so total is the loss of every good, so total the despair of recovery. Yet even so, Caesar himself judges you as he does, and so do all the citizens: that, with the rest of the lights extinguished, your sanctity, your prudence, your dignity still shine on like some lamp. These ought to weigh greatly with you in easing your distress. And that you are away from your own people is the more easily to be borne for this reason: that at the same time you are away from many and great distresses, all of which I would write out to you in full, but that I fear you would learn, in your absence, things which, just because you do not see them, make me think you in a better case than we who do.
qua re meminisse debes eos, qui auctoritatem et consilium tuum non sint secuti, sua stultitia occidisse, cum tua prudentia salvi esse potuissent. dices: ’ quid me ista res consolatur in tantis tenebris et quasi parietinis rei publicae?’ est omnino vix consolabilis dolor; tanta est omnium rerum amissio et desperatio reciperandi; sed tamen et Caesar ipse ita de te iudicat et omnes cives sic existimant, quasi lumen aliquod exstinctis ceteris elucere sanctitatem et prudentiam et dignitatem tuam. haec tibi ad levandas molestias magna esse debent. quod autem a tuis abes, id eo levius ferendum est, quod eodem tempore a multis et magnis molestiis abes; quas ad te omnis perscriberem, nisi vererer ne ea cognosceres absens, quae quia non vides, mihi videris meliore esse condicione quam nos, qui videmus.
Thus far I judge my consolation rightly applied: insofar as you could be informed, by a most devoted friend, of those things by which your distress might be eased. The rest lies in yourself, and neither is unknown to me, nor — as I at any rate feel — among the lesser comforts, but by far the greatest. I prove them daily in my own experience, and find that they seem to bring me salvation itself. As for you, I recall from boyhood that you were a most ardent student of every branch of learning, and that with the keenest zeal and care you mastered everything which the wisest men had handed down for living well; pursuits which, even in the best of times, could afford both use and pleasure, but in these times we have nothing else in which to find rest. I shall do nothing presumptuous, nor urge a man so endowed with knowledge and with such a nature to return to those arts to which from the earliest period of your life you devoted your study;
hactenus existimo nostram consolationem recte adhibitam esse, quoad certior ab homine amicissimo fieres iis de rebus, quibus levari possent molestiae tuae. reliqua sunt in te ipso neque mihi ignota nec minima solacia, ut quidem ego sentio, multo maxima; quae ego experiens cotidie sic probo, ut ea mihi salutem adferre videantur. te autem ab initio aetatis memoria teneo summe omnium doctrinarum studiosum fuisse omniaque, quae a sapientissimis ad bene vivendum tradita essent, summo studio curaque didicisse; quae quidem vel optimis rebus et usui et delectationi esse possent, his vero temporibus habemus aliud nihil, in quo adquiescamus. nihil faciam insolenter neque te tali vel scientia vel natura praeditum hortabor, ut ad eas te referas artis, quibus a primis temporibus aetatis studium tuum dedisti;
I shall only say — and this I hope you will approve — that I myself, once I saw that there was no place left for that art to which I had given my study, neither in the Senate-house nor in the Forum, have turned all my care and labor to philosophy. For your own excellent and singular knowledge little more room is left than for mine. Therefore I do not, indeed, urge it on you; but I have so persuaded myself that you too occupy yourself with the same studies, which, even if they brought less profit, would yet draw the mind away from anxiety. Your son Servius, in all the liberal arts, and most of all in this one in which I have written that I find my rest, so engages himself that he excels in it; by me he is loved in such a way that I would yield place to you, but to no one else; and he repays me with a gratitude in which — as is easily seen — he reckons that, by his attention and respect for me, he is doing what is most welcome to you as well.
tantum dicam, quod te spero approbaturum, me, postea quam illi arti, cui studueram, nihil esse loci neque in curia neque in foro viderem, omnem meam curam atque operam ad philosophiam contulisse. tuae scientiae excellenti ac singulari non multo plus quam nostrae relictum est loci. qua re non equidem te moneo, sed mihi ita persuasi, te quoque in isdem versari rebus, quae etiam si minus prodessent, animum tamen a sollicitudine abducerent. Servius quidem tuus in omnibus ingenuis artibus in primisque in hac, in qua ego me scripsi adquiescere, ita versatur, ut excellat; a me vero sic diligitur, ut tibi, uni concedam, praeterea nemini; mihique ab eo gratia refertur, in quo ille existimat, quod facile appareat, cum me colat et observet, tibi quoque in eo se facere gratissimum.