HermitshCicero by Claude

Letter · April 45 BC · in Attici Ficuleano

Ad Familiares 4.6

Ad Familiares 4.6

Headnote

Cicero to Servius Sulpicius Rufus, written at Atticus’s Ficuleanum estate about the middle of April 45 BC (Perseus: in Attici Ficuleano medio m.~Apr.~a.~709 (45)). Tullia had died in mid-February; Cicero, unable to remain at Tusculum where she had died and unwilling to be in Rome, had withdrawn to Atticus’s small property at Ficulea, north-east of the city, where he spent much of the spring in retreat. This is his reply to Servius’s letter of consolation (Fam.~4.5), arriving some weeks after it had crossed from Athens. The pair is one of the great correspondence-pairs in Latin literature, and the bound-volume reader is expected to read the two letters together.

The letter engages Servius’s argument philosophically — Cicero acknowledges that he should bear his case as a man of Servius’s wisdom would think it ought to be borne — but at the same time admits, with a candour the project will not see him match again on this question, that the philosophical apparatus he has spent his life building does not get him through this moment. The exempla Servius might have invoked — Q. Fabius Maximus, L. Aemilius Paullus, Sulpicius Galus, M. Porcius Cato Censorius — are exempla Cicero himself adduces in order to set them aside: those men, having lost their sons, were still being upheld by the standing they had in the commonwealth, and Cicero has no such standing left. The home that once received him when he came sorrowing from the Forum no longer holds his daughter; the commonwealth that once received him when he came sorrowing from home is no longer his to return to. The English of §2 should sit at this load-bearing line: he is away from both, because neither can console the grief he takes from the other.

In §3 Cicero turns from grief to the immediate political question — how he and Servius are to live through a time “to be governed entirely by the will of one man.” The delicacy of the formulation is characteristic of the period: the “man of prudence, of generous bearing, and not unfriendly to me, and a particularly warm friend to you” is Caesar, and the question is not how to act but how to be permitted by his favour to keep quiet. The letter ends as it began: with a request to see Servius soon.

For my part, Servius, I should have wished, as you write, that you had been with me in this gravest of my misfortunes. How much, by being present, you could have helped me, both by consoling and by grieving with me as if at almost equal share, I see easily enough from this: that on reading your letter I was steadied somewhat. For both you have written things that could lighten a man’s mourning, and in consoling me you yourself brought to the work no small grief of your own spirit. Your son Servius, by every office that the moment allowed, has shown me both how much he himself thought of me and how welcome he supposed his bearing toward me would be to you. His services have often, of course, been more pleasant to me; never have they been more welcome. As for me — it is not your speech alone, and the all-but-fellowship in suffering, but also your authority that is consoling me. For I count it a disgrace not to bear my own case in the way a man of your wisdom thinks it ought to be borne. But sometimes I am overcome, and I can scarcely stand up against the grief, because those consolations fail me which did not fail the other men, whose examples I set before myself, in a like turn of fortune. For both Q. Maximus, who lost a son who had been consul, a distinguished man and great in things accomplished; and L. Paullus, who lost two sons within seven days; and your Galus; and M. Cato, who lost a son of the highest character and the highest virtue — these men lived in times such that their grief was consoled by the standing which they were attaining from the commonwealth itself.
ego vero, Servi, vellem, ut scribis, in meo gravissimo casu adfuisses; quantum enim praesens me adiuvare potueris et consolando et prope aeque dolendo, facile ex eo intellego, quod litteris lectis aliquantum adquievi. nam et ea scripsisti, quae levare luctum possent, et in me consolando non mediocrem ipse animi dolorem adhibuisti. Servius tamen tuus omnibus officiis, quae illi tempori tribui potuerunt, declaravit et quanti ipse me faceret et quam suum talem erga me animum tibi gratum putaret fore. cuius officia iucundiora scilicet saepe mihi fuerunt, numquam tamen gratiora. me autem non oratio tua solum et societas paene aegritudinis, sed etiam auctoritas consolatur; turpe enim esse existimo me non ita ferre casum meum, ut tu tali sapientia praeditus ferendum putas. sed opprimor interdum et vix resisto dolori, quod ea me solacia deficiunt, quae ceteris, quorum mihi exempla propono, simili in fortuna non defuerunt. nam et Q. Maximus, qui filium consularem clarum virum et magnis rebus gestis, amisit, et L. Paullus, qui duo septem diebus, et vester Galus et M. Cato, qui summo ingenio, summa virtute filium perdidit, iis temporibus fuerunt, ut eorum luctum ipsorum dignitas consolaretur ea, quam ex re publica consequebantur;
But I, with those distinctions you yourself recall taken from me — which I had won at the greatest pains — had one consolation left, and that has been wrenched away. My thoughts were no longer hindered by the affairs of my friends, no longer by the administration of the commonwealth; nothing pleased me to do in the Forum; I could not look at the Senate-house; I judged — and the judgement was true — that I had lost every fruit both of my industry and of my fortune. But, when I would consider that these losses I shared with you and with certain others, and when I broke myself down and forced myself to bear them with endurance, I had a place to take refuge in, a place to rest, in whose conversation and sweetness I could lay down all my cares and pains. Now, with this so heavy wound on top, even those griefs which had seemed to have healed are breaking open again. For it is not now as it was then, when home received me sad from the commonwealth and lifted me; nor, sorrowing at home, can I now take refuge in the commonwealth, and find rest in its goods. And so I am away both from home and from the Forum: home can no longer console the grief I take from the commonwealth, and the commonwealth cannot console the grief I take from home.
mihi autem amissis ornamentis iis, quae ipse commemoras, quaeque eram maximis laboribus adeptus, unum manebat illud solacium, quod ereptum est. non amicorum negotiis, non rei publicae procuratione impediebantur cogitationes meae, nihil in foro agere libebat, aspicere curiam non poteram, existimabam, id quod erat, omnis me et industriae meae fructus et fortunae perdidisse. sed, cum cogitarem haec mihi tecum et cum quibusdam esse communia, et cum frangerem iam ipse me cogeremque illa ferre toleranter,,habebam quo confugerem, ubi conquiescerem, cuius in sermone et suavitate omnis curas doloresque deponerem. nunc autem hoc tam gravi vulnere etiam illa, quae consanuisse videbantur, recrudescunt non enim, ut tum me a re publica maestum domus excipiebat, quae levaret, sic nunc domo maerens ad rem publicam confugere possum, ut in eius bonis adquiescam. itaque et domo absum et foro, quod nec eum dolorem quem de re publica capio, domus iam consolari potest nec domesticum res publica.
The more, then, I expect you, the more I long to see you as soon as may be. No reasoning can bring me a greater consolation than the joining-back of our familiar conversation. And yet I was hoping that your arrival — so I was hearing — was drawing near. Now, for many reasons I wish to see you at the earliest moment, and above all so that we may take counsel together beforehand on how we are to carry ourselves through this present time, which is to be governed entirely by the will of one man — a man of prudence, of generous bearing, and (as I think I have made out) not unfriendly to me, and a particularly warm friend to you. This being so, it is nevertheless a matter for grave deliberation what course of conduct we should adopt: not for any action of our own, but for keeping quietly, by his concession and favour. Farewell.
quo magis te exspecto teque videre quam primum cupio; maius mihi solacium adferre ratio nulla potest quam coniunctio consuetudinis sermonumque nostrorum; quamquam sperabam tuum adventum (sic enim audiebam) appropinquare. ego autem cum multis de causis te exopto quam primum videre, tum etiam ut ante commentemur inter nos, qua ratione nobis traducendum sit hoc tempus, quod est totum ad unius voluntatem accommodandum et prudentis et liberalis et, ut perspexisse videor, nec a me alieni et tibi amicissimi. quod cum ita sit, magnae tamen est deliberationis, quae ratio sit ineunda nobis non agendi aliquid, sed illius concessu et beneficio quiescendi. vale.

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Ad Familiares 4.6

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