HermitshCicero by Claude

Letter · 31 May 45 BC · Athenis

Ad Familiares 4.12

Ad Familiares 4.12

Headnote

Servius Sulpicius Rufus to Cicero, written from Athens on the day before the Kalends of June 45 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. Athenis pr. K. Iunias a. 709 (45), the closing line D. pr. K. Iun. Athenis confirming both date and place. The salutation SERVIVS CICERONI sal. PLVR.\ flips the usual direction of the corpus: this is one of the few letters in the Familiares written to Cicero rather than by him, and is preserved alongside Cicero’s own grief-stricken correspondence about the murder. Servius Sulpicius Rufus is the great jurist and Caesarian proconsul of Achaia in 46–45; M. Claudius Marcellus, the Pompeian consul of 51 whose pardon by Caesar in September 46 occasioned Cicero’s Pro Marcello, was on his way back to Italy after years of exile. He met his end at the Piraeus, struck down at dinner by his own intimate P. Magius Cilo — a death so theatrical and unexpected that Cicero will return to it again and again over the coming months.

The letter is one of the masterpieces of the corpus. Sulpicius writes as a jurist and as a witness: the chronology is tight (“the tenth day before the Kalends of June the next day the third day after that about the tenth hour of the night”), the narrative reported in the indirect speech of the man who brought the news (nuntiavit se ipsum interfecisse se a Marcello ad me missum esse), the two wounds catalogued with anatomical exactness (unum in stomacho, alterum in capite secundum aurem). The third section turns from chronicle to epitaph: the antithesis vir clarissimus ab homine deterrimo (“a most illustrious man by a most worthless one”) is the sentence that has fixed the murder in literary memory, and the elaborate burial in the Academy — “the most famous gymnasium in the world” — gives the philosopher-statesman a Platonic resting place. This letter, together with Cicero’s reply (Fam.\ 4.6, already written) and Sulpicius’s later consolatio (Fam.\ 4.5), constitutes a triptych on the death of the Republic.

Although I know that the news I shall bring you is not the most welcome, still — since chance and nature have the mastery over us — it seemed right that, whatever the case might be, I should inform you. On the tenth day before the Kalends of June, when I had crossed by ship from Epidaurus to the Piraeus, I met there our colleague M. Marcellus, and I spent that day there in order to be with him. On the next day, when I had taken my leave of him, with the intention of going from Athens into Boeotia and finishing out the remainder of my judicial business, he, by his own account, was on the point of sailing past Cape Malea toward Italy.
etsi scio non iucundissimum me nuntium vobis allaturum, tamen, quoniam casus et natura in nobis dominatur, visum est faciendum, quoquo modo res se haberet, vos certiores facere. A. d. x K. Iun. cum ab Epidauro Piraeum navi advectus essem, ibi M. Marcellum, conlegam nostrum, conveni eumque diem ibi consumpsi, ut cum eo essem. postero die cum ab eo digressus essem eo consilio, ut ab Athenis in Boeotiam irem reliquamque iuris dictionem ab solverem, ille, ut aiebat, supra Maleas in Italiam versus navigaturus erat.
On the third day after that, when I had it in mind to set out from Athens, at about the tenth hour of the night P. Postumius, his intimate, came to me and reported that our colleague M. Marcellus had been struck after dinner by P. Magius Cilo, his own intimate, with a dagger, and had received two wounds, one in the belly, the other in the head beside the ear; that he hoped, nonetheless, that he might live; that Magius had killed himself afterward; that he had been sent to me by Marcellus to bring me this news and to ask that I send him doctors. So I assembled doctors and set out at once for the spot, at first light. When I was not far from the Piraeus, the boy Acidim came to meet me with a wax tablet on which was written that a little before dawn Marcellus had met his end.
post diem tertium eius diei cum ab Athenis proficisci in animo haberem, circiter hora decima noctis P. Postumius, familiaris eius, ad me venit et mihi nuntiavit M. Marcellum, conlegam nostrum, post cenae tempus a P. Magio Cilone, familiare eius, pugione percussum esse et duo vulnera accepisse, unum in stomacho, alterum in capite secundum aurem sperare tamen eum vivere posse; Magium se ipsum interfecisse postea; se a Marcello ad me missum esse, qui haec nuntiaret et rogaret, uti medicos ei mitterem. itaque medicos coegi et e vestigio eo sum profectus prima luce. cum non longe a Piraeo abessem, puer Acidim obviam mihi venit cum codicillis, in quibus erat scriptum paulo ante lucem Marcellum diem suum obisse.
So a most illustrious man has been carried off by a most worthless one by the harshest of deaths; and the man whom his enemies had spared for the sake of his standing has found a friend to deal him death. I went on, even so, to his tent. I found two freedmen and a very few slaves; the rest, they said, had fled in terror, because their master had been killed in front of his tent. I was compelled, in the very litter in which I had myself been carried, and with my own bearers, to bring him back into the city; and there, with such resources as Athens afforded, I saw to it that the funeral made for him should be sufficiently splendid. From the Athenians I could not win the granting of a place of burial within the city, since they said they were prevented by religious scruple — and indeed they had never before granted it to anyone. The next best thing they did permit us: that we should bury him in whichever gymnasium we wished. We chose, in the most famous gymnasium in the world, the place of the Academy; and there we cremated him, and afterwards saw to it that those same Athenians should commission, on that same spot, a marble monument for him. Thus, in what duties were ours to discharge — in virtue of our shared office and our personal connection — we have done him every service, in life and in death. Farewell. Dispatched the day before the Kalends of June, from Athens.
ita vir clarissimus ab homine deterrimo acerbissima morte est adfectus, et, cui inimici propter dignitatem pepercerant, inventus est amicus, qui ei mortem offerret. ego tamen ad tabernaculum eius perrexi. inveni duos libertos et pauculos servos; reliquos aiebant profugisse metu perterritos, quod dominus eorum ante tabernaculum interfectus esset. coactus sum in eadem illa lectica, qua ipse delatus eram, meisque lecticariis in urbem eum referre ibique pro ea copia, quae Athenis erat, funus ei satis amplum faciendum curavi. ab Atheniensibus, locum sepulturae intra urbem ut darent, impetrare non potui, quod religione se impediri dicerent, neque tamen id antea cuiquam concesserant. quod proximum fuit, uti in quo vellemus gymnasio eum sepeliremus, nobis permiserunt. nos in nobilissimo orbi terrarum gymnasio Academiae locum delegimus ibique eum combussimus posteaque curavimus, ut eidem Athenienses in eodem loco monumentum ei marmoreum faciendum locarent. ita, quae nostra officia fuerunt pro collegio et pro propinquitate, et vivo et mortuo omnia ei praestitimus. vale. D. pr. K. Iun. Athenis.

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Ad Familiares 4.12

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