Ad Familiares 6.1
Ad Familiares 6.1
Headnote
Cicero to A. Manlius Torquatus, written at Rome at the end of the second intercalary month of 46 BC (Perseus: Romae ex.~m.~intercal.~post.~a.~708 (46)). Torquatus, a Pompeian who had not been pardoned with the rest after Pharsalus, was still living away from Rome in continued political exile. The letter is an attempt at consolation written by one defeated former Pompeian to another, with the additional weight that Cicero — restored to the city but not to public life — was trying to argue his friend back from despair toward the form of Stoic composure he was at the same time arguing himself toward.
The letter is philosophically pitched in a way that anticipates the great consolatory works of the following year: the lost Consolatio for Tullia, the Tusculan Disputations, parts of De Officiis. The central argument of §§3–4 — that what we owed the commonwealth was duty, not the demand for a particular outcome; that, the outcome having gone against us, we have nothing to be ashamed of, only something to bear — is the doctrine on which Cicero will lean for the rest of his philosophical period. The reasoning that the defeated man must not feign surprise at what was always among the possible outcomes (“We were not so deranged as to suppose victory was assured to us”) is offered in the voice of a man who has been over the same ground himself.
In §6 Cicero notes that Torquatus has Servius Sulpicius Rufus near him — the same Servius who in mid-March of the following year will write to Cicero on the death of Tullia (Fam.~4.5). The valedictory section returns to the private register: those to whom Cicero owed most “the chances of this war have torn from me,” and what remains of his counsel and his effort is owed to Torquatus and his children. The closing balances — “under some form of commonwealth you will be the man you ought to be, or with the commonwealth ruined your case will be no worse than every other man’s” — carry the characteristic Ciceronian antithesis of the period: there are two futures, and the philosophical man is ready for either.
The confusion of everything is now such that each man regrets his own fortune above all others, and there is no one who would not rather be anywhere than where he is. And yet I have no doubt that, at this time, for a good man, to be at Rome is the most wretched lot of all. For although wherever a man is, his perception is the same, and the bitterness from the ruin of public and private fortunes the same, still the eyes increase the pain: they force on him the sight of what other men only hear about, and do not let him turn his mind away from the miseries. So although you must be tormented by the longing for many things, still that grief by which I hear you are above all worn down — that you are not at Rome — relieve your spirit of it. For though you long for your own and what is yours under great distress, still those things you miss are holding to their condition, and would not hold it any better were you here, and stand under no peril of their own; and you ought not, when you think of your own people, either to demand for them some special fortune or to refuse them the fortune that is common to all.
etsi ea perturbatio est omnium rerum, ut suae quemque fortunae maxime paeniteat nemoque sit quin ubivis quam ibi, ubi sit, esse malit, tamen mihi dubium non est quin hoc tempore bono viro Romae esse miserrimum sit. nam, etsi, quocumque in loco quisque est, idem est ei sensus et eadem acerbitas ex interitu rerum et publicarum et suarum, tamen oculi augent dolorem, qui ea, quae ceteri audiunt, intueri cogunt nec avertere a miseriis cogitationem sinunt. qua re, etsi multarum rerum desiderio te angi necesse est, tamen illo dolore, quo maxime te confici audio, quod Romae non sis, animum tuum libera. etsi enim cum magna molestia tuos tuaque desideras, tamen illa quidem, quae requiris, suum statum tenent nec melius, si tu adesses, tenerent nec sunt ullo in proprio periculo; nec debes tu, cum de tuis cogitas, aut praecipuam aliquam fortunam postulare aut communem recusare.
As for yourself, Torquatus, the right way to handle your spirit is not to bring despair or fear into the council of your thoughts. For neither has the man who up to now has been more unjust to you than your dignity called for failed to give large signs of a temper softened toward you; and yet that man himself, from whom safety is sought, has not yet a settled or assured plan for his own safety. And since the issues of all wars are uncertain, I see clearly that on the side of the one victory you are in no danger that is at all separate from the destruction of every man, and on the side of the other I know for certain you have never had anything to fear from yourself.
de te autem ipso, Torquate, est tuum sic agitare animo, ut non adhibeas in consilium cogitationum tuarum desperationem aut timorem. nec enim is, qui in te adhuc iniustior quam tua dignitas postulabat fuit, non magna signa dedit animi erga te mitigati, nec tamen is ipse, a quo salus petitur, habet explicatam aut exploratam rationem salutis suae; cumque omnium bellorum exitus incerti sint, ab altera victoria tibi periculum nullum esse perspicio, quod quidem seiunctum sit ab omnium interitu, ab altera te ipsum numquam timuisse certo scio.
It remains that the very thing which I put forward as a kind of consolation should torment you most: the common peril of the commonwealth. And for an evil so great, however many things learned men may say, still I fear that no true consolation can be found except that one which is as great as the strength and sinew that is in each man’s spirit. For if to think rightly and to act rightly is enough for living well and happily, I fear it is unholy to call wretched the man who can sustain himself by his consciousness of the best counsels. Nor do I think that we, drawn on by the prizes of victory, once left our country and our children and our fortunes; we seemed rather to be following a certain duty, just and pious and owed to the commonwealth and to our own standing; and when we did so, we were not so deranged as to suppose victory was assured to us.
reliquum est ut te id ipsum, quod ego quasi consolationis loco pono, maxime excruciet, commune periculum rei publicae. cuius tanti mali, quamvis docti viri multa dicant, tamen vereor ne consolatio nulla possit vera reperiri praeter illam, quae tanta est, quantum in cuiusque animo roboris est atque nervorum. si enim bene sentire recteque facere satis est ad bene beateque vivendum, vereor ne eum, qui se optimorum consiliorum conscientia sustentare possit, miserum esse nefas sit dicere. nec enim nos arbitror victoriae praemiis ductos patriam olim et liberos et fortunas reliquisse; sed quoddam nobis officium iustum et pium et debitum rei p. nostraeque dignitati videbamur sequi nec, cum id faciebamus, tam eramus amentes, ut explorata nobis
Therefore, if what has happened is the very thing that, on entering the cause, we set before ourselves as something that could happen, we ought not to fall in spirit as though something had happened we never thought possible. Let us therefore have the disposition that reason and truth prescribe: to think that nothing in life is required of us except to be without fault, and that, being free of that, we should bear all human things with calm and moderation. And this argument tends to this end: that, with everything ruined, virtue itself can still sustain itself. But if there is any hope for the commonwealth, you ought not, whatever the future condition turns out to be, to be without your share in it.
esset victoria. qua re, si id evenit, quod ingredientibus nobis in causam propositum fuit accidere posse, non debemus ita cadere animis, quasi aliquid evenerit, quod fieri posse numquam putarimus. simus igitur ea mente, quam ratio et veritas praescribit, ut nihil in vita nobis praestandum praeter culpam putemus, eaque cum careamus, omnia humana placate et moderate feramus. atque haec eo pertinet oratio, ut perditis rebus omnibus tamen ipsa virtus se sustentare posse videatur. sed, si est spes aliqua rebus communibus, ea tu, quicumque status est futurus, carere non debes.
And as I was writing this, it came into my mind that I am the very man whose despair you used to censure, whom you used to rouse by your authority when I was hesitating and losing faith. At that time it was not our cause that I disapproved of, but our policy. For I saw that we were too late in opposing those arms which had long since been built up by our own hand, and it grieved me that public right was being argued by javelins and swords, not by our policies and authority. Nor when I was saying that what has happened would happen was I divining the future; rather, what I saw could happen — and what would be ruinous if it did — that I feared would come about. Especially since, if I were forced to give a sure word on one outcome or the other, I could promise with more confidence that the thing which has happened would happen. For we were superior in those resources which do not come out into the field, but in the use of arms and the strength of soldiers we were inferior. But you, now — summon up that spirit, I beg, which you then judged I ought to have.
atque haec mihi scribenti veniebat in mentem me esse eum, cuius tu desperationem accusare solitus esses quemque auctoritate tua cunctantem et diffidentem excitare. quo quidem tempore non ego causam nostram sed consilium improbabam. sero enim nos iis armis adversari videbam, quae multo ante confirmata per nosmet ipsos erant, dolebamque pilis et gladiis, non consiliis neque auctoritatibus nostris de iure publico disceptari. neque ego, ea, quae facta sunt, fore cum dicebam, divinabam futura, sed, quod et fieri posse et exitiosum fore, si evenisset, videbam, id ne accideret timebam, praesertim cum, si mihi alterum utrum de eventu atque exitu rerum promittendum esset, id futurum, quod evenit, exploratius possem promittere. Iis enim rebus praestabamus, quae non prodeunt in aciem, usu autem armorum et militum robore inferiores eramus. sed tu illum animum nunc adhibe, quaeso, quo me tum esse oportere censebas.
I have written this much because your man Philargyrus, when I was asking him about everything to do with you, told me — with what seemed to me the most faithful spirit — that you are sometimes more deeply troubled than you should be. You should not be so, nor doubt that either, under some form of commonwealth, you will be the man you ought to be, or, with the commonwealth ruined, your case will be no worse than every other man’s. And this present time, when we are all without breath and in suspense, you have all the more reason to bear with a steady spirit: because you are in the city in which reason and moderation in living were born and reared, and because you have Servius Sulpicius, whom you have always uniquely loved — who is, I am sure, consoling you by both his goodwill and his wisdom. Had we followed his authority and his counsel, we should have undergone the power of the man in the toga rather than the victory of the man in arms.
haec eo scripsi, quod mihi Philargyrus tuus omnia de te requirenti fidelissimo animo, ut mihi quidem visus est, narravit te interdum sollicitum solere esse vehementius. quod facere non debes nec dubitare quin aut aliqua re p. sis is futurus, qui esse debes, aut perdita non adflictiore condicione quam ceteri. hoc vero tempus, quo exanimati omnes et suspensi sumus, hoc moderatiore animo ferre debes, quod et in urbe ea es, ubi nata et alta est ratio ac moderatio vitae, et habes Ser. Sulpicium, quem semper unice dilexisti; qui te profecto et benevolentia et sapientia consolatur. cuius si essemus et auctoritatem et consilium secuti, togati potius potentiam quam armati victoriam subissemus.
But these things, perhaps, have run on longer than was necessary. What is greater, I shall set out more briefly. I have no one to whom I owe more than to you; those to whom I owed as much as you understand — those the chances of this war have torn from me; and what kind of man I am at this moment, I know. But because no one is so beaten down that, if he sets himself to nothing other than what he is doing, he cannot still put a hand to something and accomplish something, I would have you certain that all my counsel, my labour, my zeal is owed to you and to your children.
sed haec longiora fortasse fuerunt quam necesse fuit; illa, quae maiora sunt, brevius exponam. ego habeo, cui quam tibi debeam, neminem; quibus tantum debebam, quantum tu intellegis, eos huius mihi belli casus eripuit; qui sim autem hoc tempore intellego; sed, quia nemo est tam adflictus quin, si nihil aliud studeat nisi id, quod agit, possit navare aliquid et efficere, omne meum consilium, operam, studium certe velim existimes tibi tuisque liberis esse debitum.