Ad Familiares 6.7
Ad Familiares 6.7
Headnote
Aulus Caecina to Cicero, written from Sicily in mid-December 46 BC (Perseus: in Sicilia med.~m.~Dec.~708 (46)). This is the only piece of the Caecina cluster in Caecina’s own voice. For Caecina — the antiquarian son of Cicero’s old client, the man who had circulated the Querelae against Caesar before the war, and who was now in Sicilian exile waiting on Cicero’s mediation — see the headnote to Fam.~6.6. The letter is a reply to Fam.~6.5 and is sent along with a new book of Caecina’s, which his son is to put into Cicero’s hand on condition that Cicero will go over it and amend (or hold back) whatever might do its author further harm.
The voice is markedly Caecina’s, not Cicero’s: anxious, self-aware, learned. He is exile-from-the-elite rather than mere supplicant, and he reasons with Cicero as an equal in cultivation about his own dangerous situation. The antiquarian register surfaces in §~1 in a memorable Etruscan-style sententia, set as a tricolon of corrections: a slip of the pen is erased, a folly is fined in reputation, “meus error exsilio corrigitur” — my own error is corrected by exile. It surfaces again in §~3, in the architectural image of the staircase whose steps have been pulled out or cut through, which no longer carries a climber but builds the danger of collapse: a designer’s image, for the writer who could no longer write freely about Caesar. The dramatic interior monologue of §~4 (“This he will accept; that word is dangerous. What if I change this?”) is the most personal moment in the cluster — it shows the literary man at work and afraid.
The substantive request is in §§~5–6: the time for decision has come; Cicero is not to wait on Caecina’s young son, who is too inexperienced to manage it; the whole load is Cicero’s. Caecina’s careful insistence that this is not a favour Cicero is doing but a duty he is taking up — “not that you do what you are asked, but that the whole load is yours” — is the polite assumption of equal standing under unequal fortune. The book mentioned at the head and foot of the letter appears to be a new piece of Caecina’s writing, and it is here, not to the Querelae, that the corrections refer.
That the book has not been put into your hands more quickly — forgive my fear, and pity my situation. My son, as I hear, was alarmed, and not without reason: that if the book got out (since it matters less in what spirit a thing is written than in what spirit it is received), the very fact of its having appeared might hurt me where I least deserved it — and that, when I am to this day still paying the penalty of my pen. In this matter my fate is unique. For where a fault in the writing is taken away by the eraser, where folly is fined by reputation, my own error is corrected by exile — the sum of my crime being that, with arms in my hand, I spoke ill of an adversary.
quod tibi non tam celeriter liber est redditus, ignosce timori nostro et miserere temporis. filius, ut audio, pertimuit, neque iniuria, si liber exisset (quoniam non tam interest quo animo scribatur quam quo accipiatur), ne ea res inepte mihi noceret, cum praesertim adhuc stili poenas dem. qua quidem in re singulari sum fato. nam cum mendum scripturae litura tollatur, stultitia fama multetur, meus error exsilio corrigitur, cuius summa criminis est quod armatus adversario male dixi.
There is not one of us, I suppose, who did not vow vows for his side’s victory, not one who, even when he was sacrificing for some other reason, did not even at that moment pray that Caesar should be defeated as soon as possible. If this never crosses his mind, he is fortunate in everything; but if he knows it and is persuaded of it, what cause has he to be angry with one man who wrote something against his wishes, when he has pardoned everyone who, in many a prayer, importuned the gods against his safety?
nemo nostrum est, ut opinor, quin vota victoriae suae fecerit, nemo, quin, etiam cum de alia re immolaret, tamen eo quidem ipso tempore, ut quam primum Caesar superaretur, optarit. hoc si non cogitat, omnibus rebus felix est; si scit et persuasus est, quid irascitur ei qui aliquid scripsit contra suam voluntatem, cum ignorit omnibus qui multa deos venerati sint contra eius salutem?
But, to come back to my point: this was the cause of my fear. What I wrote of you, by my honest faith I wrote sparely and timidly, holding myself back — almost shying off. And yet who does not know that this kind of writing ought to be not merely unfettered but full-speed and high-flying? To speak ill of another is judged to be free (though one must take care not to slip into mere insolence); to praise oneself is hampered, lest the vice of arrogance follow it; only this is truly free — to praise another, since whatever you take from that praise must be assigned either to weakness in you or to envy. And I cannot say but that it has fallen out the more kindly and the more conveniently for you: for since I could not do brilliantly, the first thing was not to touch the subject, the second to confer the benefit as sparingly as possible. And as it is, I held myself in; I cut much down, I struck much out, I left a good deal in altogether unwritten. Just so — if of a flight of stairs you take some steps away, cut others through, and leave some others ill-fastened, you build the danger of collapse, not the means of ascent: in just that way, with the bent for writing bound here and broken there by so many troubles, what worth hearing, what plausible thing, can it bring forward?
sed ut eodem revertar, causa haec fuit timoris: scripsi de te parce medius fidius et timide non revocans me ipse sed paene refugiens. genus autem hoc scripturae non modo liberum sed incitatum atque elatum esse debere quis ignorat? solutum existimatur esse alteri male dicere (tamen cavendum est ne in petulantiam incidas), impeditum se ipsum laudare, ne vitium adrogantiae subsequatur, solum vero liberum alterum laudare, de quo quicquid detrahas, necesse est aut infirmitati aut invidiae adsignetur. ac nescio an tibi gratius opportuniusque acciderit; nam quod praeclare facere non poteram, primum erat non attingere, secundum beneficium quam parcissime facere. sed tamen ego quidem me sustinui; multa minui, multa sustuli, complura ne posui quidem. quem ad modum igitur, scalarum gradus si alios tollas, alios incidas, non nullos male haerentis relinquas, ruinae periculum struas, non ascensum pares, sic tot malis tum vinctum tum fractum studium scribendi quid dignum auribus aut probabile potest adferre?
But when I came to Caesar’s own name, I trembled in every limb — not from fear of the punishment, but from fear of his judgement. For I do not know Caesar in his entirety. What sort of mind, do you think, is mine, while I talk it over with myself? — “This he will accept; that word is dangerous. What if I change this? But I am afraid it will be worse. Well, suppose I praise someone: do I give no offence? And when, on the other hand, I reproach someone — what if Caesar would not have me?” — He pursues the pen of an armed enemy; what will he do to a defeated man not yet restored? You too increase my fear, you who in your Orator take cover behind Brutus and look for a partner in your excuse. When the patron of all men does this, what ought I — your old client, and now everyone’s — to feel? In this lawsuit of fear, then, and under the rack of blind suspicion, when very many things must be written by guesswork at another man’s feeling and not by one’s own judgement, how hard it is to come through, I know — if you have less of the experience yourself, that is because, for everything, your supreme and outstanding talent has armed you. But I had told my son to read the book to you and take it away with him, or else to give it on this condition: that, if you took it, you would correct it — that is, would make it altogether a different book.
Cum vero ad ipsius Caesaris nomen veni, toto corpore contremesco non poenae metu, sed illius iudici. totum enim Caesarem non novi. quem putas animum esse, ubi secum loquitur? ’ hoc probabit, hoc verbum suspiciosum est. quid, si hoc muto? at vereor ne peius sit. age vero, laudo aliquem; non offendo? Cum porro reprendo aliquem, quid, si non vult? armati stilum persequitur; victi et nondum restituti quid faciet?’ auges etiam tu mihi timorem, qui in Oratore tuo caves tibi per Brutum et ad excusationem socium quaeris. Ubi hoc omnium patronus facit, quid me, veterem tuum, nunc omnium clientem, sentire oportet? in hac igitur calumnia timoris et caecae suspicionis tormento, cum plurima ad alieni sensus coniecturam, non ad suum iudicium scribantur, quam difficile sit evadere, si minus expertus es, quod te ad omnia summum atque excellens ingenium armavit, nos sentimus. sed tamen ego filio dixeram, librum tibi legeret et auferret aut ea condicione daret, si reciperes te correcturum, hoc est si totum alium faceres.
As for the journey to Asia: though the strictest necessity was pressing, I did as you ordered. What can I urge you, on my own behalf? You see the time has come when a decision must be made about me. There is nothing, my dear Cicero, for which you should wait on my son. He is a young man; he cannot, whether by application or by age or by fear, think everything through. It is on you that the whole business must rest; in you is all my hope. You, in your wisdom, know in what things Caesar takes pleasure, by what he is taken; from you all the moves must come, by you all must be brought to their issue — you have much weight with the man himself, and the most with all his people.
de Asiatico itinere, quamquam summa necessitas premebat, ut imperasti, feci. te pro me quid horter? vides tempus venisse, quo necesse sit de nobis constitui. nihil est, mi Cicero, quod filium meum exspectes. adulescens est; omnia excogitare vel studio vel aetate vel metu non potest. totum negotium tu sustineas oportet; in te mihi omnis spes est. tu pro tua prudentia, quibus rebus gaudeat, quibus capiatur Caesar, tenes; a te omnia proficiscantur et per te ad exitum perducantur necesse est; apud ipsum multum, apud eius omnis plurimum potes.
If you can persuade yourself of one thing — that this is not a matter of your doing what you are asked to do (though even that would be great and ample) — but that the whole load is yours: then you will see it through; unless perhaps in my wretchedness I am laying the load on you too foolishly, or in our friendship too impudently. But the habit of your life is an excuse for either charge. For since you have made it your habit to labour for your friends, your familiars no longer merely hope for it from you, they require it of you. As for the book your son will hand you, I ask of you that it not go out — or that you correct it so that it does me no harm.
unum tibi si persuaseris, non hoc esse tui muneris, si quid rogatus fueris, ut facias (quamquam id magnum et amplum est), sed totum tuum esse onus, perficies; nisi forte aut in miseria nimis stulte aut in amicitia nimis impudenter tibi onus impono. sed utrique rei excusationem tuae vitae consuetudo dat. nam quod ita consuesti pro amicis laborare, non iam sic sperant abs te sed etiam sic imperant tibi familiares quod ad librum attinet quem tibi filius dabit, peto a te ne exeat, aut ita corrigas ne mihi noceat.