Ad Familiares 6.10
Ad Familiares 6.10
Headnote
Cicero to Trebianus, written at Rome about August 46 BC (works.yaml -0046-08-15 at month-precision; the Perseus dateline reads Romae circ.~m.~Sext.~a.~708 (46) — “around the month of Sextilis”). Trebianus, a Roman of some standing whose name surfaces only in this short cluster of letters (Fam.~6.10–11), had stayed in arms with the Pompeians longer than most — the line “your decision, or rather the chance that kept you in arms in the civil war so long” implies he had not laid them down at any of the conventional moments — and was now in exile, with his fortune and standing under cloud. The case is not desperate; Caesar has not refused him, and intermediaries are in play. This is the first of the two surviving letters, the second (Fam.~6.11) celebrating his recall a little less than a year later.
The register is the Trebianus-counterpart of the Caecina note of December (Fam.~6.5): a short, working letter that catalogues the legwork Cicero is doing on the case (Postumulenus, Sestius, Atticus, the freedman Theudas) and lifts Trebianus’s spirits with a Stoic-consolatio note that the philosophical resources of his studies are now repaying him. No Greek. The doctrinal pivot is the standard one of the cluster — the conscientia factorum et consiliorum (the consciousness of having acted and counselled rightly) carries the philosophical freight, with the assurance that “the nature of things” and “the tilt of the times” will not let so bitter an injustice cling to so good a cause for long. The closing tricolon — great-spirited, fortune-governed-by-the-times, our-counsels-will- provide — is the standing reassurance of Book~6.
How much I think of you, and have always thought of you, and how clearly I have understood you to think of me — of these things I am my own witness. Your decision, or rather the chance that kept you in arms in the civil war so long, has always been a great grief to me; and this outcome — that you are recovering your standing and your fortune more slowly than is fair, and than I would have wished — is no less a care to me than my own reverses have always been to you. And so to Postumulenus and to Sestius, and most often to our Atticus, and most recently to Theudas your freedman, I have opened myself out entirely; and to them, one by one, I have said again and again that I desire to do justice by you and by your children with every resource at my disposal. I wish you would write the same to your people; let them at least be sure of those things which are in my power — my effort, my counsel, my means, my good faith — and trust them ready for them in every matter.
ego quanti te faciam semperque fecerim quantique me a te fieri intellexerim, sum mihi ipse testis. nam et consilium tuum vel casus potius diutius in armis civilibus commorandi semper mihi magno dolori fuit, et hic eventus, quod tardius quam est aequum et quam ego vellem reciperas fortunam et dignitatem tuam, mihi non minori curae est quam tibi semper fuerunt casus mei. itaque et Postumuleno et Sestio et saepissime Attico nostro proximeque Theudae, liberto tuo, totum me patefeci et haec iis singulis saepe dixi, quacumque re possem, me tibi et liberis tuis satis facere cupere, idque tu ad tuos velim scribas, haec quidem certe, quae in potestate mea sunt, ut operam, consilium, rem, fidem meam sibi ad omnis res paratam putent.
If I had as much authority and favour as I should have, given my service to a commonwealth that has so deserved of me, you too would be the man you were — not only the worthiest of any high station, but unquestionably the first man of your order. But since, at one and the same time and on one and the same cause, both of us fell, I promise you what I have set down above, which is still mine to give, and along with that whatever I seem to retain in some measure as the remnants of my former standing. For Caesar himself, as I have been able to gather from many indications, is not estranged from us; and almost all his closest familiars, bound to me by my great old services to them when they were in trouble, take careful notice of me and pay me their respect. And so, if ever I have an opening to act on your fortunes — that is, on the safety in which everything for you rests — and to this their conversation more and more each day brings me to hope, I shall act for myself, and set the thing in motion.
si auctoritate et gratia tantum possem quantum in ea re p., de qua ita meritus sum, posse deberem, tu quoque is esses, qui fuisti, cum omni gradu amplissimo dignissimus tum certe ordinis tui facile princeps. sed quoniam eodem tempore eademque de causa nostrum uterque cecidit, tibi et illa polliceor quae supra scripsi, quae sunt adhuc mea, et ea quae praeterea videor mihi ex aliqua parte retinere tamquam ex reliquiis pristinae dignitatis. neque enim ipse Caesar, ut multis rebus intellegere potui, est alienus a nobis et omnes fere familiarissimi eius casu devincti magnis meis veteribus officiis me diligenter observant et colunt. itaque, si qui mihi erit aditus de tuis fortunis, id est de tua incolumitate, in qua sunt omnia, agendi, quod quidem cotidie magis ex eorum sermonibus adducor ut sperem, agam per me ipse et moliar.
To go through the items one by one is not necessary; in sum, I lay my whole zeal and my whole goodwill at your disposal. But it matters greatly to me that all of yours should know this — which they may come to know through a letter from you — that all that belongs to Cicero stands open to Trebianus. This is to the end that they may think nothing so difficult that, taken up on your behalf, it will not be a pleasure to me to undertake.
singula persequi non est necesse; universum studium meum et benevolentiam ad te defero. sed magni mea interest hoc tuos omnis scire, quod tuis litteris fieri potest ut intellegant, omnia Ciceronis patere Trebiano. hoc eo pertinet, ut nihil existiment esse tam difficile quod non pro te mihi susceptum iucundum sit futurum.
I would have sent you a letter before now if I could find the kind to write. For at a time like this, the office of friends is either to console or to make promises. Consolation I was not employing, because from many quarters I was hearing how bravely and how wisely you were bearing the injustice of the times, and how powerfully you were being consoled by your own consciousness of what you have done and meant. And if this is what you are doing, you are reaping a great fruit of the best studies — studies in which I know you have always been engaged. I urge you, again and again, to keep at it.
antea misissem ad te litteras si genus scribendi invenirem; tali enim tempore aut consolari amicorum est aut polliceri. consolatione non utebar, quod ex multis audiebam quam fortiter sapienterque ferres iniuriam temporum quamque te vehementer consolaretur conscientia factorum et consiliorum tuorum. quod quidem si facis, magnum fructum studiorum optimorum capis, in quibus te semper scio esse versatum, idque ut facias etiam atque etiam te hortor.
At the same time, to you — a man of the deepest expertise in events and in precedents and in all antiquity — I, who am not unschooled myself, but who am perhaps less far advanced in study than I would wish and rather farther advanced in affairs and in their practice than I would wish, can give this pledge: that that bitterness and that injustice of yours will not be lasting. For he himself, who has the most power, seems to me daily to drift back toward equity and toward the nature of things; and the cause itself is of such a kind that — together with the commonwealth, which cannot lie prostrate forever — it must, of necessity, revive and recover with it; and every day something turns out gentler and more generous than we had feared. And since these matters are set on the tilts of the times, often on small ones, I shall watch every shift, and let pass no opportunity for helping you and for lifting your load.
simul et illud tibi, homini peritissimo rerum et exemplorum et omnis vetustatis, ne ipse quidem rudis, sed in studio minus fortasse quam vellem, et in rebus atque usu plus etiam quam vellem versatus spondeo, tibi istam acerbitatem et iniuriam non diuturnam fore. nam et ipse, qui plurimum potest, cotidie mihi delabi ad aequitatem et ad rerum naturam videtur, et ipsa causa ea est, ut iam simul cum re p. quae in perpetuum iacere non potest, necessario revivescat atque recreetur cotidieque aliquid fit lenius et liberalius quam timebamus. quae quoniam in temporum inclinationibus saepe parvis posita sunt, omnia momenta observabimus neque ullum praetermittemus tui iuvandi et levandi locum.
And so that other kind of letter I spoke of will, I hope, day by day come more easily to me, so that I may even make promises. Better to fulfil them in the matter than in the words. As for you — I want you to consider that you have more friends than those who are now, or have been, in your situation, so far as I have been able to make out, and that I yield to none of them. See to it that you keep a brave and a great spirit: this is in you alone. What lies in fortune will be governed by the times, and provided for by our counsels.
itaque illud alterum, quod dixi, litterarum genus cotidie mihi, ut spero, fiet proclivius, ut etiam polliceri possim. id re quam verbis faciam libentius. tu velim existimes et pluris te amicos habere quam qui in isto casu sint ac fuerint, quantum quidem ego intellegere potuerim, et me concedere eorum nemini. fortem fac animum habeas et magnum, quod est in uno te; quae sunt in fortuna, temporibus regentur et consiliis nostris providebuntur.