HermitshCicero by Claude

Letter · 5 October 44 BC · Romae

Ad Familiares 12.2

Ad Familiares 12.2

Headnote

Cicero to C. Cassius, from Rome between 18 September and 5 October 44 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. Romae inter xiii K. et iii Non. Oct. a. 710 (44). The First Philippic has been delivered (2 September); Antony has answered with the savage senatorial invective of 19 September; Cicero is now writing to Cassius in his province of Syria with the temperature of the city in his hand. The gladiator-metaphor of Fam. 12.22 is here in its full form — Antony is the gladiator hunting for an opening to start the killing — and Cicero gives Cassius the names: Piso, who opened the attacks on 1 August with no one rising to support him; himself, on 2 September; and P. Servilius following. Three consulars who cannot now come to the Senate in safety.

The middle paragraphs are pure Cicero in private vein: a quick catalogue of disappointments. Cassius’s tuus necessarius (his brother-in-law Lepidus) is taken up with his new marriage tie to Antony and is bursting at the applause for the elder Cassius’s ludi Apollinares; the “other in-law” (Servilius Isauricus, or possibly L. Cornelius Lentulus) has been bought off by fresh “memoranda of Caesar”; and worst of all, somebody in the Senate — unnamed, almost certainly Servilius Isauricus — expects his own son to be consul in the year that should have been Cassius and Brutus’s, and openly fawns on Antony to that end. The close pivots back to hope: the consuls-elect, Pansa and Hirtius; Cotta gone to ground in fatal despair; L. Caesar ill, Sulpicius absent. The counsellors of the public deliberation are few. “All hope is in you,” Cicero writes, in a sentence that he had already written in May (Fam. 12.1) and would write again before the year was out.

I am intensely glad that my opinion and my speech meet with your approval. If only it were permitted to me to use that liberty more often, there would be no difficulty in recovering our freedom and our state. But this deranged and ruined man, far more worthless than the very man you called the most worthless ever killed, is looking for a pretext to begin a slaughter, and charges me with having been the instigator of Caesar’s killing for no other reason than to incite the veterans against me. That danger I do not very greatly fear, so long as he makes the glory of your deed common with the credit of mine. So now there is no safety in coming to the Senate, neither for Piso, who first attacked him with no one rising in support, nor for me, who did the same thirty days later, nor for P. Servilius, who came after me. For the gladiator is looking for blood, and he reckoned to make a start of it with me on 19 September; he had come prepared, after several days of rehearsal at the villa of Metellus. But what rehearsal could there be amid orgies and wine? And so, as I wrote you before, he seemed to everyone, in his usual way, not to be speaking but vomiting.
vehementer laetor tibi probari sententiam et orationem meam. qua si saepius uti liceret, nihil esset negoti libertatem et rem p. reciperare; sed homo amens et perditus multoque nequior quam ille ipse quem tu nequissimum occisum esse dixisti caedis initium quaerit nullamque aliam ob causam me auctorem fuisse Caesaris interficiendi criminatur, nisi ut in me veterani incitentur; quod ego periculum non extimesco, modo vestri facti gloriam cum mea laude communicet. ita nec Pisoni qui in eum primus invectus est nullo adsentiente, nec mihi qui idem tricesimo post die feci, nec P. Servilio qui me est consecutus, tuto in senatum venire licet. caedem enim gladiator quaerit eiusque initium a. d. xiii K. Octobr. a me se facturum putavit; ad quem paratus venerat, cum in villa Metelli compluris dies commentatus esset. quae autem in lustris et in vino commentatio potuit esse? itaque omnibus est visus, ut ad te antea scripsi, vomere suo more, non dicere..
As for what you write — that you trust some progress can be made through our authority and eloquence — some has indeed been made, considering the magnitude of our troubles. The Roman people understand that there are three men of consular rank who, because they have thought rightly about the state and spoken freely, cannot come to the Senate in safety. Beyond that there is nothing for you to count on. Your kinsman is wrapped up in his new marriage-connection, and so has lost interest in the games; he is fit to burst at the unending applause for your brother. The other in-law, likewise, has been won over by Caesar’s new memoranda. But these are tolerable. What is not to be borne is this: that there is a man who thinks his son will be consul in your year, and on that score parades his servitude to this brigand.
qua re, quod scribis te confidere auctoritate et eloquentia nostra aliquid profici posse, non nihil ut in tantis malis est profectum. intellegit enim populus R. tris esse consularis, qui, quia de re p. bene senserint, libere locuti sint, tuto in senatum venire non possint. nec est praeterea quod quicquam exspectes. tuus enim necessarius adfinitate nova delectatur, itaque iam non est studiosus ludorum infinitoque fratris tui plausu diruiupitur; alter item adfinis novis commentariis Caesaris delenitus est. sed haec tolerabilia,. illud non ferendum, quod est qui vestro anno filium suum consulem futurum putet ob eamque causam se huic latroni deservire prae se ferat.
For my dear friend L. Cotta, in a kind of fated despair, as he himself says, scarcely comes into the Senate. L. Caesar, an excellent and most brave citizen, is kept away by ill health. Ser. Sulpicius, a man of the highest authority and the soundest views, is not present. The rest — the consuls-elect excepted — forgive me if I do not count among the men of consular rank. You have the counsellors of the public deliberation. Their number would be slender even in good times: what do you think it is in ruined ones? And so all our hope is in you; and if for that reason you are absent, that you may be safe, then it is not even in you. But if you are contemplating something worthy of your glory, I should wish it with ourselves alive; or, if not that, then the state will at any rate, through you and your friends, soon enough recover its rightful station. I am not failing your people and shall not fail them. If they refer any matter to me, my goodwill and my fidelity will be at your disposal. Farewell.
nam L. Cotta familiaris meus fatali quadam desperatione, ut ait, minus in senatum venit; L. Caesar, optimus et fortissimus civis, valetudine impeditur; Ser. Sulpicius et summa auctoritate et optime sentiens non adest; reliquos exceptis designatis ignosce mihi si non numero consularis. habes auctores consili publici. qui numerus etiam bonis rebus exiguus esset, quid censes perditis? qua re spes est omnis in vobis; qui si idcirco abestis ut sitis in tuto, ne in vobis quidem; sin aliquid dignum vestra gloria cogitatis, velim salvis nobis; sin id minus, res tamen publica per vos brevi tempore ius suum reciperabit. ego tuis neque desum neque dero. qui si quae ad me referent, mea tibi benevolentia fidesque praestabitur. vale.

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