Ad Familiares 12.15
Ad Familiares 12.15
Headnote
P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther the younger to the Senate, consuls, praetors, tribunes, and Roman People, from Perga in Pamphylia — Perseus dateline Scr. Pergae 1-6 §§iiii K., § 7 iiii Non. Iun. a. 711 (43): the first six sections were composed on 29 May 43 BC; the seventh, a postscript reporting Dolabella’s repulse at Antioch, was added on 2 June. The conventional date for the dispatch as filed is 2 June 43. Lentulus was the son of P. Lentulus Spinther (consul 57, Cicero’s recall), serving in the East as proquaestor pro praetore; with Trebonius murdered at Smyrna in January, the province of Asia was effectively in the hands of Dolabella’s adventurers until M. Brutus’s neighbouring force in Macedonia and Cassius’s gathering army in Syria changed the balance.
This is a formal senatorial despatch in the older style — salutation in full (S. V. L. V. V. B. E. V., “if you and your children are well, it is well; I and the army are well”) and tone controlled throughout. Lentulus has to explain why he turned aside to Rhodes and was humiliated there: the Rhodians, bound by a renewed treaty to count the Senate’s enemies as their own, instead shut his men out of their harbour and water, kept open communications with Dolabella, and appear to have stalled his approach long enough for Dolabella’s lieutenants to slip out of Lycia. He pleads the cause before their assembly, fails, recovers the cargo-fleet at Lycia, pursues Dolabella as far as Sida, and turns back to gather the province’s revenues. Three days later news arrives from deserters that Dolabella has been refused entry at Antioch and is fleeing toward Laodicea with Cassius four days’ march behind him; Lentulus appends the postscript with measured confidence “that this most criminal bandit will pay his penalty sooner than expectation reckoned.” The letter is invaluable as the contemporary report of the campaign that ended in Dolabella’s death at Laodicea later in the summer, and as a study in the embarrassed but dutiful prose of a young senatorial officer explaining a setback up the chain.
If you and your children are well, it is well; I and the army are well. When Asia had been crushed by the criminal act of Dolabella, I withdrew into the neighbouring province of Macedonia and to the garrisons of the commonwealth which M. Brutus, that distinguished man, was holding, and set myself to seeing that — by whatever means it could be done most quickly — the province of Asia and its revenues should be brought back into your power. Dolabella, in alarm at this, after laying the province waste, after snatching up the revenues, after stripping the Roman citizens above all most cruelly and selling them off, withdrew from Asia faster than a garrison could be brought to it. I did not think it necessary to linger longer or to wait for that garrison, but judged that I should return as soon as possible to my own duty: to collect what revenues remained, to bring in the money I had deposited, to investigate as quickly as I could whatever had been seized of it and by whose fault that had come about, and to make you fully informed on every point.
S. v. l. v. v. b. e. v. scelere Dolabellae oppressa Asia in proximam provinciam Macedoniam praesidiaque rei p. quae M. Brutus, v. c., tenebat me contuli et id egi ut, per quos celerrime possent, Asia provincia vectigaliaque in vestram potestatem redigerentur. quod cum pertimuisset Dolabella vastata provincia, correptis vectigalibus, praecipue civibus Romanis omnibus crudelissime denudatis ac divenditis celeriusque Asia excessisset quam eo praesidium adduci potuisset, diutius morari aut exspectare praesidium non necesse habui et quam primum ad meum officium revertendum mihi esse existimavi, ut et reliqua vectigalia exigerem et quam deposui pecuniam conligerem, quicquid ex ea correptum esset aut quorum id culpa accidisset cognoscerem quam primum et vos de omni re facerem certiores.
Meanwhile, as I was sailing through the islands towards Asia, word came to me that Dolabella’s fleet was in Lycia, and that the Rhodians had a good number of ships in the water, rigged and ready. So with the ships I had either brought with me or that Patiscus the proquaestor had procured — a man bound to me as much by friendship as by shared feeling in matters of state — I turned aside to Rhodes, trusting in your authority and the decree of the Senate by which you had judged Dolabella an enemy, and trusting too in the treaty which had been renewed with them in the consulship of M. Marcellus and Ser. Sulpicius, by which the Rhodians had sworn to hold the same enemies as the Senate and Roman People. The matter deceived us bitterly. So far were we from strengthening our fleet by support from them, that our soldiers were even shut out by the Rhodians from city, harbour, and the roadstead outside the city, from supplies, finally from water itself; we ourselves were scarcely received, each in a single small boat. This indignity, this diminution of our own standing — not only as private men but of the very imperium and the Roman People — we bore for the following reason: from intercepted letters we had learned that Dolabella, if he should despair of Syria and Egypt (as he must), stood ready to embark with all his bandits and all his money and to make for Italy; and that with this in view the cargo-ships — the smallest among them of two thousand amphorae — had been gathered in Lycia and were under blockade by his fleet.
interim cum per insulas in Asiam naviganti mihi nuntiatum esset classem Dolabellae in Lycia esse Rhodiosque navis compluris instructas et paratas in aqua habere, cum Hs navibus quas aut mecum adduxeram aut comparaverat Patiscus proq., homo mihi cum familiaritate tum etiam sensibus in re p. coniunctissimus, Rhodum deverti confisus auctoritate vestra senatusque consulto quo hostem Dolabellam iudicaratis, foedere quoque quod cum iis M. Marcello, Ser. Sulpicio coss. renovatum erat, quo iuraverant Rhodii eosdem hostis se habituros quos senatus populusque R. quae res nos vehementer fefellit; tantum enim afuit ut illorum praesidio nostram firmaremus classem, ut etiam a Rhodiis urbe, portu, statione quae extra urbem est, commeatu, aqua denique prohiberentur nostri milites, nos vix ipsi singulis cum navigiolis reciperemur. quam indignitatem deminutionemque t maiestatis non solum iuris nostri sed etiam imperi populique Romani idcirco tulimus quod interceptis litteris cognoramus Dolabellam, si desperasset de Syria Aegyptoque, quod necesse erat fieri, in navis cum omnibus suis latronibus atque omni pecunia conscendere esse paratum Italiamque petere; idcirco etiam navis onerarias, quarum minor nulla erat duum milium amphorum, contractas in Lycia a classe eius obsideri.
Stricken with fear at this, senators, I chose to endure injuries and to try every means first, even at the cost of insult to myself. So, on their own terms, having been admitted into the city and into their Senate, I pleaded the cause of the commonwealth as carefully as I could, and laid out the whole danger which would press on us if that bandit and all his men should put to sea. But I found the Rhodians sunk in such perversity that they reckoned every strong man worth more than every good one; that they refused to believe this concord and conspiracy of all orders in defence of liberty had been formed in earnest; that they were still confident the patience of the Senate and of every honest man would hold, and that no one could have dared declare Dolabella an enemy; that, in short, they took whatever the wicked were inventing for truer than what had truly been done and was being shown them by us.
huius rei timore, p. c., percitus iniurias perpeti et cum contumelia etiam nostra omnia prius experiri malui. itaque ad illorum voluntatem introductus in urbem et in senatum eorum quam diligentissime potui causam rei p. egi periculumque omne quod instaret si ille latro cum suis omnibus navis conscendisset exposui. Rhodios autem tanta in pravitate animadverti ut omnis firmiores putarent quam bonos, ut hanc concordiam et conspirationem omnium ordinum ad defendendam libertatem propense non crederent esse factam, ut patientiam senatus et optimi cuiusque manere etiam nunc confiderent nec potuisse audere quemquam Dolabellam hostem iudicare, ut denique omnia quae improbi fingebant magis vera existimarent quam quae vere facta erant et a nobis docebantur.
It was in this same temper that, even before our arrival — after the most monstrous murder of Trebonius and all those other crimes, so many and so unspeakable — they had twice sent embassies to Dolabella; and this against the precedent of their own laws, with the magistrates then in office trying to prevent it. These things, whether from fear, as they keep saying, for the lands they hold on the mainland, or from madness, or from the indulgence of a few — men who before this had treated the most distinguished of our countrymen with the same insult, and who now, holding the highest magistracies, would not, when they easily could, take steps in the face of any precedent against our peril, the peril of those of us on the spot, and the imminent peril of Italy and our city, should that parricide, driven by his bandits in his ships from Asia and Syria, have made for Italy.
qua mente etiam ante nostrum adventum post Treboni indignissimam caedem ceteraque tot tamque nefaria facinora binae profectae erant ad Dolabellam legationes eorum, et quidem novo exemplo, contra leges ipsorum, prohibentibus iis qui tum magistratus gerebant. † haec sive timore, ut dictitant, de agris quos in continenti habent sive furore sive patientia paucorum, qui et antea pari contumelia viros clarissimos adfecerant et nunc maximos magistratus gerentes nullo exemplo neque nostra ex parte neque nostro praesentium neque imminenti Italiae urbique nostrae periculo, si ille parricida cum suis latronibus navibus ex Asia Syriaque expulsus Italiam petisset, mederi, cum facile possent, noluerunt†.
In the case of some of them the magistrates themselves came under suspicion of having detained us and held us up, so that Dolabella’s fleet might be informed of our coming. Several subsequent events deepened that suspicion — above all that, suddenly, from Lycia, Sex. Marius and C. Titius, lieutenants of Dolabella, left the fleet and fled in a warship, abandoning the cargo-vessels, on the gathering of which they had spent no small amount of time and labour. And so when we had come from Rhodes into Lycia with the ships we had, we recovered the cargo-ships and restored them to their owners; and at the same time we ceased to fear what we had most feared — that Dolabella might reach Italy with his bandits. We pursued the fleeing fleet as far as Sida, which is the furthest district of my province.
non nullis etiam ipsi magistratus veniebant in suspicionem detinuisse nos et demorati esse, dum classis Dolabellae certior fieret de adventu nostro. quam suspicionem consecutae res aliquot auxerunt, maxime quod subito ex Lycia Sex. Marius et C. Titius, legati Dolabellae, a classe discesserunt navique longa profugerunt onerariis relictis, in quibus conligendis non minimum temporis laborisque consumpserant. itaque cum ab Rhodo cum iis quas habueramus navibus in Lyciam venissemus, navis onerarias recepimus dominisque restituimus idemque, quod maxime verebamur, ne posset Dolabella cum suis latronibus in Italiam venire, timere desumus; classem fugientem persecuti suiuus usque Sidam, quae extrema regio est provinciae meae.
There I learned that part of Dolabella’s ships had scattered, while the rest had made for Syria and Cyprus. With them thus dispersed, and knowing that the very large fleet of C. Cassius — that singular citizen and commander — would be at hand in Syria, I returned to my own duty; and I will take pains to show you, senators, and the commonwealth, my zeal and my diligence, and to gather all the money I can as quickly as I can and send it to you with full accounting. If, in going through the province, I learn who has kept faith with us and the commonwealth in preserving the money I had deposited, and who by their criminal act, freely turning over the public money, entered into this partnership in crime with Dolabella, I will inform you. If, as they deserve, you decide on these men severely (should that seem good to you) and strengthen our hand by your authority, we shall be the better able to collect the remaining revenues and to keep safe those already collected. In the meantime, that I may guard the revenues the more readily and defend the province from injury, I have raised a force of volunteers as the need required.
ibi cognovi partem navium Dolabellae diffugisse, reliquas Syriam Cyprumque petisse. quibus disiectis, cum scirem C. Cassi, singularis civis et ducis, classem maximam fore praesto in Syria, ad meum officium reverti daboque operam ut meum studium, diligentiam vobis, p. c., reique p. praestem pecuniamque quam maximam potero et quam celerrime cogam omnibusque rationibus ad vos mittam. si percurrero provinciam et cognovero qui nobis et rei p. fidem praestiterunt in conservanda pecunia a me deposita quique scelere ultro deferentes pecuniam publicam hoc munere societatem facinorum cum Dolabella inierunt, faciam vos certiores. de quibus, si vobis videbitur, si, ut meriti sunt, graviter constitueritis nosque vestra auctoritate firmaveritis, facilius et reliqua exigere vectigalia et exacta servare poterimus. interea quo commodius vectigalia tueri provinciamque ab iniuria defendere possim, praesidium voluntarium necessariumque comparavi.
After this letter was written, some thirty soldiers whom Dolabella had levied in Asia came into Pamphylia in flight from Syria. They reported that Dolabella had come to Antiochia in Syria; that he had not been received; that he had several times tried to break in by force; that he had always been driven off with great loss to himself; and so, after losing some six hundred men, leaving the sick behind, he had fled by night from Antiochia in the direction of Laodicea; that on that same night nearly all the Asiatic soldiers had deserted him; that of these some eight hundred had returned to Antiochia and surrendered themselves to those whom Cassius had left in charge of the city, while the rest had come down through Mount Amanus into Cilicia, among whose number they themselves said they belonged; that Cassius, moreover, with all his forces, was reported to be four days’ march from Laodicea at the time when Dolabella was making for it. For which reason I am confident that this most criminal bandit will pay his penalty sooner than expectation reckoned. The fourth day before the Nones of June, at Perga.
his litteris scriptis milites circiter xxx, quos Dolabella ex Asia conscripserat, ex Syria fugientes in Pamphyliam venerunt. hi nuntiaverunt Dolabellam Antiocheam quae in Syria est venisse, non receptum conatum esse aliquotiens vi introire; repulsum semper esse cum magno suo detrimento itaque DC circiter amissis, aegris relictis noctu Antiochea profugisse Laudiceam versus; ea nocte omnis fere Asiaticos milites ab eo discessisse; ex his ad octingentos Antiocheam redisse et se iis tradidisse qui a Cassio relicti urbi illi praeerant, ceteros per Amanum in Ciliciam descendisse, quo ex numero se quoque esse dicebant; Cassium autem cum suis omnibus copiis nuntiatum esse quadridui iter Laudicea afuisse tum cum Dolabella eo tenderet. quam ob rem opinione celerius confido sceleratissimum latronem poenas daturum. iiii N. Iun. Pergae.