Ad Familiares 12.23
Ad Familiares 12.23
Headnote
Cicero to Q. Cornificius (governor of Africa Vetus), from Rome a little after 9 October 44 BC — Perseus dateline Scr. Romae paulo post vii id. Oct. a. 710 (44). Cornificius’s agent Tratorius has been in Rome and has briefed Cicero on the troubles of the African province; in return Cicero sends back the news that matters most — Octavian’s first move into open politics, and Antonius’s departure for Brundisium to court the four Macedonian legions.
The letter is precious as a snapshot of Cicero’s mind in the weeks before the First Philippic’s open break. The young Caesar is sized up with cautious enthusiasm (“there is nothing one cannot expect him to do for the sake of praise and glory”) — still optimism, before the discounts of 43 BC. Antonius, called by the heavy irony “our familiar friend,” is already isolated and dangerous. Cicero ends, characteristically, with a recommendation to philosophy as the armor for what is coming — and with the line he repeats throughout this sequence, that to bear an evil well is not to leave it unavenged.
Tratorius has laid out for me the whole shape of your command and the state of your province. So many intolerable things, in every quarter! But the greater your standing, the less to be borne what has befallen you; for what you tolerate with restraint, in virtue of your greatness of spirit and intellect, must not on that account go unavenged by you, even if it is not to be lamented. But of these matters later. The city’s gazette, I am sure, is being sent on to you.
omnem condicionem imperi tui statumque provinciae mihi demonstravit Tratorius. O multa intolerabilia locis omnibus! sed quo tua maior dignitas, eo quae tibi acciderunt minus ferenda; neque enim, quae tu propter magnitudinem et animi et ingeni moderate fers, a te ea non ulciscenda sunt, etiam si non sunt dolenda. sed haec posterius. rerum urbanarum acta tibi mitti certo scio.
Were that not so, I would write it all out myself — and chief of all, the venture of Caesar Octavianus. The multitude regard the charge as concocted by Antonius to give him a pretext for going after the young man’s money; the prudent and the good not only believe it was done but approve. In short, there is great hope in him; there is nothing one cannot expect him to do for the sake of praise and glory. Antonius, on the other hand — our familiar friend — perceives himself to be so hated that, though he has caught his would-be assassins in his own house, he does not dare bring the matter forward. On the sixth day before the Ides of October he set out for Brundisium to meet the four Macedonian legions, which he was planning to win over with money, lead up to the city, and plant on our necks.
quod ni ita putarem, ipse perscriberem in primisque Caesaris Octaviani conatum; de quo multitudini fictum ab Antonio crimen videtur, ut in pecuniam adulescentis impetum faceret; prudentes autem et boni viri et credunt factum et probant. quid quaeris? magna spes est in eo; nihil est quod non existimetur laudis et gloriae causa facturus. Antonius autem, noster familiaris, tanto se odio esse intellegit ut, cum interfectores suos domi comprenderit, rem proferre non audeat. A. d. vii Id. Oct. Brundisium erat profectus obviam legionibus Macedonicis quattuor, quas sibi conciliare pecunia cogitabat easque ad urbem adducere et in cervicibus nostris conlocare.
There you have a sketch of the commonwealth — if a commonwealth can exist in a camp. For your part in this I often grieve, since for the whole of your generation you have not been able to taste any portion of a sound and undamaged commonwealth. And before now there was at least room to hope; now even that has been torn away. For what hope is there, when Antonius has dared to say in public meeting that Cannutius is looking for a place among men in whose company, while he is alive, no place can exist for him in the state?
habes formam rei p., si in castris potest esse res p.; in quo tuam vicem saepe doleo, quod nullam partem per aetatem sanae et salvae rei p. gustare potuisti. atque antehac quidem sperare saltem licebat, nunc etiam id ereptum est. quae enim est spes, cum in contione dicere ausus sit Antonius Cannutium apud eos locum sibi quaerere quibus se salvo locus in civitate esse non posset?
For my own part, I bear these things and everything that can befall a human being so as to feel great gratitude to philosophy, which not only draws me away from anxiety but also arms me against every onset of fortune; and I think you should do the same, and reckon nothing in the catalogue of evils that is free from any fault of one’s own. But these things you know better. Tratorius I have always thought highly of; in your affairs above all I have come to know the height of his fidelity, diligence, and prudence. Take care of your health; that you can do nothing for me more welcome than this.
equidem et haec et omnia quae homini accidere possunt sic fero ut philosophiae magnam habeam gratiam, quae me non modo ab sollicitudine abducit sed etiam contra omnis fortunae impetus armat, tibique idem censeo faciendum nec a quo culpa absit quicquam in malis numerandum. sed haec tu melius. Tratorium nostrum cum semper probassem, tum maxime in tuis rebus summam eius fidem, diligentiam prudentiamque cognovi. da operam ut valeas; hoc mihi gratius facere nihil potes.