Ad Familiares 13.16
Ad Familiares 13.16
Headnote
Cicero to C. Julius Caesar, dictator, recommending Apollonius, freedman of P. Crassus the younger. The internal dating is firm: P. Crassus has fallen at Carrhae (June 53 BC); Apollonius has served Cicero in Cilicia (51–50), and Caesar in the Alexandrian war (48–47); he is now setting out for Spain to find Caesar in the Munda campaign, which fixes the letter to early 45 BC. The Apollonius portrait is the longest in the Fam. 13 series and the warmest — a learned freedman, brought up in Cicero’s house in the company of Diodotus the Stoic, now setting out to write the history of Caesar’s wars in Greek. Cicero notes with characteristic self-awareness that he had told Apollonius he would not provide a formal commendation (“a man who had been with you in the war ... counted as one of your own”), and then provides one anyway. The salutation Cicero Caesari carries no honorifics — the old intimacy survives, even if the political distance now is total.
Of all the nobility, P. Crassus was the young man I loved best; and although I had conceived high hopes of him from his earliest years, I came to think exceedingly well of him once I had learned the outstanding judgements which you had passed on him. His freedman Apollonius — already, while Crassus still lived — I both held in high esteem and approved; for he was both devoted to Crassus and strikingly suited to his master’s best pursuits, and so was very dear to him.
P. Crassum ex omni nobilitate adulescentem dilexi plurimum et ex eo cum ab ineunte eius aetate bene speravissem, tum perbone existimare coepi eximus iudiciis quae de eo feceras cognitis. eius libertum Apollonium iam tum equidem cum ille viveret et magni faciebam et probabam; erat enim et studiosus Crassi et ad eius optima studia vehementer aptus; itaque ab eo admodum diligebatur.
After Crassus’s death, however, he seemed to me all the more deserving to be received into my trust and friendship, in that he held it his duty to honour and cultivate those whom Crassus had loved and to whom he had been dear. And so he came to me in Cilicia, and was of great use to me in many matters — both his loyalty and his good sense; and to you, as I believe, in the Alexandrian war, so far as zeal and fidelity could compass it, he did not fail.
post mortem to autem Crassi eo mihi etiam dignior visus est quem in fidem atque amicitiam meam reciperem, quod eos a se observandos et colendos putabat, quos ille dilexisset et quibus carus fuisset. itaque et ad me in Ciliciam venit multisque in rebus mihi magno usui fuit et fides eius et prudentia et, ut opinor, tibi in Alexandrino bello, quantum studio et fidelitate consequi potuit, non defuit.
In the hope that you too thought of him in this way, he has set out to you in Spain — chiefly indeed on his own counsel, but with my encouragement as well. To him I did not promise a commendation: not because I doubted that one of mine would carry weight with you, but because he did not seem to me to need one — a man who had been with you in the war and who, on account of his memory of Crassus, counted as one of your own; and who, if he wished to use commendations, I saw could obtain that result through others as well. The witness of my own opinion of him — which he himself prized highly, and which I had had experience of as carrying weight with you — I gave him gladly.
quod cum speraret te quoque ita existimare, in Hispaniam ad te maxime ille quidem suo consilio sed etiam me auctore est profectus. cui ego commendationem non sum pollicitus, non quin eam valituram apud te arbitrarer, sed neque egere mihi commendatione videbatur, qui et in bello tecum fuisset et propter memoriam Crassi de tuis unus esset, et, si uti commendationibus vellet, etiam per alios eum videbam id consequi posse; testimonium mei de eo iudici, quod et ipse magni aestimabat et ego apud te valere eram expertus, ei libenter dedi.
He is, then, as I have come to know him, a learned man, and devoted to the best studies, and so from boyhood; for in my house with Diodotus the Stoic — by my judgement a most erudite man — he spent much of his boyhood. Now, fired with enthusiasm for your achievements, he was wishing to commit them to writing in Greek. I think he can: he has the talent, he has the practice, he has long worked in that kind of study and writing, and he wonderfully wants to do justice to the immortality of your praises. There you have the witness of my opinion — but this you will judge much more easily by your own singular discernment. And yet, for all that — contrary to what I had said I would do — I commend him to you. Whatever you may oblige him in, that will be in the largest degree welcome to me.
doctum igitur hominem cognovi et studiis optimis deditum, idque a puero; nam domi meae cum Diodoto Stoico, homine meo iudicio eruditissimo, multum a puero fuit. nunc autem incensus studio rerum tuarum eas litteris Graecis mandare cupiebat. posse arbitror; valet ingenio, habet usum, iam pridem in eo genere studi litterarumque versatur, satis facere immortalitati laudum tuarum mirabiliter cupit. habes opinionis meae testimonium, sed tu hoc facilius multo pro tua singulari prudentia iudicabis. et tamen, quod negaveram, commendo tibi eum. quicquid ei coin-modaveris, erit id mihi maiorem in modum gratum.