HermitshCicero by Claude

Letter · 46 BC · Romae

Ad Familiares 13.18

Ad Familiares 13.18

Headnote

Cicero to Servius Sulpicius Rufus, proconsul of Achaia, written from Rome around the beginning of November 46 BC (the manuscript dateline: Scr. Romae, ut videtur, a. 708 (46)). Part of the running Servius sequence (Fam.\ 13.17–28); but unlike the formulaic recommendations of that sheaf, this letter is purely about Atticus and his property interests in Epirus. Servius has written to Atticus on his own initiative, offering his help with the management of those affairs in the province; Atticus has just shown the letter to Cicero, and Cicero, visibly delighted, writes back at once. The piece is therefore the rare specimen in the sheaf that conducts no commendation business but acknowledges and reinforces a favour already volunteered.

The structural play of the letter is the self-conscious pivot in the second paragraph. Cicero begins by listing the things he will not do — he will not ask Servius to act with redoubled zeal, and he will not thank him for what he has already done unprompted — and then announces, on the strength of their old friendship, that he will do both anyway. The closing formula collapses the favour to Atticus into a personal favour to Cicero himself: whatever Servius binds Atticus by, he binds Cicero by as well. The first paragraph also preserves a textual crux (the daggered phrase quod tamen dubium nobis quin ita futurum fuerit non erat), where the manuscript reading is suspect; the rendering here follows the sense common in the editors and treats the parenthesis as a corroborative aside.

I will not grant that the letter you wrote to our Atticus, so charming in itself and so very civilly composed, was more agreeable to him — whom I saw beside himself with delight — than it was to me. For although it was almost equally welcome to both of us, still I admired you the more on this account, that, where a generous reply from you would have come naturally if you had been asked or at any rate prompted (and even so, there was no doubt in our minds that such would have been your response), you went further: you wrote to him unsolicited, and conveyed to him by letter, when he was not looking for it, so signal a mark of your good will. On that score, I am not bound to ask you to act with the more enthusiasm on my behalf as well — for nothing fuller than what you are promising could be done — nor even to thank you for what you have done both for his sake and of your own accord;
non concedam ut Attico nostro, quem elatum laetitia vidi, iucundiores tuae suavissime ad eum et humanissime scriptae litterae fuerint quam mihi. nam etsi utrique nostrum prope aeque gratae erant, tamen ego admirabar magis te, qui, si rogatus aut certe admonitus liberaliter Attico respondisses †(quod tamen dubium nobis quin ita futurum fuerit non erat), ultro ad eum scripsisse eique nec opinanti voluntatem tuam tantam per litteras detulisse. de quo non modo rogare te ut eo studiosius mea quoque causa facias non debeo (nihil enim cumulatius fieri potest quam polliceris), sed ne gratias quidem agere, quod tu et ipsius causa et tua sponte feceris;
but I will say this much: what you have done is most welcome to me. For such a judgment of yours about a man whom I, above all others, hold dear cannot but be in the highest degree agreeable to me; and being so, it cannot fail to be grounds for gratitude. And yet, since the closeness of our friendship gives me leave to transgress with you even in the matter of writing, I shall do both the things I just said I should not. For of what you have shown yourself ready to do on Atticus’s account, I would have you add as much more as can be added on the strength of our affection; and where just now I was hesitating to thank you, I now thank you outright, and I would have you so understand it: by whatever good offices, in the affairs of Epirus and the rest, you bind Atticus to yourself, by those same offices you will lay me under obligation to you.
illud tamen dicam, mihi id, quod fecisti, esse gratissimum. tale enim tuum iudicium de homine eo, quem ego unice diligo, non potest mihi non summe esse iucundum; quod cum ita sit, esse gratum necesse est. sed tamen, quoniam mihi pro coniunctione nostra vel peccare apud te in scribendo licet, utrumque eorum, quae negavi mihi facienda esse, faciam; nam et ad id, quod Attici causa te ostendisti esse facturum, tantum velim addas, quantum ex nostro amore accessionis fieri potest, et, quod modo verebar, tibi gratias agere, nunc plane ago teque ita existimare volo, quibuscumque officiis in Epiroticis reliquisque rebus Atticum obstrinxeris, iisdem me tibi obligatum fore.

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Ad Familiares 13.18

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