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LXIX (A III, 14)

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)
THESSALONICA, 21 JULY
From your letter I am full of anxiety to hear what Pompey's view is of my Case, or what he professes to be his view. The elections, I presume, are over; and when they were over you say that he was of opinion that my Case should be mooted. If I seem foolish to you for entertaining hopes, it is at your bidding that I do so: yet I know that you have in your letters been usually inclined rather to Check me and my hopes. Now pray write distinctly what your view is. I know that I have fallen into this distress from numerous errors of my own. If certain accidents have in any degree corrected those errors, I shall be less sorry that I preserved my life then and am still living. Owing to the constant traffic along the road 1 and the daily expectation of political change, I have as yet not removed from Thessalonica. But now I am being forced away, not by Plancius—for he, indeed, wishes to keep me here—but by the nature of the place, which is not at all calculated for the residence of a disfranchised man in such a state of sorrow. I have not gone to Epirus, as I had said I would, because all of a sudden the messages and letters that arrived have all indicated it to be unnecessary for me to be in the immediate neighbourhood of Italy. From this place, as soon as I have heard something about the elections, I shall set my face towards Asia, but to what particular part I am not yet certain: however, you shall know. Thessalonica, 21 July.


1 The via Egnatia, the road across Macedonia, which was one of the great channels of communication between Rome and the East, and which terminated at Thessalonica .

Cicero. The Letters of Cicero; the whole extant correspondence in chronological order, in four volumes. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh. London. George Bell and Sons. 1908-1909.

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