CCLI (A VI, I)
TO ATTICUS (IN EPIRUS)
LAODICEA, 22 FEBRUARY
I received your letter on the fifth day before
the Terminalia (19th of February) at Laodicea. I
was delighted to read it, for it teemed with
affection, kindness, and an active and obliging
temper. I will, therefore, answer it sentence by
sentence 1 —for such
is your request—and I will not introduce
an arrangement of my own, but will follow your
order. You say that the
last letter you had of mine was from Cybistra,
dated 21st September, and you want to know which
of yours I have received. Nearly all you mention,
except the one that you say that you delivered to
Lentulus's messengers at Equotuticus and
Brundisium. Wherefore your industry has not been
thrown away, as you fear, but has been exceedingly
well laid out, if, that is to say, your object was
to give me pleasure. For I have never been more
delighted with anything. I am exceedingly glad
that you approve of my self-restraint in the case
of Appius, and of my independence even in the case
of Brutus: and I had thought that it might be
somewhat otherwise. For Appius, in the course of
his journey, had sent me two or three rather
querulous letters, because I rescinded some of his
decisions. It is exactly as if a doctor, upon a
patient having been placed under another doctor,
should choose to be angry with the
latter if he changed some of his prescriptions.
Thus Appius, having treated the province on the
system of depletion, bleeding, and removing
everything he could, and having handed it over to
me in the last state of exhaustion, he cannot bear
seeing it treated by me on the nutritive system.
Yet he is sometimes angry with me, at other times
thanks me; for nothing I ever do is accompanied
with any reflexion upon him. It is only the
dissimilarity of my system that annoys him. For
what could be a more striking
difference—under his rule a province
drained by charges for maintenance and by losses,
under mine, not a penny exacted either from
private persons or public bodies? Why speak of his
praefecti, staff, and legates? Or even of acts Of
plunder, licentiousness, and insult? While as
things actually are, no private house, by
Hercules, is governed with so much system, or on
such strict principles, nor is so well
disciplined, as is my whole province. Some of
Appius's friends put a ridiculous construction on
this, holding that I wish for a good reputation.
to set Off his bad one, and act rightly, not for
the sake of my own credit, but in order to cast a
reflexion upon him. But if Appius, as Brutus's
letter forwarded by you indicated, expresses
gratitude to me, I am satisfied. Nevertheless,
this very day on which I write this, before dawn,
I am thinking of rescinding many of his
inequitable appointments and decisions. I now come to Brutus, whose
friendship I embraced with all possible
earnestness on your advice. I had even begun to
feel genuine affection for him—but here
I pull myself up short, lest I should offend you:
for don't imagine that there is anything I wish
more than to fulfil his commissions, or that there
is anything about which I have taken more trouble.
Now he gave me a volume of commissions, and you
had already spoken with me about the same matters.
I have pushed them on with the greatest energy. To
begin with, I put such pressure on Ariobarzanes,
that he paid him the talents which he promised me.
As long as the king was with me, the business was
in excellent train: later on be began to be
pressed by countless agents of Pompey. Now Pompey
has by himself more influence than all the rest
put together for many reasons, and especially
because there is an idea that he is. coming to
undertake the Parthian war. However, even he has
to put up with the following scale
of payment: on every thirtieth day thirty-three
Attic talents ([sterling]7,920), and that raised
by special taxes: nor is it sufficient for the
monthly interest. But our friend Gnaeus is an easy
creditor: he stands out of his capital, is content
with the interest, and even that not in full. The
king neither pays anyone else, nor is capable of
doing so: for he has no treasury, no regular
income. He levies taxes after the method of
Appius. They scarcely produce enough to satisfy
Pompey's interest. The king has two or three very
rich friends, but they stick to their own as
energetically as you or I. For my part,
nevertheless, I do not cease sending letters
asking, urging, chiding the king. Deiotarus also
has informed me that he has sent emissaries to him
on Brutus's business: that they have brought him
back word that he has not got the money. And, by
Hercules, I believe it is the case; nothing can be
stripped cleaner than his kingdom, or be more
needy than the king. Accordingly, I am thinking
either of renouncing my guardianship, or, as
Scaevola did on behalf of Glabrio, of stopping
payment altogether—principal and
interest alike. However, I have conferred the
prefectures which I promised Brutus through you on
M. Scaptius and L. Gavius, who were acting as
Brutus's agents in the kingdom: for they were not
carrying on business in my own province. You will
remember that I made that condition, that he might
have as many prefectures as he pleased, so long as
it was not for a man in business. Accordingly, I
have given him two others besides: but the men for
whom he asked them had left the province. Now for
the case of the Salaminians, which I see came upon
you also as a novelty, as it did upon me. For
Brutus never told me that the money was his own.
Nay, I have his own document containing the words,
"The Salaminians owe my friends M. Scaptius and P.
Matinius a sum of money." He recommends them to
me: he even adds, as though by way of a spur to
me, that he had gone surety for them to a large
amount. I had succeeded in arranging that they
should pay with interest for six years at the rate
of twelve per cent., and added yearly to the
capital sum. 2 But Scaptius demanded
forty-eight per cent. I was afraid, if he got
that, you yourself would cease to
have any affection for me. For I should have
receded from my own edict, and should have utterly
ruined a state which was under the protection not
only of Cato, but also of Brutus himself, and had
been the recipient of favours from myself. When lo
and behold! at this very juncture Scaptius comes
down upon me with a letter from Brutus, stating
that his own property is being
imperilled—a fact that Brutus had never
told either me or you. He also begged that I would
confer a prefecture on Scaptius. That was the very
reservation that I had made to you—" not
to a man in business": and if to anyone, to such a
man as that—no! For he has been a
praefectus to Appius, and had, in fact, had some
squadrons of cavalry, with which he had kept the
senate under so close a siege in their own council
chamber at Salamis, that five senators died of
starvation. Accordingly, the first day of my
entering my province, Cyprian legates having
already visited me at Ephesus, I sent orders for
the cavalry to quit the island at once. For these
reasons I believe Scaptius has written some
unfavourable remarks about me to Brutus. However,
my feeling is this: if Brutus holds that I ought
to have decided in favour of forty-eight per
cent., though throughout my province I have only
recognized twelve per cent., and had laid down
that rule in my edict with the assent even of the
most grasping money-lenders; if he complains of my
refusal of a prefecture to a man in business,
which I refused to our friend Torquatus in the
case of your protégé
Laenius, and to Pompey himself in the case of
Sext. Statius, without offending either of them;
if, finally, he is annoyed at my recall of the
cavalry, I shall indeed feel some distress at his
being angry with me, but much greater distress at
finding him not to be the man that I had thought
him. Thus much Scaptius will own-that he had the
opportunity in my court of taking away with him
the whole sum allowed by my edict. I will add a
fact which I fear you may not approve. The
interest ought to have ceased to run (I mean the
interest allowed by my edict), but I induced the
Salaminians to say nothing about that. 3 They gave in to me, it is true, but what will become of them if
Paullus comes here? 4 However, I have granted
all this in favour of Brutus, who writes very kind
letters to you about me, but to me my-self, even
when he has a favour to ask, writes usually in a
tone of hauteur, arrogance, and offensive
superiority. You, however, I hope will write to
him on this business, in order that I may know how
he takes what I have done. For you will tell me. I
have, it is true, written you a full and careful
account in a former letter, but I wished you
clearly to understand that I had not forgotten
what you had said to me in one of your letters:
that if I brought home from this province nothing
else except his goodwill, I should have done
enough. By all means, since you will have it so:
but I assume my dealings with him to be without
breach of duty on my part. Well, then, by my
decree the payment of the money to Statius is good
at law: whether that is just you must judge for
yourself—I will not appeal even to Cato.
But don't think that I have cast your exhortations
to the winds: they have sunk deeply into my mind.
With tears in your eyes you urged me to be careful
of my reputation. Have I ever got a letter from
you without the same subject being mentioned? So,
then, let who will be angry, I will endure it:
"for the right is on my side," 5 especially as I
have given six books as bail, so to speak, for my
good conduct. I am very glad you like them, though
in one point-about Cn. Flavius, son of
Annius—you question my history. He, it
is true, did not live before the decemvirs, for he
was curule aedile, an office created many years
after the decemvirs. What good did he do, then, by
publishing the Fasti? It is supposed that the
tablet containing them had been kept concealed up
to a certain date, in order that information as to
days for doing business might have to be sought
from a small coterie. And indeed several of our
authorities relate that a scribe named Cn. Flavius
published the Fasti and composed forms of
pleading—so don't imagine that I, or rather Africanus (for he is the
spokesman), invented the fact. So you noticed the
remark about the "action of an actor," did you?
You suspect a malicious meaning : 6 I wrote in all
simplicity. You say that
Philotimus told you about my having been saluted
imperator. But I feel sure that, as you are now in
Epirus, you have received my two letters on the
whole subject, one from Pindenissus after its
capture, another from Laodicea, both delivered to
your own messengers. On these events, for fear of
accidents at sea, I sent a public despatch to Rome
in duplicate by two different letter-carriers.
As to my Tullia, I agree
with you, and I have written to her and to
Terentia giving my consent. For you have already
said in a previous letter to me, "and I could wish
that you had returned to your old set." There was
no occasion to alter the letter you sent by
Memnius: for I much prefer to accept this man from
Pontidia, than the other from Servilia. 7 Wherefore
take our friend Saufeius into council. He was
always fond of me, and now I suppose all the more
so as he is bound to have accepted Appius's
affection for me with the rest of the property he
has inherited. Appius often shewed how much he
valued me, and especially in the trial of Bursa.
Indeed you will have relieved me of a serious
anxiety. I don't like
Furnius's proviso. For, in fact, there is no state
of things that alarms me except just that of which
he makes the only exception. 8 But I should have written at great length
to you on this subject if you had been at Rome. I
don't wonder that you rest all your hope of peace
on Pompey: I believe that is the truth, and in my
opinion you must strike out your word
"insincerity." If my arrangement of topics is
somewhat random, blame yourself: for I am
following your own haphazard order. My son and nephew are very fond of
each other. They take their lessons and their
exercise together; but as Isocrates
said of Ephorus and Theopompus, the one wants the
rein, the other the spur. I intend giving Quintus
the toga virilis on the Liberalia. 9 For
his father commissioned me to do so. And I shall
observe the day without taking intercalation into
account. I am very fond of Dionysius: the boys,
however, say that he gets into mad passions. But
after all there could not be a man of greater
learning, purer character, or more attached to you
and me. The praises you hear of Thermus and Silius
are thoroughly deserved : 10 they conduct themselves in the most
honourable manner. You may say the same of M.
Nonius, Bibulus, and myself, if you like. I only
wish Scrofa had had an opportunity to do the same:
for he is an excellent fellow. The rest don't do
much honour to Cato's policy. Many thanks for
commending my case to Hortensius. As for Amianus,
Dionysius thinks there is no hope. I haven't found
a trace of Terentius. Moeragenes has certainly
been killed. I made a progress through his
district, in which there was not a single living
thing left. I didn't know about this, when I spoke
to your man Democritus. 11 I have
ordered the service of Rhosian ware. 12 But, hallo! what are you
thinking of? You generally serve us up a dinner of
herbs on fern-pattern plates, and the most
sparkling of baskets: what am I to expect you to
give on porcelain ? 13 have ordered
a horn for Phemius: one will be sure to turn up; I
only hope he may play something worthy of it.
There is a threat of a
Parthian war. Cassius's despatch was empty brag:
that of Bibulus had not arrived: when that is read
I think the senate will at length be roused. I am
myself in serious anxiety. If, as I hope, my
government is not prolonged, I have only June and
July to fear. May it be so! Bibulus will keep them
in check for two months. What will
happen to the man I leave in charge, especially if
it is my brother? Or, again, what will happen to
me, if I don't leave my province so soon? It is a
great nuisance. However, I have agreed with
Deiotarus that he should join my camp in full
force. He has thirty cohorts of four hundred men
apiece, armed in the Roman fashion, and two
thousand cavalry. That will be sufficient to hold
out till the arrival of Pompey, who in a letter he
writes to me indicates that the business will be
put in his hands. The Parthians are wintering in a
Roman province. Orodes is expected in person. In
short, it is a serious matter. As to Bibulus's
edict there is nothing new, except the proviso of
which you said in your letter, "that it reflected
with excessive severity on our order." I, however,
have a proviso in my own edict of equivalent
force, but less openly expressed (derived from the
Asiatic edict of Q. Mucius, 14 son of
Publius)—" provided that the agreement
made is not such as cannot hold good in equity."
15 I have followed Scaevola in many
points, among others in this—which the
Greeks regard as a charta of
liberty—that Greeks are to decide
controversies between each other according to
their own laws. But my edict was shortened by my
method of making a division, as I thought it well
to publish it under two heads: the first,
exclusively applicable to a province, concerned
borough accounts, debt, rate of interest,
contracts, all regulations also referring to the
publicani: the second, including what cannot
conveniently be transacted without an edict,
related to inheritances, ownership and sale,
appointment of receivers, 16 all which are by custom brought
into court and settled in accordance with the
edict: a third division, embracing the remaining
departments of judicial business, I left
unwritten. I gave out that in regard to that class
of business I should accommodate my decisions to
those made at Rome: I accordingly do so, and give
general satisfaction. The Greeks, indeed, are
jubilant because they have non-Roman jurors. "Yes," you will say, "a very poor kind."
What does that matter? They, at any rate, imagine
themselves to have obtained "autonomy." You at
Rome, I suppose, have men of high character in
that capacity—Turpio the shoemaker and
Vettius the broker! You seem to wish to know how I
treat the publicani. I pet, indulge, compliment,
and honour them: I contrive, however, that they
oppress no one. The most surprising thing is that
even Servilius 17
maintained the rates of usury entered on their
contracts. My line is this: I name a day fairly
distant, before which, if they have paid, I give
out that I shall recognize only twelve per cent.:
if they have not paid, the rate shall be according
to the contract. The result is that the Greeks pay
at a reasonable rate of interest, and the
publicani are thoroughly satisfied by receiving in
full measure what I mentioned-complimentary
speeches and frequent invitations. Need I say
more? They are all on such terms with me that each
thinks himself my most intimate friend. However,
μηδὲν
αὐτοῖς—you know the rest.
18
As to the statue of
Africanus—what a mass of confusion! But
that was just what interested me in your letter.
Do you really mean it? Does the present Metellus
Scipio not know that his great-grandfather 19 was never censor? Why, the
statue placed at a high elevation in the temple of
Ops had no inscription except CENS, while on the
statue near the Hercules of Polycles there is also
the inscription CENS, and that this is the statue
of the same man is proved by attitude, dress,
ring, and the likeness itself. 20 But, by Hercules, when I observed in the group of gilded
equestrian statues, placed by the present Metellus
on the Capitol, a statue of Africanus with the
name of Serapio inscribed under it, I thought it a
mistake of the workman. I now see that it is an
error of Metellus's. What a shocking historical
blunder! For that about Flavius and the Fasti, if
it is a blunder, is one shared in by all, and you
were quite right to raise the question. I followed
the opinion which runs through nearly all
historians, as is often the case with Greek
writers. For example, do they not all say that
Eupolis, the poet of the old comedy, was thrown
into the sea by Alcibiades on his voyage to
Sicily? Eratosthenes disproves it: for he produces
some plays exhibited by him after that date. Is
that careful historian, Duris of Samos, laughed
out of court because he, in common with many
others, made this mistake? 21 Has not,
again, every writer affirmed that Zaleucus drew up
a constitution for the Locrians? Are we on that
account to regard Theophrastus as utterly
discredited, because your favourite Timaeus
attacked his statement? 22 But not to know that
one's own great-grandfather was never censor is
discreditable, especially as since his consulship
no Cornelius was censor in his lifetime.
As to what you say about
Philotimus and the payment of the 20,600
sestertia, I hear that Philotimus arrived in the
Chersonese about the 1st of January: but as yet I
have not had a word from him. The balance due to
me Camillus writes me word that he has received; I
don't know how much it is, and I am anxious to
know. However, we will talk of this later on, and
with greater advantage, perhaps, when we meet ?
23
But, my dear Atticus, that
sentence almost at the end of your letter gave me
great uneasiness. For you say, "What else is there
to say?" and then you go on to entreat me in most
affectionate terms not to forget my vigilance, and
to keep my eyes on what is going on. Have you
heard anything about anyone? I am sure nothing of
the sort has taken place. No, no, it can't be! It
would never have eluded my notice, nor will it.
Yet that reminder of yours, so carefully worded,
seems to suggest something. As to M. Octavius, I hereby again repeat that
your answer was excellent: I could have wished it
a little more positive still. For Caelius has sent
me a freedman and a carefully written letter about
some panthers and also a grant from the states.
24 I have written
back to say that, as to the latter, I am much
vexed if my course of conduct is still obscure,
and if it is not known at Rome that not a penny
has been exacted from my province except for the
payment of debt ; and I have explained to him that
it is improper both for me to solicit the money
and for him to receive it; and I have advised him
(for I am really attached to him) that, after
prosecuting others, he should be extra-careful as
to his own conduct. As to the former request, I
have said that it is inconsistent with my
character that the people of Cibyra should hunt at
the public expense while I am governor. Lepta 25 jumps
for joy at your letter. It is indeed prettily
written, and has placed me in a very agreeable
light in his eyes. I am much obliged to your
little daughter for so earnestly bidding you send
me her love. It is very kind of Pilia also; but
your daughter's kindness is the greater, because
she sends the message to one she has never seen.
Therefore pray give my love to both in return. The
day on which your letter was dated, the last day
of December, reminded me pleasantly of that
glorious oath of mine, which I have not forgotten.
26 I was a civilian Magnus on that day.
There's your letter
completely answered! Not as you were
good enough to ask, with "gold for bronze," 27 but
tit for tat. Oh, but here is another little note,
which I will not leave unanswered. Lucceius, on my
word, could get a good price for his Tusculan
property, unless, perchance, his flute-player is a
fixture (for that's his way), and I should like to
know in what condition it is. 28 Our
friend Lentulus, I hear, has advertised everything
for sale except his Tusculan property. I should
like to see these men cleared of their
embarrassments, Cestius also, and you may add
Caelius, to all of whom the line applies, "Ashamed
to shrink and yet afraid to take." 29 I suppose you have heard of Curio's plan
for recalling Memmius. Of the debt due from
Egnatius of Sidicinum I am not without some hope,
though it is a feeble one. Pinarius, whom you
recommended to me, is seriously ill, and is being
very carefully looked after by Deiotarus. So
there's the answer to your note also. Pray talk to me on paper as
frequently as possible while I am at Laodicea,
where I shall be up to the 15th of May: and when
you reach Athens at any rate send me
letter-carriers, for by that time we shall know
about the business in the city and the
arrangements as to the provinces, the settlement
of all which has been fixed for March.
But look here! Have you
yet wrung out of Caesar by the agency of Herodes
the fifty Attic talents? In that matter you have,
I hear, roused great wrath on the part of Pompey.
For he thinks that you have snapped up money
rightly his, and that Caesar will be no less
lavish in his building at the Nemus Dianie. 30
I was told all this by P.
Vedius, a hare-brained fellow enough, but yet an
intimate friend of Pompey's. This Vedius came to
meet me with two chariots, and a carriage and
horses, and a sedan, and a large suite of
servants, for which last, if Curio has carried his
law, he will have to pay a toll of a hundred
sestertii apiece. 31
There was also in a chariot a dog-headed baboon,
as well as some wild asses. I never saw a more
extravagant fool. But the cream of the whole is
this. He stayed at Laodicea with Pompeius
Vindullus. There he deposited his properties when
coming to see me. Meanwhile Vindullus dies, and
his property is supposed to revert to Pompeius
Magnus. 32 Gaius Vennonius comes to Vindullus's
house: when, while putting a seal on all goods, he
comes across the baggage of Vedius. In this are
found five small portrait busts of married ladies,
among which is one of the wife of your
friend—" brute," indeed, to be intimate
with such a fellow! and of the wife of
Lepidus—as easy-going as his name to
take this so calmly! I wanted you to know these
historiettes by the way; for we have both a pretty
taste in gossip. There is one other thing I should
like you to turn over in your mind. I am told that
Appius is building a propylaeum at
Eleusis. Should I be foolishly vain if I also
built one at the Academy? "I think so," you will
say. Well, then, write and tell me that that is
your opinion. For myself, I am deeply attached to
Athens itself, I would like some memorial of
myself to exist. I loathe sham inscriptions on
statues really representing other people. But
settle it as you please, and be kind enough to
inform me on what day the Roman mysteries fall,
and how you have passed the winter. Take care of
your health. Dated the 765th day since the battle
of Leuctra! 33
LAODICEA, 22 FEBRUARY
