CCXLIII (F III, 7)
TO APPIUS CLAUDIUS PULCHER (AT
ROME)
LAODICEA (FEBRUARY)
I will write to you at greater length when I
have got more leisure. I write this in haste,
Brutus's messengers having come to me at Laodicea
and told me that they are hurrying off to Rome.
Accordingly, I am giving them no letters except
for you and Brutus. Commissioners from Appia have
handed me in a roll from you full of most
ill-founded complaints of my having hindered their
building by a rescript. Moreover, in the same
letter you ask me to grant them permission to go
on building as soon as possible, lest they should
be stopped by winter; and at the same time you
complain of my forbidding them to raise a tax till
I granted them leave to do so after investigation:
for you say that it was tantamount to stopping the
work, seeing that I could not hold such
investigation till after my return from Cilicia at
winter time. 1
Hear my answer to all
these charges, and see how much fairness there is
in your expostulation. In the first place, on my
being approached by persons professing that
unbearable exactions were being made upon them,
what unfairness was there in my writing to forbid
their proceeding till I had investigated the facts
and the merits of the case? In my not being able
to do so till winter? For that is what you say in
your letter. As though for purposes of
investigation I must go to them, and not they come
to me! "Such a long way off;" you say. What! at
the time you delivered that letter to them, in
which you remonstrated with me against preventing
them from finishing their building before winter,
did you suppose that they would not
come to me? However, on that point, at least, they
made a ridiculous blunder: for the letter they
brought with them asking to be allowed to carry on
the work in the summer, they delivered to me after
midwinter. But let me tell you, first, that the
number of those appealing against the tax is far
in excess of those who wish it levied; and,
second, that I will, nevertheless, do what I may
suppose you to wish. So much for the Appiani.
I have been informed by
Pausanias, Lentulus's freedman and my marshal,
that you had complained to him of my not having
gone to meet you. I treated you with contempt, you
think,' and my conduct was the height of
arrogance! Your servant having come to me nearly
at midnight and announced that you intended coming
to meet me at Iconium before daybreak, and it
being uncertain by which of the two roads (for
there were two), I sent your most intimate friend
Varro to meet you by one, and Q. Lepta, my captain
of engineers, by the other. I charged them both to
hasten back to me first, in order that I might
start to meet you. Lepta came hurrying back and
told me that you had already passed my camp. I
came in all haste to Iconium. The rest you already
know. Was I likely not to try and meet you?
You— an Appius Claudius—an
imperator—in spite of immemorial
custom— lastly (and this is the
strongest point of all) a friend t Considering,
too, that in such matters of etiquette I am
usually even too precise for my official rank and
position. But enough of this. Pausanias also told
me that you said, "What an Appius went to meet a
Lentulus, a Lentulus an Ampius, and a Cicero
refuse to meet an Appius?" Heavens! do even
you—a man, in my opinion, of supreme
good sense, of great learning, of the widest
knowledge of affairs, and I may add a man of
politeness (which the Stoics are quite right in
counting among the virtues)—do you, I
say, suppose that any Appiusism or Lentulusism has
more influence with me than the distinctions
bestowed by virtue? Before I had earned what are
held by mankind to be the most splendid honours, I
yet was never dazzled by those high-sounding names
of yours: it was the men who had bequeathed them
to you that I regarded as great. But when I had so
obtained and so administered the highest offices
of state, as to make me think that there was
nothing left for me to acquire in
furtherance of my honour or glory, I hoped that I
had become, never indeed the superior, but at
least the equal of you nobles. Nor, by Hercules,
did I perceive that Pompey, whom I put above
anybody who has ever lived, nor P. Lentulus, whom
I put above myself, take any other view. If you
think otherwise, you will not go wrong if, in
order to understand what high birth and nobility
are, you would study somewhat more carefully what
Athenodorus, 2 son of Sardon, says on this
subject. But to return to the point—I
would have you believe that I am not only your
friend, but your very warm friend. I will
assuredly by every act of kindness in my power
make it possible for you to judge that to be
unmistakably the case. As for yourself, however,
if your object is to be thought, in my absence, to
be under a less heavy obligation to me, I free you
from that anxiety: “
For by my side are thoseLAODICEA (FEBRUARY)
To honour me, and, chief, right-counselling Zeus.
” 3 If, however, you are by nature prone to spy out faults, you will not, indeed, succeed in making me less zealous for you; but you will succeed in making me rather more indifferent as to how you take my goodwill. I write this to you with some candour, relying on the consciousness of my services and my friendly feeling, which, as it was deliberately adopted, I shall preserve as long as you are willing that I should do so.
