CCXCVII (A VII, 7)
TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)
(FORMIAE, DECEMBER)
"Dionysius, a most excellent fellow
— as I, too, have reason to
know—and also a very good scholar and
warmly devoted to you, arrived in Rome on the 16th
of January and delivered me a letter from you."
Those are your exact words about Dionysius in your
letter. You don't add, "and he expressed his
gratitude to you." And yet he certainly ought to
have done so, and, if he had, you are always so
good-natured that you would have added it to your
sentence. However, any palinode in regard to him
is made impossible for me, owing to the character
I gave him in my last letter. Let him, then, pass
for an excellent man. I am obliged to him for one
thing at least—he has given me this
opportunity also of knowing him thoroughly.
Philogenes was quite correct in what he wrote to
you: for he has paid the money due. I wished him
to have the use of the money as long as he legally
could; accordingly, he has kept it
fourteen months. I hope Pomptinus is recovering
and as to having entered the city, as you say in
your letter, I feel somewhat anxious as to what he
means by it. For he would not have done so except
for some weighty reason. As the 2nd of January is
the Compitalia, 1 I don't want to arrive at Pompey's Alban
villa on that day, for fear of inconveniencing his
servants. I shall do so, therefore, on the 3rd,
and go thence to the city on the 4th. I don't know
on what day your quartan fit is due; but I am very
unwilling that you should be disturbed to the
detriment of your health. As to my triumph, unless
Caesar has been secretly intriguing by means of
the tribunes who are in his interest, everything
else appears to be going smoothly. My mind however
is supremely calm, and regards the whole thing
with utter indifference: the more so that I am
told by many that Pompey and his council have
determined to send me to Sicily on the ground of
my having imperium. That is worthy of Abdera!
2 For neither
has the senate decreed nor the people ordered me
to have imperium in Sicily. But if the state
delegates this to Pompey why should he send me
rather than some unofficial person? So, if the
possession of this imperium is going to be a
nuisance to me, I shall avail myself of the first
city gate I came to. 3 For as to what you say, that my
coming is awaited with astonishing interest, and
that none of the loyalists, or even the semi
loyalists, have any doubt about what I am likely
to do—I don't understand whom you mean
by the "loyalists"—I know of
none—that is to say no class of such
men: for of course, there are individuals who are
loyalists; but when it is a case of politic
divisions what we have to look for is classes and
sets of loyalists. Do you regard the senate as
loyalist when it is owing to it that the provinces
have no governors' with imperium? For Curio would
never have held out if negotiations with him had
been set on foot—a measure which the
senate refused to adopt with the result that no
successor was named to Caesar. Or the publicani
who, having never been staunch, are now warmly in favour of Caesar? Or the
financiers or the farmers, whose chief interest is
peace? Unless you can suppose such men to dread
being under royal rule, who have never declined
it, so long only as they were left in peace and
quiet. Well then! Do I approve of votes being
taken for a man who is retaining an army beyond
the legal day? For my part, I say no; nor in his
absence either. But when the former was granted
him, so was the latter. 4 "Why, do you
approve of the ten years' grant, and of the way in
which the law was carried?" If I do, then I
approve of my own banishment, and the loss of the
Campanian land, and of the adoption of a patrician
by a plebeian, of a Gaditanian by a Mytilenean;
5 I approve of the
wealth of Labienus and Mamurra, of the
pleasure-grounds and Tusculan villa of Balbus. But
the fountain-head of all these things is the same.
We should have resisted him when he was weak, and
that would have been easy. Now we are confronted
by eleven legions, cavalry at his desire, the
Transpadani, 6 the city rabble, all these
tribunes, a rising generation corrupted as we see,
a leader of such influence and audacity. With such
a man we must either fight a pitched battle, or
admit his candidature in virtue of the law.
"Fight," say you, "rather than be a slave." To
what end? To be proscribed, if beaten: to be a
slave after all, if victorious? "What do you mean
to do, then ?" say you. Just what animals do, who
when scattered follow the flocks of their own
kind. As an ox follows a herd, so shall I follow
the loyalists or whoever are said to be loyalists,
even if they take a disastrous course. What the
best course is in this unfortunate dilemma I see
clearly. For no one can be certain of the result
when once we come to fighting: but everyone is
certain that, if the loyalists are beaten, this
man will not be more merciful than Cinna in the
massacre of the nobility, nor less rapacious than
Sulla in confiscating the property of the rich. I
have been talking politics with you
all this time, and I would have gone on doing so,
had not my lamp failed me. The upshot is this : "
Your vote, M. Tullius!" "I vote with Gnaeus
Pompeius: that is, with Titus Pomponius." Pray
give my regards to Alexis, that very accomplished
boy, unless perchance he has become a man during
my absence, for he seemed on the point of doing
so.
(FORMIAE, DECEMBER)
