LII (Q FR I, 2)
TO HIS BROTHER QUINTUS (IN ASIA)
ROME, 26 OCTOBER
Statius arrived at my house on the 25th
October. His arrival gave me uneasiness, because
you said in your letter that you would be
plundered by your household in his absence.
However, I thought it a very happy circumstance
that he anticipated the expectation of his
arrival, and the company that would have assembled
to meet him, if he had left the
province with you, and had not appeared before.
For people have exhausted their remarks, and many
observations have been made and done with of the
"Nay, but I looked for a mighty man"
1 kind,
which I am glad to have all over before you come.
But as for the motive for your sending
him—that he might clear himself with
me—that was not at all necessary. For,
to begin with, I had never suspected him, nor in
what I wrote to you about him was I expressing my
own judgment; but since the interest and safety of
all of us who take part in public business
depends, not on truth alone, but on report also, I
wrote you word of what people were saying, not
what I thought myself. How prevalent and how
formidable that talk was Statius ascertained
himself on his arrival. For he was present when
certain persons at my house gave vent to some
complaints on that very subject, and had the
opportunity of perceiving that the observations of
the malevolent were being directed at himself
especially. But it used to annoy me most when I
was told that he had greater influence with you,
than your sober time of life and the wisdom of a
governor required. How many people, do you
suppose, have solicited me to give them a letter
of introduction to Statius? How often, do you
suppose, has he himself, while talking without
reserve to me, made such observations as, "I never
approved of that," "I told him so," "I tried to
persuade him," "I warned him not to"? And even if
these things show the highest fidelity, as I
believe they do, since that is your judgment, yet
the mere appearance of a freedman or slave
enjoying such influence cannot but lower your
dignity: and the long and short of it
is—for I am in duty bound not to say
anything without good grounds, nor to keep back
anything from motives of policy—that
Statius has supplied all the material for the
gossip of those who wished to decry you; that
formerly all that could be made out was that
certain persons were. angry at your strictness;
but that after his manumission the angry had
something to talk about.
Now I will answer the
letters delivered to me by L. Caesius, whom, as I
see you wish it, I will serve in every way I can.
One of them is about Zeuxis of Blaundus, whom you
say was warmly recommended to you by me though a
most notorious matricide. In this matter, and on
this subject generally, please listen to a short
statement, lest you should by chance be surprised
at my having become so conciliatory towards
Greeks. Seeing, as I did, that the complaints of
Greeks, because they have a genius for deceit,
were allowed an excessive weight, whenever I was
told of any of them making complaint of you, I
appeased them by every means in my power. First, I
pacified the Dionysopolitans, who were very
bitter: whose chief man, Hermippus, I secured not
only by my conversation, but by treating him as a
friend. I did the same to Hephaestus of
Apameia; the same to
that most untrustworthy fellow, Megaristus of
Antandrus; the same to Nicias of
Smyrna; I also
embraced with all the courtesy I possessed the
most trumpery of men, even Nymphon of
Colophon. And
all this I did from no liking for these particular
people, or the nation as a whole: I was heartily
sick of their fickleness and obsequiousness, of
feelings that are not affected by our kindness,
but by our position.
But
to return to Zeuxis. When he was telling me the
same story as you mention in your letter about
what M. Cascellius had said to him in
conversation, I stopped him from farther talk, and
admitted him to my society. I cannot, however,
understand your virulence when you say that,
having sewn up in the parricide's-sack two Mysians
at
Smyrna, you desired to display a
similar example of your severity in the upper part
of your province, and that, therefore, you had
wished to inveigle Zeuxis into your hands by every
possible means. For if he had been brought into
court, he ought perhaps not to have been allowed
to escape: but there was no necessity for his
being hunted out and inveigled by soft words to
stand a trial, as you say in your
letter—especially as he is one whom I
learn daily, both from his fellow citizens and
from many others, to be a man of higher character
than you would expect from such an obscure town as
his.
2 But, you will say, it is only Greeks to whom I am indulgent. What! did not I
do everything to appease L. Caecilius? What a man!
how irritable! how violent! In fact, who is there
except Tuscenius,
3 whose case admitted of no cure, have I not
softened? See again, I have now on my hands a
shifty, mean fellow, though of equestrian rank,
called Catienus: even he is going to be smoothed
down. I don't blame you for having been somewhat
harsh to his father, for I am quite sure you have
acted with good reason: but what need was there of
a letter of the sort which you sent to the man
himself? "That the man was rearing the cross for
himself from which you had already pulled him off
once; that you would take care to have him smoked
to death, and would be applauded by the whole
province for it." Again, to a man named C.
Fabius—for that letter also T. Catienus
is handing round—"that you were told
that the kidnapper Licinius, with his young kite
of a son, was collecting taxes." And then you go
on to ask Fabius to burn both father and son alive
if he can; if not, to send them to you, that they
may be burnt to death by legal sentence. That
letter sent by you in jest to C. Fabius, if it
really is from you, exhibits to ordinary readers a
violence of language very injurious to you.
Now, if you will refer to
the exhortations in all my letters, you will
perceive that I have never found fault with you
for anything except harshness and sharpness of
temper, and occasionally, though rarely, for want
of caution in the letters you write. In which
particulars, indeed, if my influence had had
greater weight with you than a somewhat excessive
quickness of disposition, or a certain enjoyment
in indulging temper, or a faculty for epigram and
a sense of humour, we should certainly have had no
cause for dissatisfaction. And don't you suppose
that I feel no common vexation when I am told how
Vergilius is esteemed, and your neighbour C. Octavius?
4 I For if you only excel your neighbours
farther up country, in Cilicia and
Syria, that is a
pretty thing to boast of! And that is just the
sting of the matter, that though the men I have
named are not more blameless than yourself, they
yet outdo you in the art of winning favour, though
they know nothing of Xenophon's Cyrus or
Agesilaus; from which kings, in the exercise of
their great office, no one ever heard an irritable
word. But in giving you this advice, as I have
from the first, I am well aware how much good I
have done.
5
Now, however, as you are
about to quit your province, pray do leave behind
you—as I think you are now
doing—as pleasant a memory as possible.
You have a successor of very mild manners; in
other respects, on his arrival, you will be much
missed. In sending letters of requisition, as I
have often told you, you have allowed yourself to
be too easily persuaded. Destroy, if you can, all
such as are inequitable, or contrary to usage, or
contradictory to others. Statius told me that they
were usually put before you ready written, read by
himself, and that, if they were inequitable, he
informed you of the fact: but that before he
entered your service there had been no sifting of
letters; that the result was that there were
volumes containing a selection of letters, which
were usually adversely criticised.
6 On this subject I am not going to give you
any advice at this time of day, for
it is too late; and you cannot but be aware that I
have often warned you in various ways and with
precision. But I have, on a hint from Theopompus,
entrusted him with this message to you: do see by
means of persons attached to you, which you will
find no difficulty in doing, that the following
classes of letters are destroyed—first,
those that are inequitable; next, those that are
contradictory; then those expressed in an
eccentric or unusual manner; and lastly, those
that contain reflections on anyone. I don't
believe all I hear about these matters, and if, in
the multiplicity of your engagements, you have let
certain things escape you, now is the time to look
into them and weed them out. I have read a letter
said to have been written by your nomenclator
Sulla himself, which I cannot approve: I have read
some written in an angry spirit. But the subject
of letters comes in pat: for while this sheet of
paper was actually in my hands, L. Flavius,
praetor-designate and a very intimate friend, came
to see me. He told me that you had sent a letter
to his agents, which seemed to me most
inequitable, prohibiting them from taking anything
from the estate of the late L. Octavius Naso,
whose heir L. Flavius is, until they had paid a
sum of money to C. Fundanius; and that you had
sent a similar letter to the Apollonidenses, not
to allow any payment on account of the estate of
the late Octavius till the debt to Fundanius had
been discharged. It seems to me hardly likely that
you have done this; for it is quite unlike your
usual good sense. The heir not to take anything?
What if he disowns the debt? What if he doesn't
owe it at all? Moreover, is the praetor wont to
decide whether a debt is due ?
7 Don't I, again, wish well to Fundanius? Am
I not his friend? Am I not touched with
compassion? No one more so: but in certain matters
the course of law is so clear as to leave no place
for personal feeling. And Flavius told me that
expressions were used in the letter,
which he said was yours, to the effect that you
would "either thank them as friends, or make
yourself disagreeable to them as enemies." In
short, he was much annoyed, complained of it to me
in strong terms, and begged me to write to you as
seriously as I could. This I am doing, and I do
strongly urge you again and again to withdraw your
injunction to Flavius's agents about taking money
from the estate, and not to lay any farther
injunction on the Apollonidenses contrary to the
rights of Flavius. Pray do everything you can for
the sake of Flavius and, indeed, of Pompey also. I
would not, upon my honour, have you think me
liberal to him at the expense of any inequitable
decision on your part: but I do entreat you to
leave behind you some authority, and some
memorandum of a decree or of a letter under your
hand, so framed as to support the interests and
cause of Flavius. For the man, who is at once very
attentive to me, and tenacious of his own rights
and dignity, is feeling extremely hurt that he has
not prevailed with you either on the grounds of
personal friendship or of legal right; and, to the
best of my belief, both Pompey and Caesar have, at
one time or another, commended the interests of
Flavius to you, and Flavius has written to you
personally, and certainly I have. Wherefore, if
there is anything which you think you ought to do
at my request, let it be this. If you love me,
take every care, take every trouble, and insure
Flavius's cordial thanks both to yourself and
myself. I cannot use greater earnestness in making
any request than I use in this.
As to what you say about Hermias, it
has been in truth a cause of much vexation to me.
I wrote you a letter in a rather unbrotherly
spirit, which I dashed off in a fit of anger and
now wish to recall, having been irritated by what
Lucullus's freedman told me, immediately after
hearing of the bargain. For this letter, which was
not expressed in a brotherly way, you ought to
have brotherly feeling enough to make allowance.
As to Censorinus, Antonius, the Cassii,
Scaevola—I am delighted to hear from you
that you possess their friendship. The other
contents of that same letter of yours were
expressed more strongly than I could have wished,
such as your "with my ship at least well trimmed"
8 and your "die
once for all."
9 You will find those
expressions to be unnecessarily strong. My
scoldings have always been very full of affection.
They mention certain things for complaint,
10 but these are not
important, or rather, are quite insignificant. For
my part, I should never have thought you deserving
of the least blame in any respect, considering the
extreme purity of your conduct, had it not been
that our enemies are numerous. Whatever I have
written to you in a tone of remonstrance or
reproach I have written from a vigilant caution,
which I maintain, and shall maintain; and I shall
not cease imploring you to do the same. Attalus of
Hypaepa has begged me to intercede with you that
you should not prevent his getting the money paid
which has been decreed for a statue of Q.
Publicius. In which matter I both ask as a favour
and urge as a duty, that you should not consent to
allow the honour of a man of his character, and so
close a friend of mine, to be lowered or hindered
by your means. Furthermore, Licinius, who is known
to you, a slave of my friend Aesopus, has run
away. He has been at
Athens, living in
the house of Patron the Epicurean as a free man.
Thence he has made his way to
Asia. Afterwards a
certain Plato of Sardis, who is often at
Athens, and happened to be at
Athens
at the time that Licinius arrived there, having
subsequently learnt by a letter from Aesopus that
he was an escaped slave, arrested the fellow, and
put him into confinement at
Ephesus; but whether
into the public prison, or into a slave mill, we
could not clearly make out from his letter. But
since he is at
Ephesus, I should be obliged if you
would trace him in any manner open to you, and
with all care either [send him] or
bring him home with you. Don't take into
consideration the fellow's value: such a
good-for-nothing is worth very little; but Aesopus
is so much vexed at his slave's bad conduct and
audacity, that you can do him no greater favour
than by being the means of his recovering him.
Now for the news that you
chiefly desire. We have so completely lost the
constitution that Cato,
11 a young
man of no sense, but yet a Roman citizen and a
Cato, scarcely got off with his life because,
having determined to prosecute Gabinius for
bribery, when the praetors could not be approached
for several days, and refused to admit anyone to
their presence, he mounted the rostra in public
meeting and called Pompey an "unofficial
dictator." No one ever had a narrower escape of
being killed. From this you may see the state of
the whole Republic. People, however, show no
inclination to desert my cause. They make
wonderful professions, offers of service, and
promises: and, indeed, I have the highest hopes
and even greater spirit—so that I hope
to get the better in the struggle, and feel
confident in my mind that, in the present state of
the Republic, I need not fear even an accident.
However, the matter stands thus: if Clodius gives
notice of an action against me, the whole of
Italy
will rush to my support, so that I shall come off
with many times greater glory than before; but if
he attempts the use of violence, I hope, by the
zeal not only of friends but also of opponents, to
be able to meet force with force. All promise me
the aid of themselves, their friends, clients,
freedmen, slaves, and, finally, of their money.
Our old regiment of loyalists is warm in its zeal
and attachment to me. If there were any who had
formerly been comparatively hostile or lukewarm,
they are now uniting themselves with the loyalists
from hatred to these despots. Pompey makes every
sort of promise, and so does Caesar: but my
confidence in them is not enough to induce me to
drop any of my preparations. The
tribunes-designate are friendly to us. The
consuls-designate make excellent professions. Some
of the new praetors are very friendly and very
brave citizens-Domitius, Nigidius, Memmius, Lentulus
12 —the others are loyalists also,
but these are eminently so. Wherefore keep a good
heart and high hopes. However, I will keep you
constantly informed on particular events as they
occur from day to day.