B.C. 54. Coss., L.
Domitius Ahenobarbus, Ap. Claudius Pulcher
B.C. 54. Coss., L. Domitius
Ahenobarbus, Ap. Claudius Pulcher |
During
this year politics were comparatively uneventful.
Crassus was gone to
Syria. Pompey should have gone to
Spain,
but at the request of the senate he stayed near
Rome,
and in the autumn his wife Iulia died, thus
breaking one strong tie between him and Caesar.
Quintus Cicero went as
legatus to Caesar and accompanied him
to
Britain. Cicero himself kept up a
correspondence with Caesar, and seems to nurse his
friendship with him with an almost feverish
eagerness, which, however, lacks spontaneity. He
was engaged this year in composing his treatise on
the Republic.
CXXX (F V, 8)
TO M. LICINIUS CRASSUS (ON HIS WAY TO
SYRIA)
ROME (JANUARY)
I have no doubt all your friends have written
to tell you what zeal I displayed on the
——
1 in the defence,
or you might call it the promotion, of your
official position. For it was neither half-hearted
nor inconspicuous, nor of a sort that could be
passed over in silence. In fact, I maintained a
controversy against both the consuls and many
consulars with a vehemence such as I have never
shewn in any cause before, and I took upon myself
the standing defence of all your honours, and paid
the duty I owed to our friendship—long
in arrears, but interrupted by the great
complexity of events—to the very utmost.
Not, believe me, that the will to shew you
attention and honour was ever wanting to me; but
certain pestilent persons—vexed at
another's fame—did at times alienate you
from me, and sometimes changed my feelings towards
you. But I have got the opportunity, for which I
had rather wished than hoped, of shewing you in
the very height of your prosperity that I remember
our mutual kindness and am faithful to our
friendship. For I have secured not only that your
whole family, but that the entire city should know
that you have no warmer friend than myself.
Accordingly, that most noble of
women, your wife, as well as your two most
affectionate, virtuous, and popular sons, place
full confidence in my counsel, advice, zeal, and
public actions; and the senate and Roman people
understand that in your absence there is nothing
upon which you can so absolutely count and depend
as upon my exertions, care, attention, and
influence in all matters which affect your
interests. What has been done and is being done in
the senate I imagine that you are informed in the
letters from members of your family. For myself, I
am very anxious that you should think and believe
that I did not stumble upon the task of supporting
your dignity from some sudden whim or by chance,
but that from the first moment of my entering on
public life I have always looked out to see how I
might be most closely united to you. And, indeed,
from that hour I never remember either my respect
for you, or your very great kindness and
liberality to me, to have failed. If certain
interruptions of friendship have occurred, based
rather on suspicion than fact, let them, as
groundless and imaginary, be uprooted from our
entire memory and life. For such is your
character, and such I desire mine to be, that,
fate having brought us face to face with the same
condition of public affairs, I would fain hope
that our union and friendship will turn out to be
for the credit of us both. Wherefore how much
consideration should in your judgment be shewn to
me, you will yourself decide, and that decision, I
hope, will be in accordance with my position in
the state. I, for my part, promise and guarantee a
special and unequaled zeal in every service which
may tend to your honour and reputation. And even
if in this I shall have many rivals, I shall yet
easily surpass them all in the judgment of the
rest of the world as well as that of your sons,
for both of whom I have a particular affection;
but while equally well-disposed to Marcus, I am
more entirely devoted to Publius for this reason,
that, though he always did so from boyhood, he is
at this particular time treating me with the
respect and affection of a second father.
I would have you believe
that this letter will have the force of a treaty,
not of a mere epistle; and that I will most
sacredly observe and most carefully perform what I
hereby promise and undertake. The defence of your
political position which I have
taken up in your absence I will abide by, not only
for the sake of our friendship, but also for the
sake of my own character for consistency.
Therefore I thought it sufficient at this time to
tell you this that if there was anything which I
understood to be your wish or for your advantage
or for your honour, I should do it without waiting
to be asked; but that if I received a hint from
yourself or your family on any point, I should
take care to convince you that no letter of your
own or any request from any of your family has
been in vain. Wherefore I would wish you to write
to me on all matters, great, small, or
indifferent, as to a most cordial friend; and to
bid your family so to make use of my activity,
advice, authority, and influence in all business
matters—public or private, forensic or
domestic, whether your own or those of your
friends, guests, or clients—that, as far
as such a thing is possible, the loss of your
presence may be lessened by my labour.
CXXXI (Q FR II, 9)
TO HIS BROTHER QUINTUS (IN THE
COUNTRY)
ROME (FEBRUARY)
Your note by its strong language has drawn out
this letter. For as to what actually occurred on
the day of your start, it supplied me with
absolutely no subject for writing. But as when we
are together we are never at a loss for something
to say, so ought our letters at times to digress
into loose chat. Well then, to begin, the liberty
of the Tenedians has received short shrift,
2 no one
speaking for them except myself, Bibulus,
Calidius, and Favonius. A complimentary reference
to you was made by the legates from
Magnesia ad Sipylum,
they saying that you were the man who alone had resisted the demand of L. Sestius
Pansa.
3 On the remaining days of this
business in the senate, if anything occurs which
you ought to know, or even if there is nothing, I
will write you something every day. On the 12th I
will not fail you or Pomponius. The poems of
Lucretius are as you say—with many
flashes of genius, yet very technical.
4 But
when you return, ... if you succeed in reading the
Empedoclea of Sallustius, I shall
regard you as a hero, yet scarcely human.
CXXXII (Q FR II, 10)
TO HIS BROTHER QUINTUS (IN THE
COUNTRY)
ROME (FEBRUARY)
I am glad you like my letter: however, I
should not even now have had anything to write
about, if I had not received yours. For on the
12th, when Appius had got together a
thinly-attended meeting of the senate, the cold
was so great that he was compelled by the general
clamour
5 to dismiss us. As to the
Commagenian, because I have blown that proposition
to the winds, Appius makes wonderful advances to
me both personally and through Pomponius; for he
sees that if I adopt a similar style of discussion
in the other business, February will not bring him
anything in. And certainly I did
chaff him pretty well, and not only wrenched from
his grasp that petty township of
his—situated in the territory of
Zeugma on
the
Euphrates
6 —but also raised a loud laugh by
my satire on the man's purple-edged toga, which he
had been granted when Caesar was consul.
7 "His wish," said I, "for a renewal of the
same honour, to save the yearly re-dying of his
purple-edged toga, I do not think calls for any
decree of the house; but you, my lords, who could
not endure that the Bostrian
8 should wear the
toga praetexta, will you allow
the Commagenian to do so?" You see the style of
chaff, and the line I took. I spoke at length
against the petty princeling, with the result that
he was utterly laughed out of court. Alarmed by
this exhibition, as I said, Appius is making up to
me For nothing could be easier than to explode the
rest of his proposals. But I will not go so far as
to trip him up, lest he appeal to the god of
hospitality, and summon all his
Greeks—it is they who make us friends
again. I will do what Theopompus wants. I had
forgotten to write to you about Caesar: for I
perceive what sort of letter you have been
expecting. But the fact is, he has written word to
Balbus that the little packet of letters, in which
mine and Balbus's were packed, had been so
drenched with rain that he was not even aware that
there was a letter from me. He had, however, made
out a few words of Balbus's letter, to which he
answered as follows: "I perceive that you have
written something about Cicero, which I have not
fully made out: but, as far I could guess, it was
of a kind that I thought was more to be wished
than hoped for." Accordingly, I afterwards sent
Caesar a duplicate copy of the letter. Don't be
put off by that passage about his
want of means. In answer to it I wrote back saying
that he must not stop payment from any reliance on
my money chest, and descanted playfully on that
subject, in familiar terms and yet without
derogating from my dignity. His good feeling
towards us, however, according to all accounts, is
marked. The letter, indeed, on the point of which
you expect to hear, will almost coincide with your
return :
9 the other business of each day I will
write on condition of your furnishing me with
letter-carriers. However, such cold weather is
threatening,
10 that there is very great
danger that Appius may find his house frost-bitten
and deserted!
11
CXXXIII (F VII, 5)
TO CAESAR (IN GAUL)
ROME (FEBRUARY)
Cicero greets Caesar,
