Chapter III: Introduction: Sidenote: Ground covered by the Correspondence (2)

But Cicero had now other causes of anxiety. He had spoken in favour of the commission offered to Pompey in B.C. 57 for superintending the corn-supply of Rome (_cura annonæ_). Pompey was to have fifteen legates, a good supply of ships and men, and considerable powers in all corn-growing countries in the Mediterranean. Cicero supported this, partly from gratitude to Pompey, but partly also from a wish to promote his power and influence against the ever-increasing influence and fame of Cæsar. He secretly hoped that a jealousy might grow up between them; that Pompey would be drawn closer to the Optimates; and that the union of the triumvirate might be gradually weakened and finally disappear. Pompey was thoroughly offended and alarmed by the insults offered him by the Clodian mob, and by Clodius's own denunciations of him; and if he could be convinced that these were suggested or approved by Cæsar or Crassus, it would go far to withdraw him from friendship with either of them. With Crassus, indeed, he had never been on cordial terms: it was only Cæsar's influence that had caused him to form any union with him. Cæsar, on the other hand, was likely to be uneasy at the great powers which the _cura annonæ_ put into Pompey's hands; and at the possible suggestion of offering him the dictatorship, if the Clodian riots became quite intolerable. On the whole, Cicero thought that he saw the element of a very pretty quarrel, from which he hoped that the result might be "liberty"--the orderly working of the constitution, that is, without the irregular supremacy of anyone, at any rate of anyone of the popular party. He had, however, a delicate part to play. He did not wish or dare to break openly with Cæsar, or to speak too openly to Pompey; and he was conscious that the intemperance, folly, or indifference of many of the Optimates made it difficult to reckon on their support, and made that support a very questionable benefit if accorded. But though his letters of this period are full of expressions indicating doubt of Pompey and irritation with him, yet he seems still to have spoken of him with warmth on public occasions, while he avoided mentioning Cæsar, or spoke of him only in cold terms.

[Sidenote: Renewal of the Triumvirate at Luca, April, B.C. 56, and Cicero's change of policy.]

[Sidenote: Quintus Cicero in Gaul.]

The hope, however, of detaching Pompey from Cæsar was dashed by the meeting at Luca in April, B.C. 56, at which a fresh arrangement was made for the mutual advantage of the triumvirs. Cæsar got the promise of the introduction of a law giving him an additional five years of command in Gaul, with special privileges as to his candidature for the consulship of B.C. 48; while Pompey and Crassus bargained for a second consulship in B.C. 55, and the reversion of the Spains (to be held as a single province) and Syria respectively, each for five years. The care taken that none of the three should have _imperium_ overlapping that of the others was indeed a sign of mutual distrust and jealousy. But the bargain was made with sufficient approval of the members of the party crowding Luca to secure its being carried out by the _comitia_. The union seemed stronger than ever; and Cicero at length resolved on a great change of attitude. Opposition to the triumvirs had been abandoned, he saw, by the very party for whom he had been incurring the enmity of Pompey and Cæsar. Why should he hold out any longer? "Since those who have no power," he writes to Atticus in April, "refuse me their affection, let me take care to secure the affection of those who have power. You will say, 'I could have wished that you had done so before.' I know you did wish it, and that I have made a real ass of myself."[13] This is the first indication in the letters of the change. But it was soon to be publicly avowed. The opposition to the consulship of Pompey and Crassus was so violent that no election took place during B.C. 56, and they were only elected under the presidency of _interreges_ at the beginning of February, B.C. 55. But by the _lex Sempronia_ the senate was bound to name the consular provinces--_i.e._, the provinces to be governed by the incoming consuls after their year of office--before the elections, and in his speech on the subject (_de Provinciis Consularibus_), delivered apparently in July, B.C. 56, Cicero, while urging that Piso and Gabinius should have successors appointed to them in Macedonia and Syria, took occasion to announce and defend his own reconciliation with Cæsar, and to support his continuance in the governorship of Gaul. Shortly afterwards, when defending the citizenship of L. Cornelius Balbus, he delivered a glowing panegyric on Pompey's character and services to the state. This was followed by a complete abstention from any farther opposition to the carrying out of Cæsar's law for the allotment of the Campanian land--a subject which he had himself brought before the senate only a short time before, and on which he really continued to feel strongly.[14] Cicero's most elaborate defence of his change of front is contained in a long letter to P. Lentulus Spinther, written two years afterwards.[15] The gist of it is much the same as the remark to Atticus already quoted. "Pompey and Cæsar were all-powerful, and could not be resisted without civil violence, if not downright civil war. The Optimates were feeble and shifty, had shewn ingratitude to Cicero himself, and had openly favoured his enemy Clodius. Public peace and safety must be the statesman's chief object, and almost any concession was to be preferred to endangering these." Nevertheless, we cannot think that Cicero was ever heartily reconciled to the policy, or the unconstitutional preponderance of the triumvirs. He patched up some sort of reconciliation with Crassus, and his personal affection for Pompey made it comparatively easy for him to give him a kind of support. Cæsar was away, and a correspondence filled on both sides with courteous expressions could be maintained without seriously compromising his convictions. But Cicero was never easy under the yoke. From B.C. 55 to B.C. 52 he sought several opportunities for a prolonged stay in the country, devoting himself--in default of politics--to literature. The fruits of this were the _de Oratore_ and the _de Republica_, besides poems on his own times and on his consulship. Still he was obliged from time to time to appear in the forum and senate-house, and in various ways to gratify Pompey and Cæsar. It must have been a great strain upon his loyalty to this new political friendship when, in B.C. 54, Pompey called upon him to undertake the defence of P. Vatinius, whom he had not long before attacked so fiercely while defending Sestius. Vatinius had been a tribune in B.C. 59, acting entirely in Cæsar's interests, and Cicero believed him to have been his enemy both in the matter of his exile and in the opposition to his recall. He had denounced him in terms that would have made it almost impossible, one would think, to have spoken in his defence in any cause whatever. At best he represented all that Cicero most disliked in politics; and on this very election, to the prætorship, for which he was charged with bribery (_de sodalitiis_), Cicero had already spoken in strongly hostile terms in the senate. For now undertaking his defence he has, in fact, no explanation to give to Lentulus (vol. i., p. 319), and he was long sore at having been forced to do it. Through B.C. 54 and 53 he was busied with his _de Republica_, and was kept more in touch with Cæsar by the fact that his brother Quintus was serving as _legatus_ to the latter in Britain and Gaul, and that his friend Trebatius (introduced by himself) was seeking for promotion and profit in Cæsar's camp. But even his brother's service with Cæsar did not eventually contribute to the formation of cordial feeling on his part towards Cæsar, whom he could not help admiring, but never really liked. For Quintus, though he distinguished himself by his defence of his camp in the autumn of B.C. 54, lost credit and subjected himself to grave rebuke by the disaster incurred in B.C. 53, near Aduatuca (_Tongres_), brought about by disregarding an express order of Cæsar's. There is no allusion to this in the extant correspondence, but a fragment of letter from Cæsar to Cicero (_neque pro cauto ac diligente se castris continuit_[16]), seems to shew that Cæsar had written sharply to Cicero on his brother's _faux pas_, and after this time, though Cicero met Cæsar at Ravenna in B.C. 52, and consented to support the bill allowing him to stand for the consulship in his absence,[17] there is apparent in his references to him a return to the cold or critical tone of former times. But of course there were other reasons.

[Sidenote: Pompey's third Consulship and the trial of Milo, B.C. 52.]

Pompey's six months' sole consulship of B.C. 52 ("that divine third consulship"), the rumour of his dictatorship, and the growing determination of the Optimates to play off Pompey against Cæsar (Crassus having disappeared) and to insist on Cæsar resigning his province and army before the end of his ten years' tenure, and before standing for a second consulship, caused Cicero's hope of a final dissolution of the unconstitutional compact to revive again; and made him draw more and more closely to Pompey as the chief hope of the _boni_. In the beginning of the year he had found himself in opposition, or quasi-opposition, to Pompey in regard to the prosecution of Milo for the murder of Clodius. But though in the previous year he had declared that the election of Milo to the consulship was of the utmost importance to his own position and the safety of the state,[18] now that it was rendered impossible by Milo's condemnation, he seems to have placed all his hopes on Pompey. Unfortunately, there is here a break in the correspondence. There is no letter of the last six months of B.C. 53, and only four (perhaps only three) of B.C. 52.[19] So that the riots which prevented Milo's election, the death of Clodius and the riots following it, and the consequent sole consulship of Pompey, with the latter's new legislation and the trial of Milo--all have to be sought for elsewhere. The last letter of this volume and of this year, addressed to M. Marius in December, B.C. 52, alludes to the condemnation of Milo, and to the numerous prosecutions following it. "Here, in Rome, I am so distracted by the number of trials, the crowded courts, and the new legislation, that I daily offer prayers that there may be no intercalation."[20]

[Sidenote: Cicero appointed Proconsul of Cilicia, B.C. 51-50.]

When the correspondence opens again in the spring of B.C. 51 an event has happened, of no particular importance in itself, but of supreme interest to Cicero, and very fortunate for the readers of the correspondence. One of Pompey's new laws ordained that no one was to take a province till the fifth year after laying down his consulship or prætorship. Pompey broke his own law by keeping his province, the Spains--his position in regard to them was altogether exceptional--but, in order to carry out the law in other cases, the senate arranged that ex-consuls and ex-prætors who had not been to provinces should in turn draw lots for vacant governorships. Cicero and Bibulus appear to have been the senior _consulares_ in that position, and with much reluctance Cicero allowed his name to be cast into the urn. He drew Cilicia and Bibulus Syria. He says that his motive was a desire to obey the wishes of the senate. Another motive may have been a desire to be away from Rome while the controversy as to Cæsar's retirement from his province was settled, and to retrieve a position of some political importance, which he had certainly not increased during the last few years. When it came to the actual start, however, he felt all the _gêne_ of the business--the formation and control of his staff, the separation from friends, and the residence far from the "light and life" of Rome, among officials who were certainly commonplace and probably corrupt, and amidst a population, perhaps acute and accomplished, but certainly servile and ill content, and in some parts predatory and barbarous. At the best, they would be emphatically provincial, in a dreary sense of the word. He felt unequal to the worry and bore of the whole business, and reproached himself with the folly of the undertaking. Of course, this regret is mingled with his usual self-congratulation on the purity with which he means to manage his province. But even that feeling is not strong enough to prevent his longing earnestly to have the period of banishment as short as possible, or to prevent the alarm with which he hears of a probable invasion by the Parthians. One effect of his almost two years' absence from Rome was, I think, to deprive him of the power of judging clearly of the course of events. He had constant intelligence and excellent correspondents--especially Cælius--still he could not really grasp what was going on under the surface: and when he returned to find the civil war on the point of breaking out, he was, after all, taken by surprise, and had no plan of action ready. This, as well as his government of the province, will be fully illustrated in the next volume of the correspondence.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Cicero's Correspondents.]

The persons to whom the chief letters are addressed in this volume, besides Atticus, are Cicero's brother Quintus and P. Lentulus Spinther. There are two excellent letters to M. Marius, and one very interesting, though rather surprising, epistle to L. Lucceius. Others of more than average interest are to Terentia, M. Fadius Gallus, C. Scribonius Curio, and Tiro.

[Sidenote: Titus Pomponius Atticus.]

ATTICUS (B.C. 109-32) is a man of whom we should be glad to know more than we do. He was the friend of all the leading men of the day--Pompey, Cæsar, Cicero, Antony, Brutus--father-in-law of Agrippa, and survived to be a constant correspondent of Augustus, between B.C. 43 and his death in B.C. 32. He was spared and respected by both sides in the civil wars, from Sulla to the Second Triumvirate. The secret of his success seems to have been that he was no man's rival. He resolutely declined all official employment, even on the staff of his brother-in-law Quintus Cicero. He committed himself to no side in politics, and, not being in the senate, had no occasion by vote or speech to wound the feelings of anyone. So, too, though he cared for literature, it was rather as a friendly critic of others than as an author. He did, it is true, compile some books on Roman history, on historical portraits, and certain family biographies; but they were not such as made him a rival of any of his contemporaries. They were rather the productions of a rich amateur, who had leisure to indulge a quasi-literary taste, without any thought of joining the ranks of professed writers. Thirdly, he had great wealth, partly inherited, partly acquired by prudent speculation in the purchase of town properties, or in loans to states or public bodies on fair terms: and this wealth was at the service of his friends, but not in the lavish or reckless manner, which often earns only ingratitude without being of any permanent service to the recipients. He lent money, but expected to be repaid even by his brother-in-law. And this prudence helped to retain the confidence, while his sympathetic temperament secured the liking, of most. Again, he had the valuable knack of constantly replenishing the number of his friends among men junior to himself. His character attracted the liking of Sulla, who was twenty-seven years his senior, and he remained the close friend of his contemporaries Hortensius and Cicero (the former five years his senior, the latter three years his junior) till the day of their death. But we also find him on intimate terms with Brutus, twenty-four, and Octavian, forty-six years junior to himself. Lastly, he was not too much at Rome. More than twenty years of his earlier manhood (B.C. 87-65) were spent in Greece, principally at Athens, partly in study and partly in business. And Athens at this time, long deprived of political importance, had still the charm not only of its illustrious past, but also of its surviving character as the home of culture and refinement. When he at length returned to Rome in B.C. 65, he had already purchased a property in Epirus, near Buthrotum (see p. 3), where he built a villa, in which he continued to spend a considerable part of his remaining years. This was sufficiently remote, not only from Rome, but from the summer residences of the Roman nobles, to secure his isolation from the intrigues and enmities of Roman society. He did not indeed--as who does?--always escape giving offence. At the very beginning of the correspondence we hear of his vain attempts to mollify the anger of L. Lucceius--how incurred we do not know; and Quintus Cicero, of whose sharp temper we hear so much, was on more than one occasion on the point of a rupture with him. But his family life was generally as pleasing as his connexion with his friends. With his mother, who lived to a great age, he boasted that he had never been reconciled, because he had never quarrelled. He was the only one who could get on with the crusty uncle Cæcilius. In the delicate matter of his sister Pomponia's differences with her husband Quintus Cicero, he seems to have acted with kindness as well as prudence; and though he married late in life (B.C. 56, when he was in his fifty-third year), he appears to have made an excellent husband to Pilia and a very affectionate father to his daughter. His unwearied sympathy with the varied moods of Cicero--whether of exultation, irritation, or despair--and the entire confidence which Cicero feels that he will have that sympathy in every case, are creditable to both. It is only between sincere souls that one can speak to the other as to a second self, as Cicero often alleges that he does to Atticus.

[Sidenote: Quintus Tullius Cicero.]

Of QUINTUS CICERO, the next most important correspondent in this volume, we get a fairly clear picture. Four years younger than his famous brother (b. B.C. 102), he followed him at the due distance up the ladder of official promotion to the prætorship, to which he was elected in the year of his elder's consulship. There, however, Quintus stopped. He never seems to have stood for the consulship. He had no oratorical genius to give him reputation in the forum, nor were his literary productions of any value, either for style or originality. His abilities for administration, as shewn in his three years' government of Asia, appear to have been respectable, but were marred by faults of temper, which too often betrayed him into extreme violence of language. In military command he shewed courage and energy in defending his camp in the rising of the Gauls in the winter of B.C. 54-53; but he spoilt the reputation thus gained by the mistake committed in the autumn of B.C. 53, which cost the loss of a considerable number of troops, and all but allowed the roving Germans to storm his camp. He remained another year in Gaul, but did nothing to retrieve this mistake. In military affairs fortune rarely forgives. In politics he seems to have contented himself generally with saying ditto to his brother. And this continued to be the case up to Pharsalia. After that, finding himself on the losing side, he turned somewhat fiercely upon the brother, whom he regarded as having misled him; and for a time there was a miserable breach between them, which, however, did not last very long. When the end came it found the brothers united in heart as in misfortune. His private happiness was marred by an uncongenial marriage. Pomponia--sister of Atticus--seems to have been as high-tempered as her husband, and less placable. The constant quarrels between them exercised the patience both of Cicero and Atticus, and crops up all through the correspondence. One effect of them was the loss of all control over their son, who, being called upon to smooth over the differences between father and mother, naturally took up at an early age a line of his own, and shewed a disposition to act independently of his elders.

[Sidenote: Terentia.]

The letters to TERENTIA do not fill much space in the correspondence, and are rarely interesting. Married about B.C. 80, Cicero seems to have lived in harmony with her at least till the time of his return from exile, during which unhappy period he acknowledges the activity of her exertions in support of his recall, and the drain which his ruin was making upon her resources. Terentia had a large private fortune, and apparently used it liberally in his service. Nevertheless, immediately on his return from exile, there seems to have been some cause of coldness between the husband and wife. He darkly alludes to certain domestic troubles in the first letter to Atticus written from Rome (vol i., p. 189), and repeats the hint in the next (p. 193). When he landed at Brundisium it was Tullia, not Terentia, who came to meet him (p. 187), and for some time after she appears to be presiding in his house rather than Terentia (see pp. 224, 257). Whatever the cause of this coldness was, however, it appears to have been removed for a time. He kept up a correspondence with her while he was in Cilicia (B.C. 51-50), and though he does not seem pleased at her having arranged the marriage of Tullia with Dolabella, he addresses her warmly when about to return, and was met by her on landing. During the five or six months that followed, before Cicero left Italy to join Pompey, there is no indication of any alienation: but the short notes from Pompey's camp, and in the first half of B.C. 47, are cold and conventional, and on his return to Brundisium after Pharsalia, and during his lengthened stay there, he appears to have declined to allow her to come and see him. Soon after his return to Rome, in September, B.C. 47, matters came to a climax. Perhaps some of the mischief was caused by the mismanagement or dishonesty of Terentia's steward, Philotimus, of whom we hear a good deal in the letters from Cilicia: but whatever was the origin of the quarrel, Cicero asserts that on his return he found his affairs in a state of utter disorder. It may well have been that, like other adherents to the losing cause, he had to suffer from loss of any property that could be easily laid hands on in Rome, and that Terentia had had no power to save it. But Cicero, rightly or wrongly, attributed the embarrassment which he found awaiting him to his wife. He says in a letter to Gnæus Plancius:[21] "I should not have taken any new step at a time of such general disaster had I not on my return found my private affairs in as sorry a position as the public. The fact is, that when I saw that, owing to the criminal conduct of those to whom my life and fortunes ought, in return for my never-to-be-forgotten services, to have been their dearest object, there was nothing safe within the walls of my house, nothing that was not the subject of some intrigue, I made up my mind that I must arm myself by the faithful support of new marriage connexions against the perfidy of the old." This is a lame excuse for a man of sixty separating from the companion of his whole manhood, and in the eyes of Roman Society it was rendered still more questionable by a prompt marriage with a young girl, rich, and his own ward: from whom, however, he soon again divorced himself, angered, it is said, by her want of feeling at the death of Tullia. Terentia long survived her husband, living, we are told, to be over a hundred years old. Divorce was, of course, not regarded in these days of the Republic as it had once been, or as it is now among ourselves; still we should have been glad, both for his fame and his happiness, if the few years remaining to him had not had this additional cloud. A man of sixty embarking on such matrimonial enterprise is not a dignified spectacle, or one pleasing to gods and men.

The other correspondents may be dismissed in few words.

[Sidenote: P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther.]

P. CORNELIUS LENTULUS SPINTHER, to whom some of the longest letters are addressed, represents the high aristocracy, to which Cicero wished to commend himself, though seeing keenly the weakness which underlay their magnificence. The part played by Lentulus in politics had been showy, but never founded on steadfast principle. He owed his earlier promotions to Cæsar's influence, but in his consulship of B.C. 57 had taken the side of the aristocracy in promoting the recall of Cicero, though he had gone against their sentiment by supporting Pompey's appointment to the _cura annonæ_. But as he was going to Cilicia in B.C. 56, Lentulus wished to have the lucrative task of restoring Ptolemy Auletes to the throne of Egypt, from which he had been righteously driven by his subjects. Therefore it was all to the good that Pompey should have business at home preventing him from taking this in hand. How Lentulus was baulked in this desire will appear in the letters. He no doubt had his full share of the _Lentulitas_ distinguishing his family. But all was forgiven by Cicero to a man who had promoted his recall, and he takes great pains to justify to Lentulus his own change of policy in regard to the triumvirs after B.C. 56. When the civil war began Lentulus joined Domitius at Corfinium, and with him fell into Cæsar's hands, and was dismissed unharmed. He afterwards joined Pompey in Epirus, intent on succeeding Cæsar as Pontifex Maximus, as soon as the latter had been satisfactorily disposed of. After Pharsalia he sought refuge at Rhodes, but was refused sanctuary by the islanders, and was eventually put to death, though we do not know by whom (_Att._ xi. 13; _Fam._ ix. 18).

[Sidenote: M. Fadius Gallus, M. Marius, L. Lucceius, C. Scribonius Curio, C. Trebatius Testa.]

M. FADIUS GALLUS, the Epicurean, and M. MARIUS, the valetudinarian and wit, were among friends valued for their personal and agreeable qualities rather than for any public or political importance attaching to them. The same may be said of L. LUCCEIUS, of whose Roman history Cicero thought so well, that he wrote a remarkable letter begging for an honourable place in it for his consulship, as Pliny did to Tacitus.[22] C. SCRIBONIUS CURIO, son of a great friend of Cicero, after a _jeunesse orageuse_, returned to Rome from his quæstorship in Asia, in B.C. 53, to take up the inheritance of his father, which he quickly dissipated. Cicero seems to have had a high idea of his abilities, and to have believed him capable of taking the lead of the Optimates. But in his tribuneship of B.C. 51-50 he disappointed all such hopes by openly joining Cæsar's party, and resisting all attempts to recall him. He joined Cæsar at Ravenna as soon as his tribuneship was out, and urged him to march on Rome. In B.C. 49 he was sent to secure Sicily and Africa. The first he did, but in the second he perished in battle against the senatorial governor and king Iuba. Cicero's relation to C. TREBATIUS TESTA, a learned jurisconsult, was apparently that of a patron or tutor, who, thinking that he has found a young man of ability, endeavours to push him. He sent him with a letter of introduction to Cæsar, who was good-natured, though rather sarcastic as to the scope for legal abilities to be found in Gaul. He gave him, however, a military tribuneship, without exacting military duties, and apparently kept on good terms with him, for he employed him in B.C. 49 to communicate his wish to Cicero as to his remaining at Rome. Cicero's letters to him, though numerous, are not among the most interesting. They are full of banter of a rather forced and dull kind; and Cicero was evidently annoyed to find that his scheme for advancing Trebatius in Cæsar's province had not been very successful. The friendship, however, survived the civil war, and we find Cicero in B.C. 44 dedicating his _Topica_ to Trebatius.

[Footnote 1: That Cicero up to the time of his consulship had been connected rather with the _populares_ is illustrated by Quintus (_de Petit._ i.) urging him to make it clear that he had never been a demagogue, but that if he had ever spoken "in the spirit of the popular party, he had done so with the view of attracting Pompey."]

[Footnote 2: _De Orat._ ii. §§ 1, 2.]

[Footnote 3: "The city, the city, my dear Rufus--stick to that, and live in its full light. Residence elsewhere--as I made up my mind early in life--is mere eclipse and obscurity to those whose energy is capable of shining at Rome."--_Fam._ ii. 12 (vol. ii., p. 166).]

[Footnote 4: Even at these he found troublesome people to interrupt him. See vol. i., pp. 102, 104.]

[Footnote 5: Yet the announcement of the birth of his son (p. 16) and of the dangerous confinement of Tullia (vol. ii., p. 403) are almost equally brief.]

[Footnote 6: See _Att._ ii. 1, vol. 1., p. 62; Plut. _Cic._ 13; Cic. _in Pis._ § 4.]

[Footnote 7: _Die Entstchungsgeschichte der catilinarischen Verschwörung_, by Dr. Constantin John, 1876. I am still of opinion that Plutarch's statement can be strongly supported.]

[Footnote 8: Cæsar said, οὺ μὴν καὶ προσήκειν ἐπὶ τοῐς παρεληλυθόσι τοιοῠτόν τινα νόμον συγγράφεσθαι (Dio, xxxviii. 17).]

[Footnote 9: "The man who did not so much as raise me up, when I threw myself at his feet."--_Att._ x. 4 (vol. ii., p. 362). Similar allusions to Pompey's conduct to him on the occasion often occur.]

[Footnote 10: See vol. i., p. 190.]

[Footnote 11: See vol. i., pp. 129, 138; cp. _pro Planc._ §§ 95-96.]

[Footnote 12: _Fam._ i. 9, 15 (vol. i., p. 316).]

[Footnote 13: Letter CVII, vol. i., pp. 219, 220.]

[Footnote 14: Ever since its capture in the second Punic War, Capua had ceased to have any corporate existence, and its territory had been _ager publicus_, let out to tenants (_aratores_). Cæsar had restored its corporate existence by making it a _colonia_, and much of the land had been allotted to veterans of his own and Pompey's armies. The state thus lost the rent of the land, one of the few sources of revenue from Italy now drawn by the exchequer of Rome.]

[Footnote 15: Letter CLII, vol. i., pp. 310-324.]

[Footnote 16: Quoted by Flavius Charisius, _Ars Gramm._ i., p. 126 (ed. Kiel).]

[Footnote 17: Vol. ii., p. 204.]

[Footnote 18: Vol. i., p. 357.]

[Footnote 19: CLXXVIII-CLXXXI. The date of the letter to P. Sittius (CLXXVIII) is not certain.]

[Footnote 20: Vol. i., p. 366.]

[Footnote 21: Letter DXXXIII (_Fam._ iv. 14), about October, B.C. 46.]

[Footnote 22: Vol. i., p. 226; Pliny, _Ep._, vii. 33.]

"TULLIUS, of all the sons of royal Rome
That are, or have been, or are yet to come,
Most skilled to plead, most learned in debate,--
Catullus hails thee, small as thou art great.
Take thou from him his thanks, his fond regards,
The first of patrons from the least of bards."

CATULLUS, xlix. (J. E. S.)

CICERO'S LETTERS

ERRATA IN VOL. I.

Page 107, note 3, last line, _dele_ note of interrogation after "expenses." " 193, note 4, last line, _for_ B.C. 45 _lege_ B.C. 46. " 253, Letter CXXII, _for_ A IV, 1, _lege_ A IV, 2.

CICERO'S LETTERS

I (A I, 5)

[Sidenote: B.C. 68. Coss., L. Cæcilius Metellus, Q. Marcius Rex.]

This opening of the correspondence finds Cicero, now in his
thirty-ninth year, in the midst of his official career. He had
already been quæstor (B.C. 75) and ædile (B.C. 69), and was looking
forward to his election to the prætorship in the next year (B.C.
67). He had already risen almost to the highest place in his
profession as advocate, and had partly delivered, partly published
his great indictment of Verres only a year ago. He is married to
Terentia (B.C. 80), and has one daughter, Tullia or Tulliola, born
on August 5, probably the next year (B.C. 79). His intimacy with T.
Pomponius Atticus (three years his senior), perhaps begun at
school, had lasted at least eleven years, from the time when he met
him at Athens (B.C. 79), and with him had been initiated in the
Eleusinian mysteries (_de Leg._ 2, § 36). There too they had both
seen much of the writer's cousin Lucius, whose death he deplores in
this letter (_de Fin._ 5, § 1). Atticus had lived abroad in Athens
and Epirus, with occasional visits home from B.C. 88 to B.C. 65, in
which latter year he seems to have returned for a more lengthened
stay (Nep. _Att._ 4). The two friends have already corresponded
frequently, but this is the first letter preserved.

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)

ROME

[Sidenote: B.C. 68, ÆT. 38]

We are such intimate friends that more than almost anyone else you can appreciate the grief as well as the actual public and private loss that the death of my cousin Lucius is to me. There is absolutely no gratification which any human being can receive from the kindly character of another that I have not been accustomed to receive from him. I am sure, therefore, that you will share my grief. For, in the first place, whatever affects me affects you; and in the second place, you have yourself lost in him a friend and connexion of the highest character and most obliging disposition, who was attached to you from personal inclination, as well as from my conversation.

As to what you say in your letter about your sister,[23] she will herself bear me witness what pains I have taken that my brother Quintus should show her proper affection. Thinking him somewhat inclined to be angry with her, I wrote to him in such a way as I thought would not hurt his feelings as a brother, while giving him some good advice as my junior, and remonstrating with him as being in the wrong. The result is that, from frequent letters since received from him, I feel confident that everything is as it ought and as we should wish it to be.

As to the frequency of my letters you have no ground for your complaint. The fact is our good sister Pomponia never informed me of there being a courier ready to take a letter. Farthermore, I never chanced to know of anyone going to Epirus,[24] and I was not till recently informed of your being at Athens.

Again, as to the business of Acutilius which you had left in my hands. I had settled it on my first visit to Rome after your departure. But it turned out that, in the first place, there was no urgency in the matter, and, in the second place, as I felt confidence in your judgment, I preferred that Peducæus[25] rather than myself should advise you by letter on the subject. For having submitted my ears to Acutilius for several days (and I think you know his style), I should scarcely have regarded it as a hardship to write you a letter describing his grumblings after patiently enduring the bore (and it _was_ rather a bore, I can tell you) of hearing them. Moreover, though you find fault with me, allow me to observe that I have had only one letter from you, though you had greater leisure for writing, and more opportunity of sending letters.

As to what you say in your letter, "Even if anyone is inclined to be offended with you, I ought to bring him to a better mind"--I understand to what you allude, and I have not neglected the matter. But the truth is that the extent of his displeasure is something surprising. However, I have not omitted to say anything there was to say in your behalf: but on what points I am to hold out your wishes, I consider, ought to be my guide. If you will write me word distinctly what they are, you will find that I have had no desire to be more exacting, and in the future shall be no more yielding, than you wish.[26]

As to the business of Tadius. He tells me that you have written him word that there was no need of farther trouble, since the property is secured by prescription. I am surprised that you do not know that in the case of a statutory wardship of an unmarried girl prescription cannot be pleaded.[27]

I am glad you like your purchase in Epirus. What I commissioned you to get for me, and anything you see suitable to my Tusculan villa, I should be glad if you will, as you say in your letter, procure for me, only don't put yourself to any inconvenience. The truth is, there is no other place that gives me complete rest after all my worries and hard work.

I am expecting my brother Quintus every day. Terentia has a severe attack of rheumatism. She is devoted to you, to your sister, and your mother, and adds her kindest regards in a postscript. So does my pet Tulliola. Love me, and be assured that I love you as a brother.

[Footnote 23: Pomponia, married to Cicero's younger brother Quintus. We shall frequently hear of this unfortunate marriage. Quintus was four years younger than his brother, who had apparently arranged the match, and felt therefore perhaps somewhat responsible for the result (Nep. _Att._ 5).]

[Footnote 24: Atticus had estates and a villa near Buthrotum in Epirus,--_Butrinto_ in Albania, opposite Corfu.]

[Footnote 25: This is probably Sext. Peducæus the younger, an intimate friend of Atticus (Nep. _Att._ 21); his father had been prætor in Sicily when Cicero was quæstor (B.C. 76-75), the son was afterwards a partisan of Cæsar in the Civil War, governor of Sardinia, B.C. 48, and proprætor in Spain, B.C. 39.]

[Footnote 26: The person alluded to is L. Lucceius, of whom we shall hear again. See Letters V, VII, VIII, CVIII. What his quarrel with Atticus was about, we do not know.]

[Footnote 27: Prescriptive right to property was acquired by possession (_usus_) of two years. But no such right could be acquired to the property of a girl under guardianship (_pro Flacco_, § 84).]

II (A I, 6)

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)

ROME, DECEMBER

[Sidenote: B.C. 68, ÆT. 38]

I won't give you any excuse hereafter for accusing me of neglecting to write. It is you that must take care that with all your leisure you keep up with me.

Rabirius's house at Naples,[28]for the improvement of which you have designs drawn out and completed in imagination, has been bought by M. Fonteius[29] for 130,000 sesterces (about £1,040). I wished you to know this in case you were still hankering after it.

We may be quite satisfied, I think, with my brother's feelings towards Pomponia. He is with her at present in his villa at Arpinum, and has Decimus Turanius with him, who is great in _belles lettres_.

The date of my father's death was the 28th of November.

That is about all my news. If you light on any articles of _vertu_ suitable for a gymnasium, which would look well in the place you wot of,[30] please don't let them slip. I am so delighted with my Tusculan villa that I never feel really happy till I get there. Let me know exactly what you are doing and intending to do about everything.

[Footnote 28: C. Rabirius, whom Cicero defended in B.C. 63, when prosecuted by Cæsar for his share in the murder of Saturninus (B.C. 100). He lived, we know, in Campania, for his neighbours came to give evidence in his favour at the trial.]

[Footnote 29: M. Fonteius made a fortune in the province of Gaul beyond the Alps, of which he was proprætor, B.C. 77-74. In B.C. 69 he had been accused of malversation, and defended by Cicero. After his acquittal he seems to be buying a seaside residence in Campania, as so many of the men of fashion did.]

[Footnote 30: Cicero's "gymnasium" was some arrangement of buildings and plantations more or less on the model of the Greek gymnasia, at his Tusculan villa.]

III (A I, 7)

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)

ROME, DECEMBER

[Sidenote: B.C. 68, ÆT. 38]

All's well at your mother's,[31] and I keep an eye on her. I have undertaken to pay L. Cincius 20,400 sesterces[32] to your credit on the Ides of February. Pray see that I receive at the earliest possible opportunity what you say in your letters that you have bought and secured for me. I should also be very much obliged if you would, as you promised, think over the means of securing the library for me. My hope of getting the one enjoyment which I care for, when I come to retire, depends entirely on your kindness.

[Footnote 31: The mother of Atticus lived to be ninety, dying in B.C. 33, not long before Atticus himself, who at her funeral declared that "he had never been reconciled to her, for he had never had a word of dispute with her" (Nep. _Att._ 17).]

[Footnote 32: This sum (about £163) is for the works of art purchased for the writer by Atticus.]

IV (A I, 9)

[Sidenote: B.C. 67. Coss., C. Calpurnius Piso, M. Acilius Glabrio.]

The year of Cicero's election to the prætorship. It is the year
also of Pompey's great commission by the _lex Gabinia_ against the
Pirates. But Cicero does not seem as yet much concerned with
"foreign politics."

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)

ROME

[Sidenote: B.C. 67, ÆT. 39]

I get letters from you far too seldom considering that you can much more easily find people starting for Rome than I to Athens: considering, too, that you are more certain of my being at Rome than I of your being at Athens. For instance, it is owing to this uncertainty on my part that this very letter is somewhat short, because not being sure as to where you are, I don't choose my confidential talk to fall into strange hands. The Megaric statues and the Hermæ, which you mentioned in your letters, I am waiting for impatiently. Anything you have of the same kind which may strike you as worthy of my "Academia," do not hesitate to send, and have complete confidence in my money-chest. My present delight is to pick up anything particularly suitable to a "gymnasium." Lentulus promises the use of his ships. I beg you to be zealous in these matters. Thyillus begs you (and I also at his request) to get him some writings of the Eumolpidæ.[33]

V (A I, 8)

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)

ROME

[Sidenote: B.C. 67, ÆT. 39]

All well at your house. Your mother and sister are regarded with affection by me and my brother Quintus. I have spoken to Acutilius. He says that he has not heard from his agent, and professes surprise that you should make any difficulty of his having refused to guarantee you against farther demands. As to the business of Tadius, the announcement in your letter that you have settled the matter out of court I saw gratified and pleased him very much. That friend of mine[34]--a most excellent man, upon my honour, and most warmly attached to me--is very angry with you. If I could but know how much you care about it, I should be able to decide how much trouble I am to take in the matter. I have paid L. Cincius the 20,400 sesterces for the Megaric statues in accordance with your letter to me. As to your Hermæ of Pentelic marble with bronze heads, about which you wrote to me--I have fallen in love with them on the spot. So pray send both them and the statues, and anything else that may appear to you to suit the place you wot of, my passion, and your taste--as large a supply and as early as possible. Above all, anything you think appropriate to a gymnasium and terrace. I have such a passion for things of this sort that while I expect assistance from you, I must expect something like rebuke from others. If Lentulus has no vessel there, put them on board anyone you please. My pet Tulliola claims your present and duns me as your security. I am resolved, however, to disown the obligation rather than pay up for you.

[Footnote 33: Thyillus (sometimes written Chilius), a Greek poet living at Rome. See Letters XVI and XXI. The Eumolpidæ were a family of priests at Athens who had charge of the temple of Demeter at Eleusis. The πάτρια Εὐμολπιδῶν (the phrase used by Cicero here) may be either books of ritual or records such as priests usually kept: πάτρια is an appropriate word for such rituals or records handed down by priests of one race or family.]

[Footnote 34: Lucceius, as in the first letter and the next.]

VI (A I, 10)

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)

TUSCULUM

[Sidenote: B.C. 67, ÆT. 39]

"Being in my Tusculan villa" (that's for your "being in the Ceramicus")--however, I being there, a courier sent by your sister arrived from Rome and delivered me a letter from you, announcing at the same time that the courier who was going to you started that very afternoon. The result is that, though I do send _an_ answer, I am forced by the shortness of the time to write only these few words. First, as to softening my friend's feeling towards you, or even reconciling him outright, I pledge you my word to do so. Though I have been attempting it already on my own account, I will now urge the point more earnestly and press him closer, as I think I gather from your letter that you are so set upon it. This much I should like you to realize, that he is very deeply offended; but since I cannot see any serious ground for it, I feel confident that he will do as I wish and yield to my influence. As for my statues and Hermeracles, pray put them on board, as you say in your letter, at your very earliest convenience, and anything else you light upon that may seem to you appropriate to the place you wot of, especially anything you think suitable to a palæstra and gymnasium. I say this because I am sitting there as I write, so that the very place itself reminds me. Besides these, I commission you to get me some medallions to let into the walls of my little entrance-court, and two engraved stone-curbs. Mind you don't engage your library to anyone, however keen a lover you may find; for I am hoarding up my little savings expressly to secure that resource for my old age. As to my brother, I trust that all is as I have ever wished and tried to make it. There are many signs of that result--not least that your sister is _enceinte_. As for my election, I don't forget that I left the question entirely to you, and I have all along been telling our common friends that I have not only not asked you to come, but have positively forbidden you to do so, because I understood that it was much more important to you to carry through the business you have now in hand, than it is to me to have you at my election. I wish you therefore to feel as though you had been sent to where you are in my interests. Nay, you will find me feeling towards you, and hear of it from others, exactly as though my success were obtained not only in your presence, but by your direct agency.

Tulliola gives notice of action against you. She is dunning me as your surety.

VII (A I, 11)

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)

ROME

[Sidenote: B.C. 67, ÆT. 39]

I was doing so before spontaneously, and have been since greatly stirred by your two letters, with their earnest expressions to the same effect. Besides, Sallustius has been always at my side to prompt me to spare no pains to induce Lucceius to be reconciled to you. But after doing everything that could be done, not only did I fail to renew his old feelings towards you, but I could not even succeed in eliciting the reason of his alienation. On his part, however, he keeps harping on that arbitration case of his, and the other matters which I knew very well before you left Rome were causing him offence. Still, he has certainly got something else fixed deeper in his mind; and this no letters _from_ you, and no commissioning of me will obliterate as easily as you will do in a personal interview, I don't mean merely by your words, but by the old familiar expression of your face--if only you think it worth while, as you will if you will listen to me, and be willing to act with your habitual kindness. Finally, you need not wonder why it is that, whereas I intimated in my letters that I felt hopeful of his yielding to my influence, I now appear to have no such confidence; for you can scarcely believe how much more stubborn his sentiment appears to me than I expected, and how much more obstinate he is in this anger. However, all this will either be cured when you come, or will only be painful to the party in fault.

As to the sentence in your letter, "you suppose by this time I am prætor-elect," let me tell you that there is no class of people at Rome so harassed by every kind of unreasonable difficulty as candidates for office; and that no one knows when the elections will be.[35] However, you will hear all this from Philadelphus. Pray despatch at the earliest opportunity what you have bought for my "Academia." I am surprisingly delighted with the mere thought of that place, to say nothing of its actual occupation. Mind also not to let anyone else have your books. Reserve them, as you say in your letter, for me. I am possessed with the utmost longing for them, as I am with a loathing for affairs of every other kind, which you will find in an incredibly worse position than when you left them.[36]

[Footnote 35: The _comitia_ were twice postponed this year. Apparently the voting for Cicero had in each case been completed, so that he is able to say that he was "thrice returned at the head of the poll by an unanimous vote" (_de Imp. Pomp._ § 2). The postponement of the elections was probably connected with the struggles of the senate to hinder the legislation (as to bribery) of the Tribune, Gaius Cornelius (Dio, 36, 38-39).]

[Footnote 36: The first allusion in these letters to the disturbed position of public affairs. See the passage of Dio quoted in the previous note. There were so many riots in the interval between the proclamation and the holding of the elections, not without bloodshed, that the senate voted the consuls a guard.]

VIII (A I, 3)

[Sidenote: B.C. 66. Coss., M. Æmilius Lepidus, L. Volcatius Tullus.]

In this year Cicero was prætor, and delivered his first extant
public speech (_apud populum_) in support of the _lex Manilia_,
which gave Pompey the command in the Mithridatic War with the
provinces of Asia and Bithynia. The strict Optimates opposed it.
Cicero supported it on the grounds of the importance of the war and
the proofs Pompey had already given of military ability, courage,
personal prestige, and good fortune. He takes occasion to point out
the mischief done to the Roman name by oppressive or fraudulent
governors and imperators. In this same year he delivered one of his
ablest speeches in court in defending A. Cluentius Habitus on a
charge of poisoning. At the consular elections this year the two
first elected were disabled for bribery.

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)

ROME, JANUARY

[Sidenote: B.C. 66, ÆT. 40]