The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1

APPENDIX C

The following letters to Tiro, with one from Quintus in regard to his manumission, are given here because of the difficulty of dating them. The indications of time are as follows. I. Those addressed to Tiro are earlier than that of Quintus, because they refer to a promised emancipation, while that of Quintus speaks of it as accomplished. II. The letter of Quintus is after the emancipation of his own freedman Statius, which apparently took place b.c. 59. III. Quintus is at a distance from Italy, and is looking forward to rejoin his brother and family. IV. Cicero is engaged on some more than ordinary literary work. V. Pompey is visiting Cicero in his Cuman villa. Now after his return from Asia (b.c. 58), Quintus was only twice thus distant, in b.c. 57-56 in Sardinia, and in b.c. 54-53 in Britain and Gaul. In both of these periods Cicero was engaged on literary work; in the former on the de Oratore, in the latter on the de Republica. There is really no means of deciding between these two. It is even possible that they might be placed some time during the proprietorship of Quintus in Asia (b.c. 62-59), during which Cicero was engaged, among other things, on a poem on his own times and a history of his consulship. Tiro—or M. Tullius Tiro, as he was called after his emancipation—was not a young man, and may well have been emancipated even in b.c. 59. According to Hieronymus, he died in b.c. 5 in his hundredth year. He was therefore little more than a year younger than Cicero himself. The illness of Tiro must have been an earlier one than that of which we shall hear much in b.c. 50-49.

I (f xvi, 13)

TO TIRO

(Cumæ) 10 April

I shall consider that I have everything possible from you, if I see you in good health. I am awaiting the arrival of Andricus, whom I sent to you, with the utmost anxiety. Do take pains to recover, if you love me: and as soon as you have thoroughly re-established your health, come to me. Good-bye.

10 April.

II (f xvi, 14)

TO TIRO

(Cumæ) 11 April

Andricus arrived a day later than I expected him, and accordingly I had a night of terror and unhappiness. Your letter does not make me at all more certain of your state, and yet it did revive me. I can take pleasure in nothing; can employ myself in no literary work, which I cannot touch till I have seen you. Give orders to promise the doctor any fee he chooses to ask. I wrote to that effect to Ummidius. I am told that your mind is ill at ease, and that the doctor says this is what makes you ill. If you care for me, rouse from their sleep your studies and your culture, which make you the dearest object of my affection. It is your mind that requires strengthening now, in order that your body may also recover. Pray do it both for your own and my sake. Keep Acastus with you to help to nurse you. Preserve yourself for me. The day for the fulfilment of my promise is at hand, and I will be true to it, if you only come. Good-bye, good-bye!

11 April, noon.

III (f xvi, 15)

TO TIRO

(Cumæ) 12 April

Ægypta arrived on the 12th of April. Though he brought the news that you were entirely without fever and were pretty well, yet he caused me anxiety by saying that you had not been able to write to me: and all the more so because Hermia, who ought to have arrived on the same day, has not done so. I am incredibly anxious about your health. If you will relieve me from that, I will liberate you from every burden. I would have written at greater length, if I had thought that you were now capable of taking any pleasure in reading a letter. Concentrate your whole intelligence, which I value above everything, upon preserving yourself for your own and my benefit. Use your utmost diligence, I repeat, in nursing your health. Good-bye.

P.S.—When I had finished the above Hermia arrived. I have your letter written in a shaky hand, and no wonder after so serious an illness. I am sending Ægypta back to stay with you, because he is by no means without feeling, and seems to me to be attached to you, and with him a cook for your especial use. Good-bye!

IV (f xvi, 10)

TO TIRO

Cumæ, 19 May

I of course wish you to come to me, but I dread the journey for you. You have been most seriously ill: you have been much reduced by a low diet and purgatives, and the ravages of the disease itself. After dangerous illnesses, if some mistake is made, drawbacks are usually dangerous. Moreover, to the two days on the road which it will have taken you to reach Cumæ, there will have to be added at once five more for your return journey to Rome. I mean to be at Formiæ on the 30th: be sure, my dear Tiro, that I find you there strong and well. My poor studies, or rather ours, have been in a very bad way owing to your absence. However, they have looked up a little owing to this letter from you brought by Acastus. Pompey is staying with me at the moment of writing this, and seems to be cheerful and enjoying himself. He asks me to read him something of ours, but I told him that without you the oracle was dumb. Pray prepare to renew your services to our Muses. My promise shall be performed on the day named: for I have taught you the etymology of fides.737 Take care to make a complete recovery. I shall be with you directly. Good-bye.

19 May.

V (f xvi, 16)

Q. CICERO TO HIS BROTHER

(Gaul?)

As I hope to see you again, my dear Marcus, and my own son Cicero, and your Tulliola and your son, I am delighted about Tiro. He was much too good for his position, and I am truly glad that you preferred that he should be our freedman and friend rather than our slave. Believe me, when I read your letter and his I jumped for joy, and I both thank and congratulate you: for if the fidelity and good character of my own Statius is a delight to me, how much more valuable must those same qualities be in your man, since there is added to them knowledge of literature, conversational powers, and culture, which have advantages even over those useful virtues! I have all sorts of most conclusive reasons for loving you: and here is another one, either for what you have done, or, if you choose, for your perfect manner of announcing it to me. Your letter shewed me your whole heart. I have promised Sabinus's servants all they asked, and I will perform my promise.

END OF VOL. I

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."

2

De Orat. ii. §§ 1, 2.

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).

4

Even at these he found troublesome people to interrupt him. See vol. i., pp. 102, 104.

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.

6

See Att. ii. 1, vol. i., p. 62; Plut. Cic. 13; Cic. in Pis. § 4.

7

See Att. ii. 1, vol. i., p. 62; Plut. Cic. 13; Cic. in Pis. § 4.

8

Die Entstchungsgeschichte der catilinarischen Verschwörung, by Dr. Constantin John, 1876. I am still of opinion that Plutarch's statement can be strongly supported.

9

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

10

"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.

11

See vol. i., p. 190.

12

See vol. i., pp. 129, 138; cp. pro Planc. §§ 95-96.

13

Fam. i. 9, 15 (vol. i., p. 316).

14

Letter CVII, vol. i., pp. 219, 220.

15

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.

16

Letter CLII, vol. i., pp. 310-324.

17

Quoted by Flavius Charisius, Ars Gramm. i., p. 126 (ed. Kiel).

18

Vol. ii., p. 204.

19

Vol. i., p. 357.

20

CLXXVIII-CLXXXI. The date of the letter to P. Sittius (CLXXVIII) is not certain.

21

Vol. i., p. 366.

22

Letter DXXXIII (Fam. iv. 14), about October, B.C. 46.

23

Vol. i., p. 226; Pliny, Ep., vii. 33.

24

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).

25

Atticus had estates and a villa near Buthrotum in Epirus,—Butrinto in Albania, opposite Corfu.

26

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.

27

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.

28

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).

29

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.

30

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.

31

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

32

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).

33

This sum (about £163) is for the works of art purchased for the writer by Atticus.

34

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.

35

Lucceius, as in the first letter and the next.

36

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).

37

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.

38

The point of this frigid joke is not clear. Was the grandmother really dead? What was she to do with the Latin feriæ? Mr. Strachan Davidson's explanation is perhaps the best, that Cicero means that the old lady was thinking of the Social War in b.c. 89, when the loyalty of the Latin towns must have been a subject of anxiety. She is in her dotage and only remembers old scares. This is understanding civitates with Latinæ. Others understand feriæ or mulieres. Saufeius, a Roman eques, was an Epicurean, who would hold death to be no evil. He was a close friend of Atticus, who afterwards saved his property from confiscation by the Triumvirs (Nep. Att. 12).

39

Cneius Sallustius, a learned friend of Cicero's, of whom we shall often hear again.

40

C. Calpurnius Piso, quæstor b.c. 58, died in b.c. 57. The marriage took place in b.c. 63.

41

The annalist C. Licinius Macer was impeached de repetundis (he was prætor about b.c. 70 or 69, and afterwards had a province), and finding that he was going to be condemned, committed suicide. He was never therefore condemned regularly (Val. Max. ix. 127; Plut. Cic. 9). Cicero presided at the court as prætor.

42

The books must have been a very valuable collection, or Cicero would hardly have made so much of being able to buy them, considering his lavish orders for statues or antiques.

43

One of the judices rejected by Verres on his trial, a pontifex and augur.

44

Agent of Atticus.

45

C. Antonius (uncle of M. Antonius) was elected with Cicero. Q. Cornificius had been tr. pl. in b.c. 69. See Letter XVIII.

46

M. Cæsonius, Cicero's colleague in the ædileship. He had lost credit as one of the Iunianum concilium in the trial of Oppianicus.

47

Aufidius Lurco, tr. pl. b.c. 61. M. Lollius Palicanus, tr. pl. some years previously.

48

L. Iulius Cæsar, actually consul in b.c. 64, brother-in-law of Lentulus the Catilinarian conspirator, was afterwards legatus to his distant kinsman, Iulius Cæsar, in Gaul. A. Minucius Thermus, defended by Cicero in b.c. 59, but the identification is not certain. D. Iunius Silanus got the consulship in the year after Cicero (b.c. 62), and as consul-designate spoke in favour of executing the Catilinarian conspirators.

49

The text is corrupt in all MSS. I have assumed a reading, something of this sort, quæ cum erit absoluta, sane facile ac libenter eum nunc fieri consulem viderim. This at any rate gives nearly the required sense, which is that Cicero regards the influence which Thermus will gain by managing the repair of the Flaminia as likely to make him a formidable candidate, and therefore he would be glad to see him elected in the present year 65 (nunc) rather than wait for the next, his own year.

50

C. Calpurnis Piso, consul in b.c. 67, then proconsul of Gallia Transalpina (Narbonensis). He was charged with embezzlement in his province and defended by Cicero in b.c. 63. There were no votes in Transalpine Gaul, but Cicero means in going and coming to canvass the Cispadane cities.

51

Pompey was this year on his way to take over the Mithridatic War. But Cicero may have thought it likely that he or some of his staff would pass through Athens and meet Atticus.

52

L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, prætor in b.c. 58, and consul b.c. 54, fell at Pharsalia, fighting against Cæsar.

53

Q. Cæcilius, a rich uncle of Atticus, so cross-grained that no one but Atticus could get on with him, to whom he accordingly left his large fortune (Nep. Att. 5).

54

Hom. Il. xxii. 159, Achilles pursuing Hector:

"Since not for sacred beast or oxhide shieldThey strove,—man's guerdon for the fleet of foot:Their stake was Hector's soul, the swift steed's lord."

55

Reading eius ἀνάθημα, and taking the latter word in the common sense of "ornament": the Hermathena is so placed that the whole gymnasium is as it were an ornament to it, designed to set it off, instead of its being a mere ornament to the gymnasium. Professor Tyrrell, however, will not admit that the words can have this or any meaning, and reads, ἡλίου ἄναμμα, "sun light"—"the whole gymnasium seems as bright as the sun"—a curious effect, after all, for one statue to have.

56

Asconius assigns this to the accusation of embezzlement in Africa. But that seems to have been tried in the previous year, or earlier in this year. The new impeachment threatened seems to have been connected with his crimes in the proscriptions of Sulla (Dio, xxxvii, 10). Cicero may have thought of defending him on a charge relating to so distant a period, just as he did Rabirius on the charge of murdering Saturninus (b.c. 100), though he had regarded his guilt in the case of extortion in Africa as glaring.

57

The essay on the duties of a candidate attributed to Quintus is hardly a letter, and there is some doubt as to its authenticity. I have therefore relegated it to an appendix.

58

Q. Metellus Celer had been prætor in b.c. 63 and was now (b.c. 62), as proconsul in Gallia Cisalpina, engaged against the remains of the Catilinarian conspiracy. Meanwhile his brother (or cousin) Q. Cæcilius Metellus Nepos, a tribune, after trying in vain to bring Cicero to trial for the execution of the conspirators, at last proposed to summon Pompey to Rome to prevent danger to the lives of citizens. This attempt led to riots and contests with Cato, and Nepos finally fled from Rome to Pompey. By leaving Rome he broke the law as to the tribunes, and the senate declared his office vacant, and this letter would even seem to shew that the senate declared him a public enemy. This letter of remonstrance is peremptory, if not insolent, in tone, and the reader will observe that the formal sentences, dropped in more familiar letters, are carefully used.

59

Metellus had been employed with Antonius against the camp at Fæsulæ, but was now engaged against some Alpine tribes.

60

When Metellus was commanding against Catiline, it is suggested that he marched towards Rome to support his brother, but this is conjecture.

61

Sister of P. Clodius. Of this famous woman we shall hear often again. She is believed to be the Lesbia of Catullus, and she is the "Palatine Medea" of the speech pro Cælio. Yet, in spite of Cicero's denunciations of her, he seems at one time to have been so fond of her society as to rouse Terentia's jealousy.

62

Wife of Pompey—divorced by him on his return from the East.

63

On the next meeting of the senate. The second was a dies comitialis on which the senate usually did not meet (Cæs. B. Civ. i. i).

64

For the riots caused by his contests with Cato (on which the senate seems to have passed the senatus consultum ultimum), and for his having left Rome while tribune.

65

P. Sestius was serving as proquæstor in Macedonia under Gaius Antonius. As tribune in b.c. 57 he worked for Cicero's recall, but was afterwards prosecuted de vi, and defended by Cicero.

66

Gaius Antonius, Cicero's colleague in the consulship. He had the province of Macedonia after the consulship, Cicero having voluntarily withdrawn in his favour to secure his support against Catiline. Scandal said that he had bargained to pay Cicero large sums from the profits of the province. He governed so corruptly and unsuccessfully that he was on his return condemned of maiestas.

67

From expressions in the following letters it seems certain that this refers to money expected from Gaius Antonius; but we have no means of deciding whether or no Teucris is a pseudonym for some agent. Cicero had undertaken to be the advocate and supporter of Antonius, and though as an actual patronus in court he could not take money, he may have felt justified in receiving supplies from him. Still, he knew the character of Antonius, and how such wealth was likely to be got, and it is not a pleasant affair.

68

Money-lenders.

69

The rich and cross-grained uncle of Atticus. See Letter X.

70

Cicero quotes half a Greek verse of Menander's, ταὐτόματον ἡμῶν, leaving Atticus to fill up the other two words, καλλίω βουλεύεται, "Chance designs better than we ourselves."

71

Mucia was suspected of intriguing with Iulius Cæsar.

72

The chief festival of the Bona Dea (Tellus) was in May. The celebration referred to here took place on the night between the 3rd and 4th of December. It was a state function (pro populo), and was celebrated in the presence of the Vestals and the wife of the consul or prætor urbanus, in ea domo quæ est in imperio. As Cæsar was Pontifex Maximus, as well as prætor urbanus, it took place in the Regia, the Pontiff's official house (Plutarch, Cic. 19; Dio, xxxvii. 35).

73

The word (comperisse) used by Cicero in regard to the Catilinarian conspiracy; it had apparently become a subject of rather malignant chaff.

74

Cicero is hinting at the danger of prosecution hanging over the head of Antonius.

75

Reading tibi ipsi (not ipse), with Tyrrell.

76

Ora soluta. Or, if ancora sublata be read, "when the anchor was already weighed." In either case it means "just as you were starting." Atticus wrote on board, and gave the letter to a carrier to take on shore.

77

A word lost in the text.