The translation is by W.G. Williams (1927). Click on the L symbols to go to the Latin text of each section. Click on ** to go to the translator's footnotes.
CONTENTS: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 ; all these letters were written by M. Caelius Rufus to Cicero.
← Book 7
CAELIUS ** TO CICERO, GREETING
As you were leaving me, I promised to write you a very careful and full account of all that happened in the city ; well, I have been at some pains to get hold of a man who would report every detail - so minutely , indeed, that I fear you will regard his efforts in that line as a mere excess of loquacity. Although I know how keenly interested you are, and what pleasure it gives all who are abroad to be informed of even the most trivial transactions at home, still, as to this particular arrangement, I implore you not to condemn this way of discharging my duty as savouring of superciliousness, simply because I have delegated the task to another. It is not that anything in the world would be more delightful to me, busy as I am, and the laziest of letter-writers, than to refresh my memories of you. But the packet I send you herewith itself explains my conduct. It would require I don't know how much leisure, not only to write out all this, but even to cast an eye over it. Decrees of the Senate, edicts, gossip, rumours - they are all there. If you are not altogether pleased with this sample, be sure you let me know, so that I may not exhaust your patience and my purse at the same time.
2 Should anything of unusual political importance be transacted, which those scribes of mine cannot adequately explain, I will send you a full and accurate account of the way it was done, what was thought of it afterwards, and what anticipations it has aroused. As things now are, there is no great expectation of anything happening. For those rumours about the comitia of the Transpadani ** were rife enough, until I got as far as Cumae; when I reached Rome, I never heard the slightest whisper about it. Then there's Marcellus **; so far he has not brought any motion before the Senate about the succession to the Gallic provinces, ** and has put off doing so, as he told me himself, till June 1, with the result that he has helped not a little to aggravate those rumours ** one heard about him when we were in Rome.
3 If, as you hoped, you found Pompey disengaged, be sure you write me a full account of your impression of him, what conversation he had with you, and what he professed to be his wishes ; for, as a rule, he thinks one thing and says another, and yet is not quite clever enough to disguise his desires.
4 As regards Caesar, there are frequent reports about him and they are not very nice ; at any rate there are strange whisperings among the fresh arrivals here ; one fellow says he has lost his cavalry, which I suspect is undoubtedly the case ; another that the seventh legion has had a thrashing; that he himself is hemmed in among the Bellovaci, and cut off from the rest of his army ; but so far there is nothing certain, and even these rumours, and they are only vague, are, after all, not publicly disseminated, but only talked about as open secrets among the little gang you know of - Domitius, indeed, puts his fingers to his lips before he speaks. **
5 On the 24th of May the loafers about the rostra had spread the report (so be it unto them !) that you had been done away with, so that the city and forum rang with the persistent rumour that you had been murdered on your journey by Q. Pompeius. ** Now I, who happened to know that Q. Pompeius was undergoing starvation treatment at Bauli, and so extremely hungry that even I was sorry for him, was not upset, and I very much hoped that that lie would enable us to get rid of whatever dangers were hanging over you.
Your dear Plancus ** is at Ravenna; and though he has been presented with a handsome honorarium by Caesar, he is neither prosperous nor even decently well off. °
Your books on the Republic are universally popular.
CAELIUS TO CICERO, GREETING
There is no doubt of it, I tell you; he ** has been acquitted ; I was present when the verdict was given, and that with all the orders voting, and by the unanimous vote of each separate order. Treat it as a joke, you say. Good heavens, no! It is the most unexpected, and, as we all think, the most discreditable thing that ever happened. Why, I myself, who backed him for all I was worth, because we were such friends, had by this time prepared myself for disappointment, and when it actually occurred, I was astounded and thought I had taken leave of my senses. And the others, how do you suppose they took it ? Well, naturally, they swept the jurors off their feet with their savage yells, and made it abundantly clear that they could not stomach it. So he is left high and dry, and under the Licinian law ** is in worse danger, I take it, than ever.
I should add that, on the day after his acquittal, Hortensius entered Curio's theatre, to give us the chance, I suppose, of showing that his joy was ours. Instantly you heard
Din and uproar, crash of thunder, and the hissing of the shrouds, **
which last was all the more remarked upon, because Hortensius had reached a venerable age unscathed by a single hiss. But now he was hissed heartily enough to satisfy anyone for the whole of his life, and to make him sorry that he had ever won this case.
2 As regards politics, I have nothing to write to you. Marcellus is less aggressive in his attacks, not from apathy, but, I take it, from policy. There are the vaguest speculations as to the consular elections. As it happens I have standing against me a real noble and a would-be noble; for M. Octavius, son of Gnaeus, and C. Hirrus ** are my competitors. I have jotted this down because I know how keenly you will be on the look-out for news of our elections, on account of Hirrus. Anyhow, as soon as you hear that I am consul- designate, I beg you to interest yourself in the matter of the panthers. ** I recommend to your notice the bond ** which Sittius holds. I handed my first collection of notes on city affairs to L. Castrinius Paetus, my second to the bearer of this letter.
CAELIUS TO CICERO, GREETING
Is it so? Have I won? And do I constantly send you letters, a thing you declared on leaving Rome that I should never take the trouble to do for you ? It is so, provided, of course, that the letters I do send you reach you. And I do so all the more diligently because, when I am at leisure, I have simply nowhere to make pleasant use of my bit of leisure. When you were at Rome, it used to be the unfailing and most delightful employment of my idle hours to spend all that leisure time with you. And so terribly do I miss it all, that not only do I seem solitary myself, but your departure seems to have created a universal solitude in Rome; and I, who, in my heedlessness, often failed to visit you for many days when you were here, am now in daily distress because I have not got you to run to. But it is my competitor Hirrus who sees to it with the greatest success that I keep on yearning for you day and night. You may well imagine how annoyed your old rival for the augurate is, and how he pretends that I am no more sure of election than himself. And, upon my soul, I am more anxious on your account, that the news you pray for about him should reach you as soon as possible, than I am on my own. For as regards myself, if I am elected, I shall probably be so with a colleague wealthier than myself **; but there is this much in it to smack the lips over, that, if it comes to pass, we can always have something to laugh at as long as we live. But is it worth the trouble? Yes, I swear it is. Octavius does little to mitigate the antipathies he has roused - antipathies that are handicapping Hirrus, and there is no lack of them.
2 As to the responsibilities of your freedman Philotimus, ** and Milo's property, I have made it my object to ensure that Philotimus should do his duty in the most honourable manner by Milo in his absence and by his relatives, and that as far as his honesty and assiduity are concerned your reputation should be fully maintained.
I now make a special request of you that if ever you are (as I hope you will be) at leisure, you should compose and dedicate to me some sort of a brochure, to make me feel that you take an interest in me. "What put that into your head ?" you ask, "for you are no fool." My desire is that among all your many memorials ** there should be one extant that will also hand down to posterity the memory of our friendship. I suppose you will ask "what is the sort of thing you want?" Well, you, acquainted as you are with every department of learning, will think of something most suitable sooner than I.
But let it be of such a character as to make it, while especially applicable to myself, so generally "educative " (if I may use the expression) as to have a wide circulation.
CAELIUS TO CICERO, GREETING
I envy you! There is so much news arriving daily where you are to cause you surprise first that Messalla ** has been acquitted, then that he has been condemned; that C. Marcellus has been made consul **; that M. Calidius immediately after his rejection was impeached ** by the brothers Gallii ; and that P. Dolabella ** has been put on the "Board of Fifteen." What I do not envy you is your having missed a very pretty spectacle, and not seen Lentulus Crus's ** face when he was rejected. And yet, how sanguine he was, and how sure of himself, when he entered the lists! And that when Dolabella himself despaired of success! And upon my word, had not our friends, the knights, shown a keener insight, he would almost have won his election through the retirement of his opponent. **
2 I imagine that the conviction of Servaeus ** the tribune elect, was no surprise to you. C. Curio ** is a candidate for his place. There is no doubt that he inspires many people, who do not know him and his accommodating nature, with no little apprehension. But, as I hope and pray, and judge by his present behaviour, he will prefer the loyalist party and the Senate. At the present moment he is simply bubbling over with enthusiasm in that direction. The origin and reason of this partisanship is, that Caesar, prone as he is to enlist at whatever cost the affections of the very lowest class of man, has deeply insulted him in a very marked way, And regarding the whole matter, this seems to me a very pretty development of affairs, and it has struck everybody else too so forcibly as to suggest that Curio, a man who never does anything according to plan, exercised policy and strategy in eluding the intentions of those who have set themselves to oppose his tribuneship - I mean the Lollii and the Antonii, and influential men of that sort. **
3 I send you this letter after a longer interval than usual, because I have been kept busier than usual by the adjoumments of the elections, and compelled day after day to wait for their final result, so that I might apprise you of it when all was settled. I have waited right up to the 1st of August. There have been certain hitches, too, in the election of praetors. Then again I have no idea what the result of my own election will be, though it is true that the expression of opinion it elicited against Hirrus - I mean at the election of plebeian aediles - was amazingly strong. For that silly proposal of M. Coelius Vinicianus, which we had long ago laughed to scorn, and his proposed Bill about a Dictator, ** caused his sudden downfall, and brought a storm of execration upon him when he was down; and since then everybody has been excitedly demanding that Hirrus, too, should not be elected. I hope you will very soon hear the news you have hoped for about me, and at the same time the news you hardly ventured to hope for about him.
4 As regards politics, I had now ceased to expect any development; but when, at a meeting of the Senate in the temple of Apollo on the 22nd of July, it was proposed to vote for the payment of Cn. Pompeius's troops, the question was raised as to that legion which Pompey had lent to C. Caesar ** - to what contingent it belonged, and how long Pompey would allow it to remain in Gaul. He was compelled to say (not immediately, but only after insinuations and outcries on the part of his detractors) that he would withdraw the legion. He was then interrogated as to the appointment of a successor to C. Caesar. On this point - the assignment, that is, of the provinces - it was carried that "Cn. Pompeius should return to the city as soon as possible, so that the succession to the provinces might be dealt with in his presence." For Pompey was just about to join his army at Ariminum, and, indeed, he went there immediately afterwards. My impression is that the business will be dealt with on the 13th of August. There will be some definite settlement, I am sure, or else the veto will be scandalously applied. For in the course of the discussion Cn. Pompeius gave excited utterance to the words that it was every man's duty to render obedience to the Senate. As for myself, however, there is nothing I look forward to so eagerly as to hearing Paullus ** give his opinion first, as consul elect.
5 I keep reminding you again and again about Sittius's bond **; for I am anxious that you should understand how exceedingly important that matter is to me. Also about the panthers ,** that you should send for some men from Cibyra, ** and see that the animals are shipped to me. Another thing; it has been reported to us, and is now accepted as a fact, that the king of Alexandria ** is dead. Please write fully and carefully what you advise me to do, what the situation is in that kingdom, and who is the vice-regent. **
CAELIUS TO CICERO, GREETING
As regards maintaining peace in your province and the adjoining districts, what your anxiety may be I don't know ; I at any rate am in sore suspense. If we could only manage to make the development of the war correspond to the strength of your forces, and win just so much success as was requisite for a laurel wreath and a triumph, and avoid the dangerous and decisive engagement you apprehend, nothing could be so desirable. As it is, if the Parthian makes any move, I feel sure the struggle will be no slight one. Besides, your army can hardly hold a single pass. Nobody, however, takes this into account, but everything is expected of a man who has been given the control of a public transaction, because it is taken for granted that nothing has been refused him to make his equipment as complete as possible.
2 I must say further that I don't see any probability of a successor to you being appointed, because of the dispute about the Gallic provinces. Although as regards that question I imagine you have made up your mind what to do, still, now that I foresee such a possibility, I decided to inform you of it, to help you to make up your mind all the sooner. For you know the traditional procedure in such cases - the question of the Gallic provinces will be settled ; there will be some one to apply the veto; then somebody else will get up to obstruct the settlement in the case of the other provinces, "unless the Senate is allowed a free hand to decide in the case of all the provinces." So we shall have a merry game and a long one, so long, indeed, that more than two years will be dragged out in such chicanery.
3 Had I anything new to write to you about politics, I should have observed my usual practice and written you a full and careful account of what has been done, and what I expect to be the result of it. But really everything has now become jammed, as it were, in a sort of culvert. ** Marcellus is still pressing his old policy as to the provinces, and has not vet succeeded in getting a full enough house. But if at the end of the year Curio's tribuneship and the same old pleadings about the provinces take the stage, you must surely see how easy it is in such circumstances to block all business, and how devoutly Caesar and those who, where their private interests are concerned, have no regard at all for the commonwealth, are hoping for such a state of things.
CAELIUS TO CICERO, GREETING
I have no doubt you have received the news that Appius has been impeached by Dolabella, ** though certainly without creating any such prejudice against him as I had expected. For Appius did a very sensible thing ; as soon as Dolabella appeared at the tribunal, he entered the city and so revoked his application for a triumph, ** and by so doing took the edge off any gossip there might be, and showed himself better prepared than his accuser had anticipated. His greatest hope now lies in you. I am sure you do not really hate him. How far you desire to put him under an obligation, it rests with you to decide. Had you never been at feud with him, you would have had a freer hand in dealing with the whole affair ; as it is, if you enforce your legal rights to the level of ideal justice, you will have to mind that you are not suspected of a lack of frankness and candour in your reconciliation with him. The drift of my argument is that you will be safe in doing him any favour you please ; for nobody will say it was the ties of intimacy and friendship that deterred you from doing your duty.
2 I am reminded of the fact that, between the application for leave to prosecute, ** and the announcement of the defendant's name to the court, Dolabella's wife left him. I remember the instructions ** you gave me on your departure, and I don't suppose you have forgotten what I wrote to you. This is not the time to go into further particulars ; I can but give you this one piece of advice; if the proposal ** be to your liking, you should nevertheless give no indication of your feelings for the present, but wait and see how he comes out of this trial. In short, it would be prejudicial to you, if it leaked out. Besides, if any hint of it got out in the course of the trial, it would be given more notoriety than would be either becoming or expedient. And Dolabella will never be able to hold his tongue about a thing which has happened so exactly in accord with his ambitions, and which will give him so much the greater éclat in the conduct of the prosecution, especially as he is the sort of man who, even if he knew that it meant ruin to him to blab about this matter, would still have difficulty in restraining himself.
3 It is said that Pompey is working hard for Appius, so much so that it is even supposed that he will send one or other of his sons to you. ** We always acquit everybody here ; and upon my word, every sort of villany and scandal is effectually hedged in. We have consuls, however, whose activity is quite remarkable; so far the only decree they have managed to get through the Senate is the one about the Latin festival. ** Friend Curio finds his tribuneship a frost.
4 But words cannot describe the universal stagnation here. Were it not for the fight I am having with the shopkeepers and water companies, ** the whole body politic would have sunk into a lethargy. If the Parthians are doing nothing to make it hot for you, we here are as cold as ice. And yet, Bibulus, however he contrived it, has, without the help of the Parthians, lost some few of his dear little cohorts on Mount Amanus ; so it is reported.
I wrote to you above that Curio was very cold; well, he is warm enough now; he is being pulled to pieces with red-hot pincers. The fact is that in the most capricious way, simply because he did not hold his ground about the intercalation, ** he has crossed over to the popular side and is beginning to orate in favour of Caesar; and he talked ostentatiously of a road law ** much on the lines of Rullus's agrarian law, and also a food law, which insists on the aediles using weights and measures ; he had not done so before I wrote the first part of this letter.
If you do anything in the interests of Appius, as I love you, let him give me the credit of it. In the matter of Dolabella, my advice is that you should not commit yourself. That is the best course you can adopt for the proposal I mention, for your own position, and for your reputation for fair dealing. It will be a disgrace to you if I have to go without any Greek ** panthers.
CAELIUS TO CICERO, GREETING
How soon you desire to get away from where you are, I don't know; for my part, the more successful your campaign has hitherto been, the more torturing will be my anxiety about the danger of a Parthian war, lest some apprehension of what is coming may mar this light and jocular style of mine. I handed this unusually brief letter to a carrier employed by the publicani, at short notice, because he was in a hurry. I had handed a longer one on the preceding day to your freedman.
2 But absolutely nothing new has occurred, unless you want such tittle-tattle as what follows - and I am sure you do - to be put in a letter to you. Cornificius the younger has promised to marry Orestilla's ** daughter. Paulla Valeria, the sister of Triarius, has divorced her husband without assigning any reason, on the very day that he was to arrive from his province. She is going to marry D. Brutus. She had sent back her whole wardrobe.
Many incredible things of that sort have occurred in your absence. Servius Ocella would never have convinced anybody that he was an adulterer, had he not been caught in the act twice within three days. You will ask where? Well, I swear it was in the very last place I could have wished. I leave you something to worm out of others. For it rather tickles me that an imperator should question one man after another who the lady was with whom somebody was caught.
CAELIUS TO CICERO, GREETING **
Though I have plenty to tell you about politics, yet I have nothing which will give you greater pleasure, I imagine, than this. You must know that C. Sempronius Rufus ** - Rufus, I say, the apple of your eye - has won, amid universal applause, nothing less than a conviction for malicious prosecution. "What was the case?" you will ask. Well, when the Roman games ** were over, he brought a charge of violence under the Plotian law against his own accuser, M. Tuccius **; and his object was this - he saw that if no defendant was brought into court whose case could claim precedence, **he would have to stand his own trial this year ; and what the result of that would be, he could, of course, have no doubt. And he thought there was nobody upon whom he could more fittingly bestow this little attention than his own prosecutor. So, without getting anybody to back ** his charge, down he came into the forum, and brought an accusation against Tuccius. As soon as I got wind of it, without waiting to be asked, I hurried up and took my seat on the defendant's bench. I rise, and without a word about the question at issue, I vigorously impugn Sempronius and all his works, to the extent of even dragging in Vestorius, and telling the old story of how, if there was anything held by Vestorius, "which he, Sempronius, wrongfully possessed," he, in deference to you, very kindly made Vestorius a present of it. **
2 There is now also the following keenly disputed case occupying the courts. ** M. Servilius, having, consistently with his previous career, made an utter mess of his affairs, and left nothing for anybody but what was for sale, had been handed over to me as a client of the worst possible reputation; but Laterensis, the praetor, inspite of the representations of Pausanias (I being counsel for the defence), refused to take up the inquiry as to "what had become of that money." Then Q. Pilius, a connexion of our friend Atticus, brought an action against Servilius for extortion. That immediately gave rise to a lot of gossip, and people began to talk excitedly about a conviction. This slant of wind casts up Appius the younger, to give evidence that a sum of money out of his father's estate had found its way into Servilius's pocket, and to allege that 81,000 sestertii had been placed in his hands for the purpose of bribing the prosecution. You are surprised at his want of sense; ah, but if you had only heard his pleading and the admissions he made ! - admissions most unwise as regards himself, abominable as regards his father.
3 Well, he calls upon the same jury to consider their verdict as had assessed the damages in the earlier case. When it turned out that the voting was equal, Laterensis, in his ignorance of the laws about it, announced the decision of the three orders ** taken separately, and ended up with the customary pronouncement "I shall not order the restitution of the money."
When he left the court, however, and Servilius began to be looked upon as acquitted, Laterensis read clause 101 of the law, which ran as follows : "The verdict of a majority of the aforesaid jurors shall be final, and judgment be pronounced accordingly."
He therefore did not enter him in his register as acquitted, but wrote out the verdict of each separate order., But when Appius renewed his charge, Laterensis, after consultation with L. Lollius, ** said he would merely report the facts of the case. So now Servilius, being neither acquitted nor condemned, will be handed over to Pilius, with a reputation already badly mauled, to be tried for extortion - to Pilius, for Appius in the formal selection of the accuser, ** though he had sworn that his was a bona fide prosecution, did not venture to fight the matter, and retired in favour of Pilius. And now he himself has been charged with extortion by the Servilii, and has, moreover, been had up for a breach of the peace by a certain spy of his own, one Sextus Tettius. A pretty pair, those two. **
4 As far as politics are concerned, absolutely nothing has been done for many days past, because people are waiting to see what happens about the Gallic provinces. At last, however, after several postponements, and grave discussions, and when it had been definitely ascertained that Pompey's inclinations were in the direction of having a decree passed that Caesar should quit his province after the 1st of March, a decree of the Senate was passed which I send you, and the following resolutions ** were entered on the minutes. -
5 Decree of the Senate. Resolutions. The 29th day of September, in the temple of Apollo. Present at the drafting of the decree :
| Name | Father's name | Tribe. |
| Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus | Gnaeus | Fabia. |
| Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio | Quintus | Fabia. |
| Lucius Villius Annalis | Lucius | Pomptina. |
| Gaius Septimius | Titus | Quirina. |
| Gaius Lucilius Hirrus | Gaius | Pupinia. |
| Gaius Scribonius Curio | Gaius | Popilia. |
| Lucius Ateiug Capito | Lucius | Aniensis. |
| Marcus Eppius | Marcus | Terentina ** |
Whereas the consul Marcus Marcellus has opened the question ** of the provinces to be assigned to consulars, the Senate voted on that question as follows: **
"Lucius Paullus and Gaius Marcellus, the consuls, when they have entered on their offices, after the 19th day of the month of February that shall fall within their year of office, shall bring the matter of the consular ** provinces before the Senate and shall not after the first of March give precedence to any other motion, nor shall any other motion be brought before the Senate in combination with that motion; and they shall hold a meeting of the Senate for that purpose, on comitial days ** as on any other, and pass a decree of the Senate. And when that matter is being brought before the Senate by the consuls, then it shall be lawful to call in such of the Senators as are on the roll of the 300 ** jurors without their incurring a penalty.: If it be necessary to bring that matter before the people or plebs, ** that Servius Sulpicius and Marcus Marcellus, the present consuls, with praetors and the tribunes of the plebs, to whomsoever of them it seems good, shall bring it before the people or plebs. But if the aforesaid have not so brought it, that their successors in their several offices shall so bring it before the people or plebs." No veto was recorded. **
6 The 30th day of September, in the Temple of Apollo. Present at the drafting of the decree :
| Name | Father's name | Tribe. |
| Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus | Gnaeus | Fabia. |
| Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio | Quintus | Fabia. |
| Lucius Villius Annalis | Lucius | Pomptina. |
| Gaius Septimius | Titus | Quirina. |
| Gaius Lucilius Hirrus | Gaius | Pupinia. |
| Gaius Scribonius Curio | Gaius | Popilia. |
| Lucius Ateius Capito | Lucius | Aniensis |
| Marcus Eppius | Marcus | Terentina. |
Whereas Marcus Marcellus, the consul, has opened the question of the provinces, on that matter the Senators have voted as follows: "That in the opinion of the Senate it is inexpedient that any of those who have the right of veto or of obstruction should cause any such delay as could prevent a motion being brought before the Senate concerning the Republic at the earliest opportunity, ** or a decree being passed thereon. That in the opinion of the Senate, the man who so obstructs or forbids the debate, has acted against the interests of the Republic. That if anyone shall veto this decree of the Senate, it is the pleasure of the Senate that a resolution to the same effect shall be drafted at the earliest opportunity ** and the matter brought before the Senate and the people."
The above decree was vetoed by Gaius Caelius, Lucius Vinicius, Publius Cornelius, and Gaius Vibius Pansa, tribunes of the plebs.
7 "That it is further resolved by the Senate in reference to the soldiers now in the army of Gaius Caesar, that those of them who have served their full time, or have pleas to advance, which pleas would entitle them to a discharge, shall have their cases brought before the Senate in order that they may be severally considered and their pleas investigated. ** That, if anyone shall veto this decree of the Senate, it is the pleasure of the Senate that a resolution to the same effect shall be drafted, and the matter brought before the Senate and the people at the earliest opportunity."
The above decree was vetoed by Gaius Caelius and Gaius Pansa, tribunes of the plebs.
8 "Also it is resolved that in regard to the province of Cilicia and the eight remaining provinces ** administered by ex-praetors as praetors, those who have been praetors but have not been in a province with imperium, such of them, to wit, as have a claim, according to the decree of the Senate, to be sent to provinces as praetors with imperium, should be sent to those provinces by lot. If on the list of those who have a claim to go to provinces according to the decree of the Senate, there are not enough to proceed to those provinces, in that case, as each college of praetors, the members of which have not proceeded to provinces, can claim priority, according to that order praetors should proceed to a province by lot. Should they fail to reach the necessary number, then out of each college, as it came next, the names of such as had been praetors, but had not proceeded to provinces, should be cast into the lottery until the number of them is made to tally with the number of those required to be sent into the provinces. "That should anyone veto the decree of the Senate, a resolution to the same effect should be drafted." The above decree of the Senate was vetoed by Gaius Caelius and Gaius Pansa, tribunes of the plebs.
9 The following remarks, moreover, of Cn. Pompeius attracted attention and gave people the greatest confidence, when he stated that he could not with any justice decide about Caesar's provinces before 1st of March, but that after that date he would not hesitate to act. When he was asked "‘ What if there were any vetoes interposed on that day?' he replied that "It made no difference whether Caesar was going to refuse to obey the Senate, or whether he would put up someone to obstruct its decrees." "What if he is minded," asked somebody else, ‘to be consul and keep his army at the same time?" and he replied with the utmost suavity, "What if my own son should be minded to lay his stick across my shoulders?" By such expressions he had led people to suspect that there is some trouble between him and Caesar. So now, as far as I can see, Caesar means to have recourse to one or other of these alternatives - either to remain in Gaul, so that his candidature may not be considered this year, or else, if he can carry his election, to quit his province.
10 Curio is preparing to attack him tooth and nail; with what prospect of success I know not. This I do see, that a man of sound views, though he may accomplish nothing, cannot be a complete failure.
For myself, Curio treats me generously, and by his bounty has put a burden on my back; for had he not made me a present of the wild beasts ** which had been shipped to him from Africa for his games, my games might have been altogether dispensed with ; as it is, since give them I must, I should be glad if you would take the trouble - I have been perpetually asking you this favour - to let me have something in the way of beasts from where you are. I also commend to your notice the bond held by Sittius. I send you my freedman Philo, and Diogenes, a Greek, and I have given them commissions and a letter for you. Pray give them, and the business I sent them on, your kind attention. For I have explained in the letter they will deliver to you, how vitally it concerns me.
CAELIUS TO CICERO, GREETING
"Is that the way you have treated Hirrus ?" you say. Well, if you only knew how easy it was, how not even the slightest effort was required, you would be ashamed that he ever had the audacity to strut about as your rival candidate. ** Now that he has been rejected, however, he keeps on smiling, plays the patriotic citizen, and regularly records his votes against Caesar; he strongly condemns the suspense **; Curio he does not hesitate to censure in no measured terms ; indeed, his rejection has made him change his ways. Besides, though he has never appeared in the forum, and has not been much engaged in the law-courts, he now takes up the cases of slaves who want their freedom ; but he seldom works after mid-day.
2 As to the provinces, I wrote and told you that the matter would be decided on August 13th; well, an interruption has been caused by the trial of Marcellus, ** the consul elect. The matter was adjourned to September Ist, but on neither occasion did they succeed in getting even a quorum. I send this letter on September 2nd, and even up to to-day no real progress has been made. As I see it, this question will not be opened, but passed on to next year; and as far as I can foretell, you will have to leave somebody behind you to administer the province. For the question of your succession is not being simplified, since the Gallic provinces, the assignment of which is being vetoed, are being brought into the same category as all the other provinces. Of this I have no doubt, and it gives me more reason for writing, so that you might prepare yourself for this issue.
3 In almost all my letters to you I have mentioned the panthers. ** That Patiscus has sent Curio ten panthers and that you should have failed to send ever so many more, will reflect no credit upon you. Curio has made me a present of that same ten, and another ten from Africa; so you must not think that landed estates are the only gifts he knows how to bestow. ** If you only remember to do so, and send for some hunters from Cibyra, and also write a letter of instructions to Pamphylia (for they tell me that more of them are caught there), you will accomplish all you want. My anxiety on this point is all the greater now, because I expect that I shall have to provide everything myself. quite apart from my colleague. For love's sake, lay this charge upon yourself. You are usually as fond of taking trouble, as I for the most part am of taking none. In this matter you will have no trouble except to say a few words - that is, to give orders and instructions. For as soonas the animals are caught, you have the men I sent to deal with Sittius's bond available to feed them and see to their being shipped to Rome. I also think. that, if you hold out any hopes to me in your letter, I shall send some more men over to you.
4 There is one Marcus Feridius, a Roman knight, the son of a friend of mine, a young man of merit and energy, who has arrived in your province on business of his own ; I strongly commend him to you, and beg you to put his name on your list of friends. He desires that the lands which certain municipalities hold as a means of profit, ** should, by an act of kindness as easy as it is honourable for you to perform, be exempted from taxation. You will find you have laid under an obligation to you men who are grateful as well as good.
5 I should not like to think that Favonius ** was rejected by the corner-men ** only ; no, all the best men refused to vote for him.
Your friend Pompey makes no secret of demurring to Caesar's holding a province with an army and being consul at the same time. What he moved in the Senate, however, was that no decree should be passed at the present juncture ; what Scipio moved was, that the matter of the Gallic provinces should be brought before the Senate on the 1st of March, but that no other matter should be combined with it - a motion which made Balbus Cornelius ** quite unhappy, and I know that he expostulated with Scipio.
Calidius was most eloquent in his own defence, ** but feeble enough as a prosecutor. **
CAELIUS TO CICERO, GREETING
I am greatly agitated by the despatches of C. Cassius and Deiotarus; for Cassius writes to say that the Parthian forces are on this side of the Euphrates, and Deiotarus that they have advanced through Commagene into our province. For my own part, being aware of your unpreparedness in the matter of your army, my special apprehension as regards yourself is that this sudden rising will imperil your prestige. For were you better prepared in respect of your army, I should fear for your life; ** as it is, the present numerical weakness of your forces fills me with foreboding, not of an engagement, but of a retreat, on your part. How the public would accept the latter decision, and how far the necessity for it would be taken as a sufficient justification, as to that I have my misgivings even now, and shall never cease to have a feeling of. dread, until I am told that you have landed in Italy.
2 But the reports about the crossing of the Parthians have given rise to all sorts of suggestions. One man would send Pompey; another would not have Pompey withdrawn from the city; another would send Caesar in command of his own army, another the consuls ; no one, however, would have anybody, not holding public office, sent by a decree of the Senate. Now the consuls, because they are afraid of such a decree of the Senate being passed as would lead to their leaving Rome in uniform as military commanders, and to the subsequent ignominy of having the commission transferred over their heads to someone else, are altogether opposed to the holding of a Senate, so much so, indeed, as to convey the impression that they are not as energetic as they should be in their public duties. But candidly, whether it be negligence or indolence, or that apprehension I have already indicated, beneath all this affectation of unselfishness ** there lurks a decided disinclination to accept a province.
No despatch has arrived from you, and had not Deiotarus's despatch immediately followed his, there was a growing suspicion that Cassius, in order that his own depredations might pass as the devastations of the enemy, had arranged a sham war, let loose a horde of Arabs into his province, and reported these to the Senate as being Parthians.
And that is why I urge you, whatever be the position of affairs in your province, to be careful and cautious in your drafted report of it, lest it be said of you that you either puffed out somebody's sails for him, ** or held back something which it was important to know.
3 It is now the close of the year; for I am writing this letter on the 17th of November. I clearly see that nothing can be done before January 1st. "You know Marcellus, how slow and inefficient he is, and also how dilatory Servius is. ** What manner of men do you take them to be, or how do you think they can do what they don't like, when they are so lukewarm in dealing with what they do desire as to be suspected of not liking it? Now under the new magistrates, if there is a Parthian war, their first months will be taken up with that. If on the other hand there is no war where you are, or only such a war as you two, ** or your successors, with some slight reinforcements, can maintain, I foresee that Curio will bluster with a double purpose, first, to take something away from Caesar, and secondly, to bestow something upon Pompey - any little douceur you please, however trifling. Paullus, ** moreover, talks wildly about getting a province, Greedy as he is, he is likely to find his match in our friend Furnius **; I cannot conceive any others opposing him.
4 What I have written, I know; there are other possibilities, but I have no clear view of them. Time, I know, is bringing many changes and upsetting plans already made ; bat whatever he the play of chance, it will be within these limits. This, too, I must add to Curio's transactions - his scheme for the Campanian land. They say that Caesar does not trouble about it, but that Pompey strongly objects to it, on the grounds that if it is unoccupied, Caesar will have a free hand with it when he comes.
5 As regards your retirement, I cannot promise you to arrange for your getting a successor ; what I will certainly guarantee is that there will be no further extension of your tenure of office. Whether, if circumstances or the Senate constrain you to stay on, if we cannot consistently with honour decline, you still wish to persist in your objection, that is for you to decide ; for me it is a matter of duty to bear in mind the solemn earnestness with which. on leaving Rome, you charged me not to permit that extension to be carried.
CAELIUS TO CICERO, GREETING
The pain your supplicationes ** have caused me was not prolonged but acute. For we tumbled into a tangle hard to unravel. Curio, who is extremely fond of you, finding that he was being robbed of his comitial days ** by every sort of device, declared that he could not possibly allow the supplicationes to be decreed, lest he should be thought to have lost through his own fault whatever advantage he had gained by the crazy conduct of Paullus, ** and be considered guilty of betraying the public interests by collusion with the opposition. So we had recourse to a compromise, and the consuls formally announced that they would not celebrate these supplicationes this year. It is obvious that you have reason to thank both consuls, but Paullus certainly most. For while Marcellus merely replied that he had no hope in the efficacy ** of your supplicationes, Paullus said that in no circumstances would he proclaim them this ** year.
2 It has been reported to me that Hirrus intended to talk the measure out; I got hold of him ; ** not only did he refrain from doing so, but when the question of the victims ** was being discussed, and he might have obstructed the proceedings if he had demanded a count out, he held his tongue. He merely concurred with Cato who, though he spoke of you in complimentary terms, did not vote for the supplicationes. The addition of Favonius ** made three of them. You must, therefore, thank them all according to their several dispositions and principles these three for having merely indicated their inclinations instead of expressing them in a set speech, and for not having put up a fight when they might have obstructed matters; but Curio for having deviated for your sake from his whole line of action. Furnius ** and Lentulus, of course, as indeed they were bound to do, went about with me and worked hard, just as if it were their own affair. I can also speak highly of Cornelius Balbus's assiduous efforts. For he had a heated interview with Curio, telling him that had he acted otherwise, ** he would have wronged Caesar ; and it was then he threw suspicion on Curio's sincerity. ** Men like Domitius ** and Scipio certainly voted for the measure, but had no desire that it should pass ; and when they interrupted the discussion of the matter for the purpose of provoking his veto, Curio very neatly retorted that he had all the more pleasure in withholding his veto, because he observed that certain persons who voted for the measure had no desire that it should be carried.
3 As far as general politics are concerned, all controversy is concentrated upon one question - that of the provinces. And on that question Pompey appears so far to have thrown his weight on the side of the Senate, to the effect that Caesar should quit his province on November 13th. Curio is determined to submit to anything rather than allow this. All his former schemes he has flung to the winds. Our friends of course - you know them well - shrink from bringing the matter to a crisis. The whole situation is staged as follows: Pompey, as if he were not attacking Caesar, but making an arrangement which he considers fair to him, says that Curio is seeking excuses for discord. But he emphatically does not desire, and is evidently afraid of, Caesar's being elected consul-designate before he has handed over his army and his province. He is being treated harshly enough, and the whole of his second consulship ** fiercely impugned by Curio. I tell you this much ; if they try to crush Curio in every respect, Caesar will defend his power of veto ; if (and it looks like it) they are too much afraid to do so, Caesar will stay on as long as he pleases.
4 How each has voted, you will find in my memoranda of affairs in the city ; and you must pick out of them what is noteworthy. There is much which you must skip, especially the detailed accounts of the games and funerals, and all the rest of the tittle-tattle. But the great part is useful. In fact I had rather err in the direction of telling you what you don't desire to know, than that of passing anything that is essential. I am glad that you have interested yourself in Sittius's business. But seeing that you suspect that the men! sent you have shown rather doubtful honesty, I beg you to act just as though you were acting with my full authority..
[12] L { about 20 September, 50 }
CAELIUS TO CICERO, GREETING
I am ashamed to confess it to you, and to complain of the wrongs done me by Appius, a most ungrateful person, who is beginning to hate me, because he is indebted to me for great kindnesses ; and miser that he is, being unable to enforce upon himself the discharge of that debt, he has declared a secret war against me, not so secret, however, but that many people have reported it to me, and that I could easily notice myself that he entertained evil thoughts of me. ** But when I discovered that he had tampered with the College ** and had then approached certain persons openly, and was hobnobbing with Domitius, ** a man at the present juncture bitterly hostile to me, and was anxious to confer this little favour on Cn. Pompeius - why, then to get hold of the man himself. and to entreat one who, I considered, owed his very life to me, to do me no such wrong, well, that I could not prevail upon myself to do.
2 So what did I do? Well, in spite of all that, I addressed myself to several of his friends, who could testify to my services to him. Then, after I had learnt that he did not regard my claims as even worth satisfying, I preferred to lay myself under an obligation to his colleague, ** a man on the most distant terms with me, and not very favourably inclined to me on account of my friendship with you, rather than suffer the grimaces of such a monkey.
When he found that out, he flared up, and shouted out that I was only seeking a pretext for falling out with him, in order that, since he had not quite satisfied me in a monetary transaction, I might attack him under cover of a quarrel of that sort. Since then he has never ceased whistling up Pola Servius ** to act as my accuser, and hatching plots with Domitius.
3 And not being very successful in getting anybody to accuse me under any law in existence, it was their pleasure to have me summoned under a law which left them with nothing to say. In their sublime impudence they take measures to have me charged under the Scantinian law, ** at the very time when the Circensian games, my games, were at their height. Hardly had Pola uttered the words when I charged Appius the Censor under the same law. Never did I see a luckier hit. So heartily was it applauded by the populace, and not the lowest of them either, that the scandal of it has given Appius more pain than the fact of his being charged. And besides that I have begun proceedings for the restitution of a shrine now in his house. **
4 I am much put out by the dilatoriness of the slave who is bringing you this letter ; since I received your last he has stayed on here for more than forty days. I don't know what to tell you. You know that Domitius's hatred of me is still on the boil. I am eagerly on the look-out for you, and am anxious to see you as soon as possible. I beg you to resent my wrongs fully as much as you believe that I resent, and indeed avenge, yours.
CAELIUS TO CICERO, GREETING
I congratulate you on your connexion by marriage with one who is, on my solemn oath, a most excellent fellow; ** for that is my opinion of him. Moreover, those other characteristics of his, which have hitherto made him his own enemy, have already been shed by his maturing age, and, if any remain, rest assured that they will be speedily exorcized by the influence of your close association with him and Tullia's modesty. For he is not stubborn in his vices, and no dullard in appreciating the better course. Another point, and the most important of all, is that I am exceedingly fond of him.
2 You will be glad to know, Cicero, that our friend Curio's veto as regards the provinces ended splendidly. For when the question of the veto was raised (and that was done according to a decree of the Senate), and when the first opinion expressed was that of M. Marcellus ** who held that the tribunes of the plebs should be drastically dealt with, the House voted en masse against it.
The fact is that Pompey, "Great" though he be, is just now in such a state of malaise that he can hardly discover what it is he wants.
The view they had come round to was this, that the candidature ** of one who was inclined to surrender neither his army nor his provinces should be duly considered. How Pompey is likely to take this I shall let you know when I find out ; what will happen to the Republic if he either offers armed resistance or is apathetic, is a matter for you opulent old men to see to.
As I write this letter, Q. Hortensius ** is breathing his last.
CAELIUS TO CICERO, GREETING
The taking of Arsaces ** and the storming of Seleucea ** would not have compensated you for missing the sight of what has been done here. Never again would your eyes have pained you, had you seen Domitius's face when he was rejected. ** That election was an important one, and it was plainly evident that men took sides on party lines only ; very few did their duty in accordance with the claims of personal obligations. The consequence is that Domitius is my very bitter enemy, indeed, there is not one of his own friends whom he hates so much as myself, all the more so in that he regards the augurship as having been snatched away from him by an act of injustice, for which he maintains that I was responsible. Now he is mad with rage that people should have shown such joy at his discomfiture, and that there was but one man ** who supported Antony more strongly than I did. For Cn. Domitius ** himself has brought an action against the young Cn. Saturninus, who is extremely unpopular as a result of his past life ; and the trial is now being eagerly awaited, and with considerable confidence too, since the acquittal of Sex. Peducaeus. **
2 With regard to the general political position, I have repeatedly told you in my letters that I foresee no peace that can last a year; and the nearer that struggle - and there is bound to be a struggle - approaches, the more clearly do we see the danger of it.
The point at issue, on which those who are at the head of affairs are going to fight, is this - Cn. Pompeius is determined not to allow C. Caesar to be elected consul, unless he has handed over his army and his provinces ; Caesar on the other hand is convinced that there is no safety for him, if once he quits his army. He proposes, however, this compromise - that both should deliver up their armies. So it is that their vaunted mutual attachment and detestable alliance is not degenerating into merely private bickerings, but is breaking out into war. Nor can I imagine what line I am to take in regard to my own affairs (and as to that I have no doubt that you, too, are likely to be agitated by the same perplexity) ; for I am bound to these men ** by ties of gratitude and intimacy, while I hate the opposite cause, but not the men who support it. **
3 You do not, I suppose, overlook the fact that men involved in a feud in their own country, so long as the struggle is carried on constitutionally and without recourse to arms, are bound to follow the more honourable, but when it comes to war and taking the field, the stronger cause, and to resolve upon that as the better course in proportion to its greater safety. Amid all this discord I see that while Pompey will have on his side the Senate and those who settle cases at law; ** all who live a life of fear, or but little hope, will join Caesar, for his army is altogether above comparison. Only may we have time enough to consider the resources of each, and choose our side !
4 I nearly forgot what I had especially wanted to write. Do you know that censor Appius is performing prodigies, that he is showing vigorous activity in the matter of statues and pictures, ** the amount of land held, and debts? He has convinced himself that his censorship is as good as soap or soda. I think he is making a mistake. What he wants is to wash away his stains, but he is exposing all his veins and his skinned flesh. ** In the name of gods and men, hurry home, and come as soon as possible to have your laugh at what is going on here - Drusus ** presiding over a trial under the Scantinian law, ** Appius busying himself about pictures and statues! I give you my word, you have got to make haste.
It is thought that our friend Curio acted wisely in making a concession as to the payment of Pompey's troops. **
To sum up, you ask what I think will happen. Well, unless one or other of them goes to fight the Parthians, I see the imminence of violent feuds, which only the sword and force will settle. Each of the two is well prepared in resolution and resources. If only it could be managed without personal risk to yourself, a drama of infinite entertainment is being staged by Fortune for your benefit.
CAELIUS TO CICERO, GREETING
Did you ever see a sillier fellow than your Cn. Pompeius, stirring up all this mud by his futile inefficiency ? On the other hand, did you ever read or hear of anyone more vigorous in action than our Caesar, or more moderate in victory either? What do you mean? Do you really imagine that our troops who in the roughest and coldest regions on earth, during a winter of exceptional severity, finished the war by a mere march past, have been feeding on chubby-faced apples ** ? "Why all this glorification?" you ask. Ah, did you but know how anxious I am, then you would jeer at this glorying of mine, which in fact does not touch me at all. ** All this I can only explain to you at a personal interview, and I hope that will soon come about. For he determined to summon me to Rome when he ** had driven Pompey out of Italy; and that I now regard as an accomplished fact, unless Pompey has decided that it is better to stand a siege at Brundisium.
2 May I perish if the main reason for my hurrying to Rome is not that I am bursting with eagerness to see you, and discuss with you my inmost thoughts ! But what a lot of them I have! Alas, I fear that, as so often happens, when I do see you, I shall forget them all. But anyhow what sin have I committed that I have had inflicted upon me the necessity of a journey back towards the Alps? Simply because the Intimilii ** are up in arms, and for no great reason. Bellienus, a domestic slave of Demetrius, who was there with a garrison, taking a bribe from the opposing faction, seized a certain Domitius, a noble who had entertained Caesar there, and strangled him. The whole state has taken up arms. That is where I have to go with four cohorts through all the snow. The Domitii, you will remark, are going to the dogs all the world over. I could certainly wish that the descendant of Venus ** had shown as much determination in the case of your Domitius as the offspring of a Psecas ** showed in the case of this one. My kindest regards ** to your son Cicero.
CAELIUS TO CICERO, GREETING
Profoundly alarmed ** by your letter, in which you showed that you were thinking only of some gloomy project without fully explaining what it was, and at the same time did not fail to disclose the trend of your meditations, I am writing this letter on the spot.
In the name of your future and of your children, I implore and beseech you, Cicero, to take no step to the serious detriment of your safety and assured position. For I call heaven and earth and the friendship between us to witness that I told you of this beforehand, and that my warning was not without foundation ; but that, after interviewing Caesar and ascertaining what his sentiments were likely to be if he won the victory, I gave you further information.
If you imagine that Caesar's policy will be the same as ever as regards letting his adversaries off and proposing terms of peace, you are making a mistake. His intentions and even his expression of them are, without exception, grim and pitiless. He was enraged with the Senate when he left Rome; and he has evidently been scandalized by the recent interventions of the tribunes **; there is no room, I solemnly aver, for any appeal to mercy.
2 Consequently, if you have any regard for yourself, for your only son, for your household. and for the prospects that are left you, if I and that excellent man, your son-in-law, have any influence with you (and it ought not to be your wish so to derange our fortunes as either to compel us to abominate or abandon that cause upon the triumph of which depends our prosperity, or else to harbour an unhallowed desire to see the end of yours), then do finally take this into consideration, that whatever odium was attached to your original hesitation ** has been already incurred ; that you should now take action against a victorious Caesar, whom you shrank from affronting when his success was in the balance, and join those combatants when put to flight, whom you shrank from following when they faced the foe, that, I say, is the very height of folly. Take heed lest, in your shame at having lacked enthusiasm for the "nobles," you lack discrimination in your choice of the nobler cause.
3 But if I cannot altogether convince you, at any rate wait while we are collecting intelligence as to how we are getting on in the matter of the Spains, ** both of which, I beg to inform you, will on the arrival of Caesar be ours. What hope your friends have left them when they have lost the Spains, I know not; and further, what your idea is in joining men so desperately situated, I take my solemn oath, I cannot conceive.
4 What you so clearly intimated to me by your very silence had got to Caesar's ears, and he had no sooner wished me "good morning" than he told me the whole story of what he had heard about you. I said I knew nothing about it, but all the same I besought him to write you such a letter as might be most likely to frighten you into staying in Italy. He is taking me with him into Spain; if he were not, I should have hurried all the way to join you, wherever you were, before approaching the city, and urged you personally to make me this promise, and exerted all my powers to keep you from going away.
5 Think it over again and again, Cicero, so as not to bring utter ruin upon yourself and your friends, or knowingly and with your eyes open let yourself sink into a morass, out of which, as you see, you can never emerge.
But if you are either disturbed by the comments of the optimates, or unable to tolerate the swaggering insolence of certain other fellows, my advice is that you should select some suitable town unaffected by the war, while these issues, which will be presently settled, are being decided. If you do so. not only shall I judge you to have acted wisely, but you will avoid giving offence to Caesar.
CAELIUS TO CICERO, GREETING
So I was in Spain, more's the pity, instead of at Formiae, when you set out to join Pompey! Well, I only wish either that Appius Claudius were on our side, or that C. Curio were on yours ; for it was my friendship with the latter that imperceptibly lured me to embark upon this accursed cause ; indeed I am conscious that it was anger on the one hand and affection on the other ** that robbed me of all sound judgment. You, too, when, on my departure by night for Ariminum, ** I came to see you, while you were giving me messages of peace for Caesar, and posing as quite an admirable citizen, - you, I say, failed in your duty asa friend, and did nothing to further my interests. And I am not speaking thus because I have lost confidence in our cause, but, believe me, I'd sooner be hanged than endure the sight of these fellows here.
2 Indeed, were it not that people are afraid of you Pompeians' ruthlessness, we should have been flung out of Rome long ago; for with the exception of a few money-lenders, ** there is not an individual, not an order, that is not Pompeian. Why, I myself have now succeeded in putting the rabble in particular, and the people in general, who were previously on our side, on yours. "Why did you do that?" you say. Ah, wait and see what follows. I mean to compel you to be victorious, however much you may object. Are you all surprised to find me a regular Cato? As for you, you are all asleep, and so far do not seem to me to perceive where we are open to attack, and where we are weak. Yes, and I shall act thus with no hope of any reward, but out of pure chagrin and a sense of humiliation ; that is what, as a rule, influences me more than anything. What are you all doing over there? Waiting for a battle, on which Caesar confidently relies? Of your forces I know nothing. Our men have acquired the habit of putting up a stubborn and decisive fight, and making light of cold and hunger.
1. M. Caelius Rufus, the son of a Roman knight, a banker at Tusculum, was born about 85 B.C. At an early age he was brought to Rome by his father and put under the charge of Cicero and Crassus with a view to a political career. Unprincipled, profligate, and irascible but generous, he soon made his mark as an advocate, though stronger in prosecution than in defence. He was one of the lovers of the notorious Clodia, supplanting Catullus (who writes of her as "Lesbia"), but, breaking with her, he nicknamed her quadrantaria, "the lady whose price was a penny." In revenge she induced Sempronius Atratinus to charge him with borrowing money from her to compass the death of Dion, the head of Ptolemy Auletes' embassy to Rome, and then attempting to murder her. Caelius, however, supported by Cicero and Crassus, successfully defended himself. In 52 he was tribune of the plebs, and in 50 was elected aedile, defeating Octavius and Hirrus at the poll. It was during 51 and 50 that he wrote to Cicero, then in Cilicia, the letters contained in this book. In 49 he took Caesar's side, and was rewarded with the praetorship in 48. Being heavily in debt, he took advantage of Caesar's absence from Italy to bring forward a law for the abolition of debts, but was opposed by the other magistrates and deprived of his office. He then joined the exiled Milo, whom he had secretly summoned from Massilia, in S. Italy, in order to raise an insurrection against Caesar. Milo was slain in the territory of the Hirpini, and Caelius soon afterwards at Thurii. Cicero had always a kindly regard for him, and that Caelius reciprocated that regard is proved by the punctilious fidelity with which, in these letters, he keeps Cicero informed of every phase of affairs at Rome.
2. i.e., the assembly summoned to vote on the proposal that the towns north of the Padus should become municipia and receive the full Roman franchise (civitas), whereas now they had only the latinitas, or ius Latii. The civitas was granted them by Caesar as consul in 49.
3. M. Claudius Marcellus, consul in 51 B.C.
4. That Caesar should give up his Gallic provinces on March 1, 49,
5. That he was slow and inefficient, 'tardus et parum eficax.'
6. i.e, as a sign of secrecy. After Domitius something like 'narrat' must be supplied. This Domitius is Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, who married Porcia, sister of M. Cato. He was a faithful supporter of the aristocratical party. He was aedile in 61, practor in 58, and consul in 54. When the Civil War broke out in 49 he threw himself into Corfinium, but his own troops forced him to surrender to Caesar. He then went to Massilia, and on the surrender of that town, joined Pompey in Greece. He commanded the left wing in the battle of Pharsalia, in which he fell (according to Cicero) by the hand of Antony.
7. Quintus Pompeius Rufus, the bitter opponent of Milo, accused by Caelius and forced to retire to Bauli in Campania, where he was generously treated by his prosecutor Caelius.
8. T. Munatius Plancus Bursa was closely associated with Q. Pompeius Rufus, and an enemy of Cicero.
9. M. Valerius Messalla, accused probably of ambitus ("bribery and corruption"), and defended by Hortensius.
10. The penalties inflicted by the Lex Licinia were much heavier than those under the law for ambitus. As a matter of fact Messalla was subsequently tried and condemned under that law. See viii. 4. 1.
11. Quoted, it is supposed, from the Teucer of Pacuvius.
12. For Hirrus see ii. 9 and 10.
13. Caelius was anxious to get these animals for the venationes in the games he was giving as aedile.
14. 'Syngrapha' was a written bond, signed by both parties, used in negotiations between Romans and foreigners. Sittius, probably Caelius's agent, held such a bond for money owing to him.
15. He means Octavius; and a richer colleague would mean that Caelius would have to spend more money in rivalling that colleague's magnificent shows. Tyrrell.
16. Milo's property being forfeit to the state, Cicero, at the instance of one Duro, a particular friend of Milo's, had induced Philotimus, a freedman of Cicero's wife Terentia, to be one of the buyers {sectores} of the forfeit property when sold by the State, as being more likely than a complete stranger to deal fairly with Milo.
17. i.e., Cicero's works, which would be his perpetual "monument" or "memorial."
18. See letter 2 of this Book.
19. i.e., for the year 50, thus succeeding his cousin, M. Marcellus, consul in 51. Another C. Marcellus, brother of M. Marcellus, was consul in 49.
20. On a charge of ambitus; there was an hereditary feud between the Gallii and the Calidii.
21. Afterwards the husband of Cicero's daughter, Tullia. The XVviri sacris faciundis had charge of the Sibylline books.
23. A candidate for the post to which Dolabella was elected.
24. Condemned for ambitus; nothing more is known of him.
25. The famous C. Scribonius Curio. See note to ii. 1.
26. Either from jealousy, or because they doubted his sincerity, and feared that, if elected, he might go over to Caesar.
27. i.e., that Pompey should be appointed Dictator, a title that had fallen into disrepute since the proscriptions of Sulla. Hirrus had made a like proposal some years earlier.
28. This legion was lent in 53 to replace men lost in a contest with the Eburones in 54. - Watson.
29. L. Aemilius Paullus, consul in 50, a man of little weight, whose allegiance was bought by Caesar. The consuls elect were always the first to be asked to express their sententia in the Senate.
30. See note on letter 2 §. 2.
31. Which Rufus required for his venationes as aedile.
32. A town on the borders of Phrygia and Cilicia.
33. Ptolemy XII. (‘Auletes'), who had now been restored by Gabinius. See i. 1 and 2.
34. The vice-regent was Pothinus, the murderer of Pompey.
35. 'Incile' (from 'incidile'), lit. a cut, trench, or ditch.
36. On a charge of maiestas, connected with Appius's administration of Cilicia. The defence was conducted by Hortensius and Brutus, and Appius was acquitted.
37. As a commander who claimed a triumph had to remain outside the city, he would automatically disqualify himself by entering.
38. The 'postulatio' was the first step in a trial - an application made to the praetor by the accuser for leave to prosecute a definite individual on a definite charge. The 'nominis delatio' was the next step, more formal and detailed.
39. As to selecting a third husband for Cicero's daughter Tullia, who had in 63 married C. Calpurnius Piso Frugi, who died, and in 56 Furius Crassipes, from whom she was now divorced.
40. That Tullia should marry Dolabella.
41. Of Pompey's two sons, the elder, Gnaeus, married the daughter of Appius Claudius (cf. iii. 4. 2); he was killed soon after his defeat at Munda in 45. The younger, Sextus, was famous after Caesar's death as "lord of Sicily and the seas," and is called 'Dux Neptunius' by Horace (Ep. ix. 7).
42. A mere formality, fixing the date.
43. The shopkeepers had evidently bribed the managers of the public water-supply to be allowed to draw more than their quantum for their private use, and Caelius as aedile intervened to check the abuse.
44. Curio as pontiff had failed to induce his colleagues to intercalate a month in 50 B.C., which was necessary, as no month had been intercalated in 51 B.C. As the insertion would have been made after February 23, it would have postponed the debate on the consular provinces which was arranged for March 1. Curio also wished to prolong his own term of office.
45. The carrying out of such a law, as in the case of Rullus's law, would have conferred extensive powers over a long period (according to Appian, five years) upon its proposer, and Curio in this, as in the matter of the intercalatory month, was playing for time.
46. Because Asia Minor was now hellenized.
47. Orestilla was Catiline's wife.
48. This Letter is earlier than the last (letter 7) by some months.
49. A banker of Puteoli, under obligations to Cicero, who refers (Att. vi. 2. 10) to his euētheia, "gaucherie."
50. September 5-19.
51. Nothing is known of Tuccius or of his charge against Rufus.
52. A defendant on a charge of vis could claim such precedence. Rufus's object in providing such a defendant was to put off his own trial till the following year, when he hoped he might have a more favourable praetor, or have time to pack a jury.
53. 'Subscriptores' were the subordinate advocates for the prosecution, who attached their names to the charge.
54. It would seem that Cicero had enabled Sempronius to borrow money from Vestorius, another banker of Puteoli; but as Sempronius repudiated the debt, Vestorius kept in his hands an equivalent amount of Sempronius's property - an arrangement to which the latter gracefully yielded as a particular favour to Cicero.
55. This complicated case may be summarized as follows. C. Claudius Pulcher, brother of Appius and Clodius, was proconsul of Asia in 55-54 B.C., and in 51 B.C. was tried for repetundae, " extortion," and condemned. Damages were assessed ('lites aestimati'), but, before execution was effected, he seems to have either gone into exile or committed suicide. He had deposited a large sum of money in the hands of Servilius, one of his legati, to enable him by bribery to effect a 'praevaricatio' - "a mismanagement of the case by collusion of the parties," - which Servilius failed to do. Pausanias, probably an agent for the provincials of Asia, being convinced of Servilius's guilt, appealed to the praetor Laterensis to prosecute him "for receiving money with intent to defraud" ('quo ea pecunia pervenisset'), but Laterensis held that there was no case, owing to lack of evidence. Upon this Q. Pilius directly charged Servilius with repetundae. This brought up Appius, son of C. Claudius, who, in his disgust at Servilius's mismanagement of affairs entrusted to him, gave evidence about the bribe which seriously compromised, not only himself, but his own father. On this evidence Laterensis allowed the case against Servilius to proceed, and the voting being equal, he did not, as he should have done according to law, acquit Servilius, but only recorded the verdicts of the separate orders; and when Appius again appealed he said "he would merely record the facts." Thus Servilius, being neither acquitted nor condemned, is to be handed over to Pilius, to whom Appius had given place, to be dealt with on the charge of repetundae. And now Appius himself is being prosecuted for repetundae by Servilius and his relations, and at the same time for vis (" breach of the peace") by one of his own agents, Sextus Tettius. (The above is a précis of the notes of both Tyrrell and How.)
56. The Senators, Equites, and Tribuni Aerarii.
57. Probably a jurisconsult.
58. "On the preliminary question as to who should be appointed accuser."
59. Appius and Tettius.
60. A senatus auctoritas was a motion carried by the Senate, but vetoed by a tribune (cf. i. 2. 4).
61. I am indebted for this lucid tabulation to the Rev. G.E. Jeans.
62. v.f. = 'verba fecit.'
63. d.e.r.i.c. = 'de ea re ita censuerunt'.
64. Provinces requiring an army were usually entrusted to a proconsul and called consulares, peaceful provinces to a propraetor, and called praetoriae.
65. According to the Lex Pupia it was not customary to hold a Senate on days on which comitia could be held (cf. i. 4. 1).
66. This would be about half the Senate. Strachan-Davidson, Problems of Roman Criminal Law, ii. p. 76, makes the number 400.
67. i.e., "before the comitia centuriata or tributa."
68. i.n. = 'Intercessit nemo,' "‘no tribune intervened with a veto."
69. r.p.p.r.q.p. = 'republica populi Romani quam primum.'
70. p. q. t. = 'primo quoque tempore.'
71. The object of this was to draw away from Caesar as many of his soldiers as possible.
72. These were: (1) Sicily, (2) Sardinia and Corsica, (3) Macedonia and Achaia, (4) Asia, (5) Africa, (6) Crete, (7) Cyrene, (8) Bithynia.
73. In Caelius's eyes Curio's panthers were so many "white elephants." For the panthers see letters 2. 2, 4. 5, and 6. 5, in this Book. It should be noticed that this letter was written some weeks before the last, which was written late in October.
74. i.e., for the vacancy in the College of Augurs.
75. i.e., about Caesar's provinces. Boot takes the words to mean ‘diminishes the expectation of the provinces being assigned to Caesar."
76. Marcus Marcellus, consul in 50, accused this year by Calidius of ambitus.
77. See note on § 10 of the preceding Letter.
78. "This probably refers to some gift of a country place by the extravagant Curio, of which we have no record." Tyrrell.
79. Municipalities often owned such property, even in distant countries. Some Italian town, for which Feridius was probably acting as agent, owned such land in Cilicia.
80. A candidate for the praetorship this year. He was an imitator of Cato - 'ille Catonis aemulus,' Suet. Aug. 13. "Cato's Sancho," Mommsen, R.H. iv. 315.
81. Probably loafers round the columnae, the pillars in the forum.
82. When the praenomen is left out, Cicero almost always puts the cognomen before the nomen, as here; cf. Gallus Caminius, Ahala Servilius, Vespa Terentius. Cornelius Balbus was Caesar's great friend (see ix. 17. 1, and 19. 1).
83. When accused by the two Gallii (see note on viii. 4. 1).
84. When he himself accused Claudius Marcellus (see note on §2). In 'frigidus' there is a jesting reference to his name Calidius (from 'calidus'). The fervid advocate was frigid.
85. He means that, in that case, Cicero would not hesitate to fight, and would therefore be slain.
86. i.e., the pretence that they did not want to go because they had no greedy ambition for military honours.
87. Or "wafted him on his way," the converse being our "to take the wind out of a man's sails." Tyrrell.
88. The consuls for 51 B.C.
89. Cicero and Cassius.
90. Aemilius Paullus, consul with C. Marcellus, in 50 B.c. According to Mommsen, Paullus, in defiance of Pompey's law about a five years' interval, was violently asserting that he would claim a province (presumably Cilicia) immediately after his consulship. His ill-balanced judg- ment (of which Curio made capital) is mentioned in § 1 of the next letter.
91. A friend of Cicero's. See x. 25.
93. Cicero had written to the Senate in April, asking for a supplicatio (a public thanksgiving, generally followed by a triumph) in honour of his achievements on the Amanus.
94. The number of days during which the elections {comitia} could be held was of supreme importance to Curio at this juncture. Any appropriation of them for other purposes, e.g. for religious observances (such as Paullus was urging) or the celebration of a supplicatio, by subtracting from their number, would diminish Curio's opportunities of "pulling the political wires" in view of the approaching debate on the Provinces.
95. Which gave Curio an excuse for public declamation.
96. As a means of thwarting Curio by encroaching upon the comitiales dies.
97. Thus definitely implying their proclamation in the future, which Marcellus did not imply.
98. i.e., "button-holed" him.
99. To be sacrificed at the supplicatio ; for though it was not to be given this year, the preliminaries might be settled now, so that all might be ready when the time came.
100. See note on viii. 9.5, The three were Hirrus, Cato, and Favonius.
101. A tribune of the plebs devoted to Cicero.
102. Than by coming to a compromise.
103. As a friend of Cicero (Tyrrell). But more probably, as Manutius and Graevius take it, "as a friend of Caesar" who was now warmly attached to Cicero.
104. L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, the staunch aristocrat, consul in 54 B.C. with Appius Claudius Pulcher.
105. In 55 B.C., when he and Crassus proposed the bill for prolonging Caesar's command for five years.
106. Caelius appears to have asked Appius for a loan or gift of some money in return for services he had rendered to Appius when the latter was prosecuted. But Appius (Caelius being a spendthrift) refused, and so ungraciously as to irritate Caelius violently. - Tyrrell.
107. Of Augurs, to which Caelius aspired to be elected.
108. See note to § 2 of the preceding letter.
109. L. Piso, the other censor.
110. Cicero describes him elsewhere (Q. F. ii. 11. 2) as 'homo taeter et ferus,' "a loathsome and brutal fellow."
111. Against unnatural crimes. The date of the law is unknown, but it was passed by the tribune Scantinius.
112. This appropriation of public property was particularly scandalous in a Censor,
113. Publius Cornelius Dolabella, who had divorced his wife Fabia in the preceding year. For a further account of Dolabella see note 6 on p. 210.
114. He was asked his opinion first as being consul elect for 49 B.C.
115. i.e., for the consulship.
116. The famous orator, born in 114, and therefore eight years older than Cicero.
117. The name of the first king of the Parthians, used as a title by all subsequent kings (just as the Roman emperors were all called Augustus). The Parthian king's own name was Orodes.
118. A Greek city on the Tigris, opposite Ctesiphon.
119. As a candidate for the vacancy on the College of Augurs caused by the death of Q. Hortensius. The successful candidate was M. Antony, who was supported by Caesar and Curio and their friends. For L. Domitius see note on letter 1 § 4 of this book.
120. Curio, or perhaps Saturninus.
121. Son of L. Domitius, whom his father employed to wreak his vengeance on Saturninus, who had supported Antony.
122. Son and namesake of the propraetor of Sicily when Cicero was quaestor there (75-74). What the charge against him was is unknown.
123. "Caesar's friends, Curio, Dolabella, and others." How. "The Pompeians." Manutius.
124. "Appius Claudius, L. Domitius, and perhaps Pompey." How.
125. i.e., the iudices and the legal profession generally.
126. This would come before the censor under the head of "excessive luxury" or "gross extravagance."
127. 'Lomentum' = "bean-meal," used for washing; 'nitrum' = "washing-soda." Appius is overdoing his moral ablutions, and scrubbing his reputation raw.
128. Some debauchee or other, probably a Claudius by birth, and a Drusus by adoption. - How.
129. See note on viii. 12. 3.
130. In Spain and at Ariminum. Curio shrank from embittering Pompey's men against Caesar.
131. i.e., delicacies, so that they would be incapable of fatigue.
132. i.e, all the glory was Caesar's.
133. Obviously Caesar.
134. A Ligurian people. Their chief town was Albium Intimilium, now Ventimiglia.
135. Julius Caesar.
136. Bellienus, son of Psecas - a common name for a lady's maid or tire-woman (ef. Juv. vi. 491).
137. f.s.d. = 'filio salutem do.'
138. Or " frightened to death." How.
139. Especially of L. Metellus, a bitter enemy of Caesar.
140. i.e, "you have certainly vexed Caesar by your indecision in the past, but to throw him over for Pompey now would be suicidal."
141. Caelius was in the army of Caesar, who was marching into Spain to attack the Pompeian generals, Afranius, Petreius, and Varro.
142. i.e, anger with Appius and affection for Curio.
143. Caelius, with Antony, Cassius, and Curio, fled from Rome on the night of Jan. 7 to join Caesar at Ariminum.
144. "Caesar won the favour of the capitalists by not abolishing debts. That he refrained from doing so was a sore point with the deeply involved Caelius." Tyrrell.
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