What I want now is your advice and your affection and loyalty: so fly to me. It will simplify everything, if I have you with me. Varro can render me many services, but they would be far surer if you were here to support them: a great deal of information can be extracted from Publius himself, and a great deal found out, which could not possibly be kept from your ears: besides a great deal more—but it is absurd to specify details, when I want you for everything. The one point I want you to grasp is that the mere sight of you would simplify everything for me; but it all depends on your coming before he enters on his office. I think that, though Crassus is egging on Pompey, if you were here and could find out from the enemy through Juno how far the great men are to be trusted, I should either escape molestation altogether or at any rate I should no longer be
sine errore futuros. Precibus nostris et cohortatione non indiges; quid mea voluntas, quid tempus, quid rei magnitudo postulet, intellegis.
De re publica nihil habeo ad te scribere nisi summum odium omnium hominum in eos, qui tenent omnia. Mutationis tamen spes nulla. Sed, quod facile sentias, taedet ipsum Pompeium vehementerque paenitet. Non provideo satis, quem exitum futurum putem; sed certe videntur haec aliquo eruptura.
Libros Alexandri, neglegentis hominis et non boni poetae, sed tamen non inutilis, tibi remisi. Numerium Numestium libenter accepi in amicitiam et hominem gravem et prudentem et dignum tua commendatione cognovi.
XXIII
CICERO ATTICO SAL.
Scr. Romae ante XV K. Nov. a. 695
Numquam ante arbitror te epistulam meam legisse nisi mea manu scriptam. Ex eo colligere poteris, quanta occupatione distinear. Nam, cum vacui temporis nihil haberem, et cum recreandae voculae causa necesse esset mihi ambulare, haec dictavi ambulans. Primum igitur illud te scire volo, Sampsiceramum, nostrum amicum, vehementer sui status paenitere restituique in eum locum cupere, ex quo decidit, doloremque suum impertire nobis et medicinam interdum aperte quaerere, quam ego possum invenire nullam; deinde omnes illius partis auctores ac socios nullo adversario consenescere, consensionem universorum
in a fog. There is no need of prayers and exhortations between you and me: you know what I wish and what the gravity of the occasion demands.
I have no political news except that the present masters of the world have the world’s hatred: and yet there is no hope of a change. But, as you can easily imagine, Pompey is disgusted and heartily sick of it all. I can’t see what the end of it will be, but I am pretty sure there will be an explosion of some sort.
I have sent back the works of Alexander, who is a careless writer and not much of a poet: still there is some use in him. Numerius Numestius I have admitted to my friendship with pleasure and find he has plenty of sober good sense and is quite worthy of your recommendation.