V
CICERO TO ATTICUS, GREETING.
Formiae, March 10, B.C. 49
On your birthday you wrote me a letter full of advice, full of great kindness and of great wisdom. Philotimus delivered it to me the day after he got it from you. The points you discuss are very difficult—the route to the upper sea, a voyage by the lower sea, departure to Arpinum, lest I should seem to have avoided Caesar, remaining at Formiae, lest I should appear to have put myself forward to congratulate him; but the most miserable thing of all will be to see what I tell you must very shortly be seen.
Curtius Postumus was with me. I wrote you how tiresome he was. Quintus Fufius also came to see me—what an air! what assurance!—hastening to Brundisium denouncing Pompey's wrong-doings and the careless folly of the House. When I cannot stand this under my own roof, how shall I be able to endure Curtius in the Senate? But suppose I put up with all this in good humour, what of the question "Your vote, M. Tullius?" What will come of it? I pass over the cause of the Republic, which I consider lost, both from the wounds dealt it and the cures prepared for them; but what am I to do about Pompey? It is no use denying that I am downright angry with him. For I am always more affected by the causes of events than by the events themselves. Therefore considering our incomparable woes, or rather concluding that they have happened by his doing and his mistakes, I am more angry with Pompey than with Caesar himself. Just as our ancestors
maiores nostri funestiorem diem esse voluerunt Aliensis pugnae quam urbis captae, quod hoc malum ex illo (itaque alter religiosus etiam nunc dies, alter in vulgus ignotus), sic ego decem annorum peccata recordans, in quibus inerat ille etiam annus, qui nos hoc non defendente, ne dicam gravius, adflixerat, praesentisque temporis cognoscens temeritatem, ignaviam, neglegentiam suscensebam. Sed ea iam mihi exciderunt; beneficia eiusdem cogito, cogito etiam dignitatem; intellego serius equidem, quam vellem, propter epistulas sermonesque Balbi, sed video plane nihil aliud agi, nihil actum ab initio, nisi ut hunc occideret. Ego igitur, sicut ille apud Homerum, cui et mater et dea dixisset:
Αὐτίκα γάρ τοι ἔπειτα μεθ' Ἐκτορα πότμος ἕτοιμος,
matri ipse respondit: