Your letters I am reading now from the beginning of the business. They afford me some little relief. The first warn and entreat me not to commit myself. The later ones show you are glad I stayed. While I read them, my conduct seems to me less discreditable; but only so long as I read: afterwards up rises sorrow again and a vision of shame. So I beseech you, Titus,
mihi hunc dolorem, aut minue saltem aut consolatione aut consilio, aut quacumque re potes. Quid tu autem possis? aut quid homo quisquam? Vix iam deus.
Equidem illud molior, quod tu mones sperasque fieri posse, ut mihi Caesar concedat, ut absim, cum aliquid in senatu contra Gnaeum agatur. Sed timeo, ne non impetrem. Venit ab eo Furnius. Ut quidem scias, quos sequamur, Q. Titini filium cum Caesare esse nuntiat, sed illum maiores mihi gratias agere, quam vellem. Quid autem me roget paucis ille quidem verbis, sed ἐν δυνάμει, cognosce ex ipsius epistula. Me miserum, quod tu non valuisti! una fuissemus; consilium certe non defuisset; σύν τε δύ' ἐρχομένω——.
Sed acta ne agamus, reliqua paremus. Me adhuc haec duo fefellerunt, initio spes compositionis, qua facta volebam uti populari vita, sollicitudine senectutem nostram liberari; deinde bellum crudele et exitiosum suscipi a Pompeio intellegebam. Melioris medius fidius civis et viri putabam quovis supplicio adfici, quam illi crudelitati non solum praeesse, verum etiam interesse. Videtur vel mori satius fuisse quam esse cum his. Ad haec igitur cogita, mi Attice, vel potius excogita. Quemvis eventum fortius feram quam hunc dolorem.
take this grief away from me, or at any rate lessen it by your sympathy or advice or by any other possible means. Yet what can you or any man do? God Himself could hardly help now.
But my own aim now is to achieve what you advise and hope, that Caesar excuse my absence, when any measure is brought forward against Pompey in the house. But I fear I may fail. Furnius has come from Caesar. To show you the sort of men I am following, he tells me that the son of Q. Titinius is with Caesar, but Caesar expresses greater thanks to me than I could wish. His request put in a few words, but ex cathedra, you may see from his letter. How grieved I am at your ill-health! We should have been together; assuredly advice would not have been wanting: "Two heads are better than one."
Iliad X, 224
But let us not fight battles over again, let us attend to the future. Till now two things have led me astray, at first the hope of a settlement, and, if that were secured, I was ready for private life and an old age quit of public cares; and then I discovered that Pompey was beginning a bloody and destructive war. On my honour I thought that it was the part of a better man and a better citizen to suffer any punishment rather than, I will not say to take a leading part, but even to take any part in such atrocities. It seems as though it would have been preferable to die than to be one of such men. So, my dear Atticus, think on these problems, or rather think them out. I shall bear any result more bravely than this affliction.