XIIIa
BALBUS CICERONI IMP. SAL. DIC.
Scr. Romae circ. X K. Apr. 705.
Caesar nobis litteras perbreves misit; quarum exemplum subscripsi. Brevitate epistulae scire poteris eum valde esse distentum, qui tanta de re tam breviter scripserit. Si quid praeterea novi fuerit, statim tibi scribam.
"CAESAR OPPIO, CORNELIO SAL.
A. d. VII Idus Martias Brundisium veni, ad murum castra posui. Pompeius est Brundisi. Misit ad me N. Magium de pace. Quae visa sunt, respondi. Hoc vos statim scire volui. Cum in spem venero de compositione aliquid me conficere, statim vos certiores faciam."
Quo modo me nunc putas, mi Cicero, torqueri, postquam rursus in spem pacis veni, ne qua res eorum compositionem impediat? Namque, quod absens
wretched, but nothing more wretched than this. Pompey sent N. Magius to speak of peace, and yet he is under siege. I did not believe it; but I have a letter from Balbus of which I send you a copy. Read it, please, and that clause at the end which contains the remarks of the good Balbus himself, to whom Pompey gave a site for his estate and whom he had often preferred to all of us. So he is in an agony of grief. But, that you may not have to read the same, twice over, I refer you to the letter. Of peace I have no hope. Dolabella in his letter of the 13th of March speaks of war pure and simple. So let us stick to the same opinion, that there is no hope, for nothing can be worse than all this.