Is this what it comes to? Is this what our hero Brutus, my hero and yours, has achieved, that he should have to stay at Lanuvium, that Trebonius must make his way to his province by roundabout routes; that all the acts, notes, words, promises, and projects of Caesar should have more validity than if he were alive? Do you remember that I cried aloud
234Capitolino die debere senatum in Capitolium a praetoribus vocari? Di immortales, quae tum opera effici potuerunt laetantibus omnibus bonis, etiam sat bonis, fractis latronibus! Liberalia tu accusas. Quid fieri tum potuit? iam pridem perieramus. Meministine te clamare causam perisse, si funere elatus esset? At ille etiam in foro combustus, laudatusque miserabiliter, servique et egentes in tecta nostra cum facibus immissi. Quae deinde? ut audeant dicere: "Tune contra Caesaris nutum?" Haec et alia ferre non possum. Itaque "γῆν πρὸ γῆς" cogito; tua tamen ὑπηνέμιος.
Nausea iamne plane abiit? Mihi quidem ex tuis litteris coniectanti ita videbatur. Redeo ad Tebassos, Scaevas, Frangones. Hos tu existimas confidere se illa habituros stantibus nobis? in quibus plus virtutis putarunt, quam experti sunt. Pacis isti scilicet amatores et non latrocinii auctores. At ego, cum tibi de Curtilio scripsi Sextilianoque fundo, scripsi de Censorino, de Messalla, de Planco, de Postumo, de genere toto. Melius fuit perisse illo interfecto, quod numquam accidisset, quam haec videre.
Octavius Neapolim venit XIIII Kal. Ibi eum Balbus
on that first day on the Capitol[[196]] that the Senate should be summoned thither by the praetors? Ye gods! what might we not have accomplished then, when all the loyalists were rejoicing, and even the half loyal, while the knaves were crushed. You blame the Liberalia.[[197]] What could have been done then? We were done for already. Do you remember you exclaimed our cause was lost if the funeral took place? But he was even burned in the forum and a moving oration was delivered in his praise, and slaves and paupers were incited to attack our houses with torches. And the end of it all is that they dare to say: "Are you going to oppose Caesar's will?" Such things as these I cannot bear. So I am thinking of shifting from land to land. But your land[[198]] is too exposed.
[196]. The murderers of Caesar barricaded themselves on the Capitol after the murder, and were visited by Cicero and others.
[197]. At a meeting of the Senate on March 17 it was decreed that Caesar's acta should be confirmed, that he should have a public funeral, and that his will should be read.
[198]. Greece.
Has your sickness left you entirely now? So far as I can guess from your letters it has. I return to the Tebassi, Scaevae, and Frangones.[[199]] Do you suppose they will have any confidence in their homesteads, while we have any power? They have found us to have less courage than they expected. I suppose we must hold them lovers of peace and not a gang of brigands. But, when I wrote to you of Curtilius and Sextilianus' farm, I wrote of Censorinus, Messalla, Plancus, Postumus, and all such cases. It were better to have perished when he was slain—though it would never have come to that[[200]]—than to see such things.
[199]. Veterans of Caesar's army, who had had lands of the Pompeian party given to them.