besides Atticus, are Cicero's brother Quintus and P. Lentulus Spinther.
There are two excellent letters to M. Marius, and one very interesting,
though rather surprising, epistle to L. Lucceius. Others of more than
average interest are to Terentia, M. Fadius Gallus, C. Scribonius Curio,
and Tiro.
[Sidenote: Titus Pomponius Atticus.]
ATTICUS (B.C. 109-32) is a man of whom we should be glad to know more
than we do. He was the friend of all the leading men of the day--Pompey,
Cæsar, Cicero, Antony, Brutus--father-in-law of Agrippa, and survived to
be a constant correspondent of Augustus, between B.C. 43 and his death
in B.C. 32. He was spared and respected by both sides in the civil
wars, from Sulla to the Second Triumvirate. The secret of his success
seems to have been that he was no man's rival. He resolutely declined
all official employment, even on the staff of his brother-in-law Quintus
Cicero. He committed himself to no side in politics, and, not being in
the senate, had no occasion by vote or speech to wound the feelings of
anyone. So, too, though he cared for literature, it was rather as a
friendly critic of others than as an author. He did, it is true, compile
some books on Roman history, on historical portraits, and certain family
biographies; but they were not such as made him a rival of any of his
contemporaries. They were rather the productions of a rich amateur, who
had leisure to indulge a quasi-literary taste, without any thought of
joining the ranks of professed writers. Thirdly, he had great wealth,
partly inherited, partly acquired by prudent speculation in the purchase
of town properties, or in loans to states or public bodies on fair
terms: and this wealth was at the service of his friends, but not in the
lavish or reckless manner, which often earns only ingratitude without
being of any permanent service to the recipients. He lent money, but
expected to be repaid even by his brother-in-law. And this prudence
helped to retain the confidence, while his sympathetic temperament
secured the liking, of most. Again, he had the valuable knack of
constantly replenishing the number of his friends among men junior to
himself. His character attracted the liking of Sulla, who was
twenty-seven years his senior, and he remained the close friend of his
contemporaries Hortensius and Cicero (the former five years his senior,
the latter three years his junior) till the day of their death. But we
also find him on intimate terms with Brutus, twenty-four, and Octavian,
forty-six years junior to himself. Lastly, he was not too much at Rome.
More than twenty years of his earlier manhood (B.C. 87-65) were spent in
Greece, principally at Athens, partly in study and partly in business.
And Athens at this time, long deprived of political importance, had
still the charm not only of its illustrious past, but also of its
surviving character as the home of culture and refinement. When he at
length returned to Rome in B.C. 65, he had already purchased a property
in Epirus, near Buthrotum (see p. 3), where he built a villa, in which
he continued to spend a considerable part of his remaining years. This
was sufficiently remote, not only from Rome, but from the summer
residences of the Roman nobles, to secure his isolation from the
intrigues and enmities of Roman society. He did not indeed--as who
does?--always escape giving offence. At the very beginning of the
correspondence we hear of his vain attempts to mollify the anger of L.
Lucceius--how incurred we do not know; and Quintus Cicero, of whose
sharp temper we hear so much, was on more than one occasion on the point
of a rupture with him. But his family life was generally as pleasing as
his connexion with his friends. With his mother, who lived to a great
age, he boasted that he had never been reconciled, because he had never
quarrelled. He was the only one who could get on with the crusty uncle
Cæcilius. In the delicate matter of his sister Pomponia's differences
with her husband Quintus Cicero, he seems to have acted with kindness as
well as prudence; and though he married late in life (B.C. 56, when he
was in his fifty-third year), he appears to have made an excellent
husband to Pilia and a very affectionate father to his daughter. His
unwearied sympathy with the varied moods of Cicero--whether of
exultation, irritation, or despair--and the entire confidence which
Cicero feels that he will have that sympathy in every case, are
creditable to both. It is only between sincere souls that one can speak
to the other as to a second self, as Cicero often alleges that he does
to Atticus.
[Sidenote: Quintus Tullius Cicero.]
Of QUINTUS CICERO, the next most important correspondent in this volume,
we get a fairly clear picture. Four years younger than his famous
brother (b. B.C. 102), he followed him at the due distance up the ladder
of official promotion to the prætorship, to which he was elected in the
year of his elder's consulship. There, however, Quintus stopped. He
never seems to have stood for the consulship. He had no oratorical
genius to give him reputation in the forum, nor were his literary
productions of any value, either for style or originality. His abilities
for administration, as shewn in his three years' government of Asia,
appear to have been respectable, but were marred by faults of temper,
which too often betrayed him into extreme violence of language. In
military command he shewed courage and energy in defending his camp in
the rising of the Gauls in the winter of B.C. 54-53; but he spoilt the
reputation thus gained by the mistake committed in the autumn of B.C.
53, which cost the loss of a considerable number of troops, and all but
allowed the roving Germans to storm his camp. He remained another year
in Gaul, but did nothing to retrieve this mistake. In military affairs
fortune rarely forgives. In politics he seems to have contented himself
generally with saying ditto to his brother. And this continued to be the
case up to Pharsalia. After that, finding himself on the losing side, he
turned somewhat fiercely upon the brother, whom he regarded as having
misled him; and for a time there was a miserable breach between them,
which, however, did not last very long. When the end came it found the
brothers united in heart as in misfortune. His private happiness was
marred by an uncongenial marriage. Pomponia--sister of Atticus--seems to
have been as high-tempered as her husband, and less placable. The
constant quarrels between them exercised the patience both of Cicero and
Atticus, and crops up all through the correspondence. One effect of them
was the loss of all control over their son, who, being called upon to
smooth over the differences between father and mother, naturally took up
at an early age a line of his own, and shewed a disposition to act
independently of his elders.
[Sidenote: Terentia.]
The letters to TERENTIA do not fill much space in the correspondence,
and are rarely interesting. Married about B.C. 80, Cicero seems to have
lived in harmony with her at least till the time of his return from
exile, during which unhappy period he acknowledges the activity of her
exertions in support of his recall, and the drain which his ruin was
making upon her resources. Terentia had a large private fortune, and
apparently used it liberally in his service. Nevertheless, immediately
on his return from exile, there seems to have been some cause of
coldness between the husband and wife. He darkly alludes to certain
domestic troubles in the first letter to Atticus written from Rome (vol
i., p. 189), and repeats the hint in the next (p. 193). When he landed
at Brundisium it was Tullia, not Terentia, who came to meet him (p.
187), and for some time after she appears to be presiding in his house
rather than Terentia (see pp. 224, 257). Whatever the cause of this
coldness was, however, it appears to have been removed for a time. He
kept up a correspondence with her while he was in Cilicia (B.C. 51-50),
and though he does not seem pleased at her having arranged the marriage
of Tullia with Dolabella, he addresses her warmly when about to return,
and was met by her on landing. During the five or six months that
followed, before Cicero left Italy to join Pompey, there is no
indication of any alienation: but the short notes from Pompey's camp,
and in the first half of B.C. 47, are cold and conventional, and on his
return to Brundisium after Pharsalia, and during his lengthened stay
there, he appears to have declined to allow her to come and see him.
Soon after his return to Rome, in September, B.C. 47, matters came to a
climax. Perhaps some of the mischief was caused by the mismanagement or
dishonesty of Terentia's steward, Philotimus, of whom we hear a good
deal in the letters from Cilicia: but whatever was the origin of the
quarrel, Cicero asserts that on his return he found his affairs in a
state of utter disorder. It may well have been that, like other
adherents to the losing cause, he had to suffer from loss of any
property that could be easily laid hands on in Rome, and that Terentia
had had no power to save it. But Cicero, rightly or wrongly, attributed
the embarrassment which he found awaiting him to his wife. He says in a
letter to Gnæus Plancius:[21] "I should not have taken any new step at a
time of such general disaster had I not on my return found my private
affairs in as sorry a position as the public. The fact is, that when I
saw that, owing to the criminal conduct of those to whom my life and
fortunes ought, in return for my never-to-be-forgotten services, to have
been their dearest object, there was nothing safe within the walls of my
house, nothing that was not the subject of some intrigue, I made up my
mind that I must arm myself by the faithful support of new marriage
connexions against the perfidy of the old." This is a lame excuse for a
man of sixty separating from the companion of his whole manhood, and in
the eyes of Roman Society it was rendered still more questionable by a
prompt marriage with a young girl, rich, and his own ward: from whom,
however, he soon again divorced himself, angered, it is said, by her
want of feeling at the death of Tullia. Terentia long survived her
husband, living, we are told, to be over a hundred years old. Divorce
was, of course, not regarded in these days of the Republic as it had
once been, or as it is now among ourselves; still we should have been
glad, both for his fame and his happiness, if the few years remaining to
him had not had this additional cloud. A man of sixty embarking on such
matrimonial enterprise is not a dignified spectacle, or one pleasing to
gods and men.
The other correspondents may be dismissed in few words.
[Sidenote: P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther.]
P. CORNELIUS LENTULUS SPINTHER, to whom some of the longest letters are
addressed, represents the high aristocracy, to which Cicero wished to
commend himself, though seeing keenly the weakness which underlay their
magnificence. The part played by Lentulus in politics had been showy,
but never founded on steadfast principle. He owed his earlier promotions
to Cæsar's influence, but in his consulship of B.C. 57 had taken the
side of the aristocracy in promoting the recall of Cicero, though he had
gone against their sentiment by supporting Pompey's appointment to the
_cura annonæ_. But as he was going to Cilicia in B.C. 56, Lentulus
wished to have the lucrative task of restoring Ptolemy Auletes to the
throne of Egypt, from which he had been righteously driven by his
subjects. Therefore it was all to the good that Pompey should have
business at home preventing him from taking this in hand. How Lentulus
was baulked in this desire will appear in the letters. He no doubt had
his full share of the _Lentulitas_ distinguishing his family. But all
was forgiven by Cicero to a man who had promoted his recall, and he
takes great pains to justify to Lentulus his own change of policy in
regard to the triumvirs after B.C. 56. When the civil war began Lentulus
joined Domitius at Corfinium, and with him fell into Cæsar's hands, and
was dismissed unharmed. He afterwards joined Pompey in Epirus, intent on
succeeding Cæsar as Pontifex Maximus, as soon as the latter had been
satisfactorily disposed of. After Pharsalia he sought refuge at Rhodes,
but was refused sanctuary by the islanders, and was eventually put to
death, though we do not know by whom (_Att._ xi. 13; _Fam._ ix. 18).
[Sidenote: M. Fadius Gallus, M. Marius, L. Lucceius, C. Scribonius
Curio, C. Trebatius Testa.]
M. FADIUS GALLUS, the Epicurean, and M. MARIUS, the valetudinarian and
wit, were among friends valued for their personal and agreeable
qualities rather than for any public or political importance attaching
to them. The same may be said of L. LUCCEIUS, of whose Roman history
Cicero thought so well, that he wrote a remarkable letter begging for an
honourable place in it for his consulship, as Pliny did to Tacitus.[22]
C. SCRIBONIUS CURIO, son of a great friend of Cicero, after a _jeunesse
orageuse_, returned to Rome from his quæstorship in Asia, in B.C. 53, to
take up the inheritance of his father, which he quickly dissipated.
Cicero seems to have had a high idea of his abilities, and to have
believed him capable of taking the lead of the Optimates. But in his
tribuneship of B.C. 51-50 he disappointed all such hopes by openly
joining Cæsar's party, and resisting all attempts to recall him. He
joined Cæsar at Ravenna as soon as his tribuneship was out, and urged
him to march on Rome. In B.C. 49 he was sent to secure Sicily and
Africa. The first he did, but in the second he perished in battle
against the senatorial governor and king Iuba. Cicero's relation to C.
TREBATIUS TESTA, a learned jurisconsult, was apparently that of a patron
or tutor, who, thinking that he has found a young man of ability,
endeavours to push him. He sent him with a letter of introduction to
Cæsar, who was good-natured, though rather sarcastic as to the scope for
legal abilities to be found in Gaul. He gave him, however, a military
tribuneship, without exacting military duties, and apparently kept on
good terms with him, for he employed him in B.C. 49 to communicate his
wish to Cicero as to his remaining at Rome. Cicero's letters to him,
though numerous, are not among the most interesting. They are full of
banter of a rather forced and dull kind; and Cicero was evidently
annoyed to find that his scheme for advancing Trebatius in Cæsar's
province had not been very successful. The friendship, however, survived
the civil war, and we find Cicero in B.C. 44 dedicating his _Topica_ to
Trebatius.
[Footnote 1: That Cicero up to the time of his consulship had been
connected rather with the _populares_ is illustrated by Quintus (_de
Petit._ i.) urging him to make it clear that he had never been a
demagogue, but that if he had ever spoken "in the spirit of the popular
party, he had done so with the view of attracting Pompey."]
[Footnote 2: _De Orat._ ii. §§ 1, 2.]
[Footnote 3: "The city, the city, my dear Rufus--stick to that, and live
in its full light. Residence elsewhere--as I made up my mind early in
life--is mere eclipse and obscurity to those whose energy is capable of
shining at Rome."--_Fam._ ii. 12 (vol. ii., p. 166).]
[Footnote 4: Even at these he found troublesome people to interrupt him.
See vol. i., pp. 102, 104.]
[Footnote 5: Yet the announcement of the birth of his son (p. 16) and of
the dangerous confinement of Tullia (vol. ii., p. 403) are almost
equally brief.]
[Footnote 6: See _Att._ ii. 1, vol. 1., p. 62; Plut. _Cic._ 13; Cic. _in
Pis._ § 4.]
[Footnote 7: _Die Entstchungsgeschichte der catilinarischen
Verschwörung_, by Dr. Constantin John, 1876. I am still of opinion that
Plutarch's statement can be strongly supported.]
[Footnote 8: Cæsar said, οὺ μὴν καὶ προσήκειν ἐπὶ τοῐς παρεληλυθόσι
τοιοῠτόν τινα νόμον συγγράφεσθαι (Dio, xxxviii. 17).]
[Footnote 9: "The man who did not so much as raise me up, when I threw
myself at his feet."--_Att._ x. 4 (vol. ii., p. 362). Similar allusions
to Pompey's conduct to him on the occasion often occur.]
[Footnote 10: See vol. i., p. 190.]
[Footnote 11: See vol. i., pp. 129, 138; cp. _pro Planc._ §§ 95-96.]
[Footnote 12: _Fam._ i. 9, 15 (vol. i., p. 316).]
[Footnote 13: Letter CVII, vol. i., pp. 219, 220.]
[Footnote 14: Ever since its capture in the second Punic War, Capua had
ceased to have any corporate existence, and its territory had been _ager
publicus_, let out to tenants (_aratores_). Cæsar had restored its
corporate existence by making it a _colonia_, and much of the land had
been allotted to veterans of his own and Pompey's armies. The state thus
lost the rent of the land, one of the few sources of revenue from Italy
now drawn by the exchequer of Rome.]
[Footnote 15: Letter CLII, vol. i., pp. 310-324.]
[Footnote 16: Quoted by Flavius Charisius, _Ars Gramm._ i., p. 126 (ed.
Kiel).]
[Footnote 17: Vol. ii., p. 204.]
[Footnote 18: Vol. i., p. 357.]
[Footnote 19: CLXXVIII-CLXXXI. The date of the letter to P. Sittius
(CLXXVIII) is not certain.]
[Footnote 20: Vol. i., p. 366.]
[Footnote 21: Letter DXXXIII (_Fam._ iv. 14), about October, B.C. 46.]
[Footnote 22: Vol. i., p. 226; Pliny, _Ep._, vii. 33.]
"TULLIUS, of all the sons of royal Rome
That are, or have been, or are yet to come,
Most skilled to plead, most learned in debate,--
Catullus hails thee, small as thou art great.
Take thou from him his thanks, his fond regards,
The first of patrons from the least of bards."
CATULLUS, xlix. (J. E. S.)
CICERO'S LETTERS
ERRATA IN VOL. I.
Page 107, note 3, last line, _dele_ note of interrogation after "expenses."
" 193, note 4, last line, _for_ B.C. 45 _lege_ B.C. 46.
" 253, Letter CXXII, _for_ A IV, 1, _lege_ A IV, 2.
CICERO'S LETTERS
I (A I, 5)
[Sidenote: B.C. 68. Coss., L. Cæcilius Metellus, Q. Marcius Rex.]
This opening of the correspondence finds Cicero, now in his
thirty-ninth year, in the midst of his official career. He had
already been quæstor (B.C. 75) and ædile (B.C. 69), and was looking
forward to his election to the prætorship in the next year (B.C.
67). He had already risen almost to the highest place in his
profession as advocate, and had partly delivered, partly published
his great indictment of Verres only a year ago. He is married to
Terentia (B.C. 80), and has one daughter, Tullia or Tulliola, born
on August 5, probably the next year (B.C. 79). His intimacy with T.
Pomponius Atticus (three years his senior), perhaps begun at
school, had lasted at least eleven years, from the time when he met
him at Athens (B.C. 79), and with him had been initiated in the
Eleusinian mysteries (_de Leg._ 2, § 36). There too they had both
seen much of the writer's cousin Lucius, whose death he deplores in
this letter (_de Fin._ 5, § 1). Atticus had lived abroad in Athens
and Epirus, with occasional visits home from B.C. 88 to B.C. 65, in
which latter year he seems to have returned for a more lengthened
stay (Nep. _Att._ 4). The two friends have already corresponded
frequently, but this is the first letter preserved.
TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)
ROME
[Sidenote: B.C. 68, ÆT. 38]
We are such intimate friends that more than almost anyone else you can
appreciate the grief as well as the actual public and private loss that
the death of my cousin Lucius is to me. There is absolutely no
gratification which any human being can receive from the kindly
character of another that I have not been accustomed to receive from
him. I am sure, therefore, that you will share my grief. For, in the
first place, whatever affects me affects you; and in the second place,
you have yourself lost in him a friend and connexion of the highest
character and most obliging disposition, who was attached to you from
personal inclination, as well as from my conversation.
As to what you say in your letter about your sister,[23] she will
herself bear me witness what pains I have taken that my brother Quintus
should show her proper affection. Thinking him somewhat inclined to be
angry with her, I wrote to him in such a way as I thought would not hurt
his feelings as a brother, while giving him some good advice as my
junior, and remonstrating with him as being in the wrong. The result is
that, from frequent letters since received from him, I feel confident
that everything is as it ought and as we should wish it to be.
As to the frequency of my letters you have no ground for your complaint.
The fact is our good sister Pomponia never informed me of there being a
courier ready to take a letter. Farthermore, I never chanced to know of
anyone going to Epirus,[24] and I was not till recently informed of your
being at Athens.
Again, as to the business of Acutilius which you had left in my hands. I
had settled it on my first visit to Rome after your departure. But it
turned out that, in the first place, there was no urgency in the matter,
and, in the second place, as I felt confidence in your judgment, I
preferred that Peducæus[25] rather than myself should advise you by
letter on the subject. For having submitted my ears to Acutilius for
several days (and I think you know his style), I should scarcely have
regarded it as a hardship to write you a letter describing his
grumblings after patiently enduring the bore (and it _was_ rather a
bore, I can tell you) of hearing them. Moreover, though you find fault
with me, allow me to observe that I have had only one letter from you,
though you had greater leisure for writing, and more opportunity of
sending letters.
As to what you say in your letter, "Even if anyone is inclined to be
offended with you, I ought to bring him to a better mind"--I understand
to what you allude, and I have not neglected the matter. But the truth
is that the extent of his displeasure is something surprising. However,
I have not omitted to say anything there was to say in your behalf: but
on what points I am to hold out your wishes, I consider, ought to be my
guide. If you will write me word distinctly what they are, you will find
that I have had no desire to be more exacting, and in the future shall
be no more yielding, than you wish.[26]
As to the business of Tadius. He tells me that you have written him word
that there was no need of farther trouble, since the property is secured
by prescription. I am surprised that you do not know that in the case of
a statutory wardship of an unmarried girl prescription cannot be
pleaded.[27]
I am glad you like your purchase in Epirus. What I commissioned you to
get for me, and anything you see suitable to my Tusculan villa, I should
be glad if you will, as you say in your letter, procure for me, only
don't put yourself to any inconvenience. The truth is, there is no other
place that gives me complete rest after all my worries and hard work.
I am expecting my brother Quintus every day. Terentia has a severe
attack of rheumatism. She is devoted to you, to your sister, and your
mother, and adds her kindest regards in a postscript. So does my pet
Tulliola. Love me, and be assured that I love you as a brother.
[Footnote 23: Pomponia, married to Cicero's younger brother Quintus. We
shall frequently hear of this unfortunate marriage. Quintus was four
years younger than his brother, who had apparently arranged the match,
and felt therefore perhaps somewhat responsible for the result (Nep.
_Att._ 5).]
[Footnote 24: Atticus had estates and a villa near Buthrotum in
Epirus,--_Butrinto_ in Albania, opposite Corfu.]
[Footnote 25: This is probably Sext. Peducæus the younger, an intimate
friend of Atticus (Nep. _Att._ 21); his father had been prætor in Sicily
when Cicero was quæstor (B.C. 76-75), the son was afterwards a partisan
of Cæsar in the Civil War, governor of Sardinia, B.C. 48, and proprætor
in Spain, B.C. 39.]
[Footnote 26: The person alluded to is L. Lucceius, of whom we shall
hear again. See Letters V, VII, VIII, CVIII. What his quarrel with
Atticus was about, we do not know.]
[Footnote 27: Prescriptive right to property was acquired by possession
(_usus_) of two years. But no such right could be acquired to the
property of a girl under guardianship (_pro Flacco_, § 84).]
II (A I, 6)
TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)
ROME, DECEMBER
[Sidenote: B.C. 68, ÆT. 38]
I won't give you any excuse hereafter for accusing me of neglecting to
write. It is you that must take care that with all your leisure you keep
up with me.