CCCLXIV (A IX, 10)
TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)
FORMIAE, 18 MARCH
I have nothing to write about: for I have
heard no news and I answered all your letters
yesterday. But as uneasiness of mind not only
deprives me of sleep, but prevents my even keeping
awake without extreme pain, I have begun this
letter to you—I can't tell what about,
and I have no subject to hand—that I may
in a manner have a talk with you, the one thing
which gives me any repose. I think I have been a
fool from the beginning, and the one thing that
torments me is that I did not follow Pompey, like
any private in the ranks, when, in every part of
his policy, he was losing his footing, or rather
rushing headlong to ruin. On the 17th of January I
could see that he was thoroughly frightened. On
that very day I detected his design. From that
moment he forfeited my confidence, and never
ceased committing one blunder after another.
Meanwhile, never a line to me; no thought of
anything but flight. Need I say more? As in love
affairs men lose all fancy for women who are
dirty, stupid, and indelicate, even so, the
indecency of his flight and mismanagement put me
off from my love for him. For in no respect was he
acting in a way to make it proper for me to join
his flight. Now love again rises: now my regret
for him is more than I can bear: now I can get no
good out of books, literature, or philosophy. So
earnestly as I gaze across the sea, do I long,
like Plato's bird, to fly away. 1 I am being punished, indeed I am, for
my rashness. Yet what did that rashness amount to?
What have I done without the most anxious
consideration? If his only object had been flight,
I could have fled with the utmost pleasure, but
it was the nature of the war, beyond
measure sanguinary and widespread, the future of
which men do not yet realize, that I shrank from
with horror. What threats to the towns, to
individual loyalists personally, to everybody, in
fact, who stayed in Rome! How often did I hear"
Sulla could do it, why not I?" For myself I was
haunted with the reflexions: it was unrighteous of
Tarquinius to stir up Porsena and Octavius
Mamilius against his country; impious in
Coriolanus to seek aid from the Volsci; righteous
in Themistocles to prefer death; Hippias, son of
Pisistratus, who fell in the battle of Marathon
bearing arms against his country, was Criminal.
But it may be said that Sulla, Marius, and Cinna
had right on their side: rather I should perhaps
admit that they had a technical justification; yet
what could be more cruel and bloody than their use
of victory? It was the nature of the war that I
shrank from, and the more so because I saw that
even bloodier work was being imagined and
prepared. I—whom some called the
preserver of this city, some its
parent—I to bring against it armies of
the Getae, Armenians, and Colchians! I to inflict
famine on my fellow citizens, devastation upon
Italy! Caesar, to begin with, I reflected was
mortal, and in the next place might also come to
an end in many ways: but the City and our people I
thought ought to be preserved, as far as in us
lay, for ever: and, after all, I pleased myself by
hoping that some accommodation would be reached
rather than the one of these men commit such a
crime, or the other such an abomination. The
matter is now wholly changed, and so are my
feelings. The sun, as you said in one of your
letters, seems to me to have disappeared from the
universe. As in the case of a sick man one says,
"While there is life there is hope," so, as long
as Pompey was in Italy, I did not cease to hope.
It is the present situation, the present, I say,
that has baffled my calculations. And to confess
the truth, my age, now after my long day's labour
sloping towards an evening of repose, has relaxed
my energies by suggesting the charms of family
life. But now, however dangerous the experiment of
attempting to fly hence, that experiment shall at
least be made. I ought, perhaps, to have done so
before. But the considerations I have mentioned
held me back, and above all things your influence.
For when I got to this point in my letter, I unrolled the volume of your letters,
which I keep under seal and preserve with the
greatest care. Now there were in the letter dated
by you the 21st of January the following
expression: "But let us first see what Gnaeus is
about, and in what direction his plans are
drifting. Now, if he does abandon Italy, he will
be acting certainly improperly, and, in my
opinion, unwisely too. But it will be time enough,
when he does that, to make a change in our
policy." This you write on the fourth day after
our quitting the city Next on the 23rd of January:
"May our friend Gnaeus only not abandon Italy, as
he has unwisely done Rome !" On the same day you
write a second letter, in which you answer my
application for advice in the plainest terms. This
is what you say: "To come to the point on which
you ask my opinion If Gnaeus quits Italy, I think
you should return to the city: for what limit can
there be to such a trip abroad as that?" This is
what I could not get over: and I now see that
attached to a most humiliating flight, which you
euphemistically call a "trip abroad," is an
unlimited war. Then follows your prophecy of the
25th of January: "If Pompey remains in Italy, and
no terms are come to, I think there will be an
unusually long war: but if he abandons Italy, I
think that there awaits us in the future a really
'truceless' war." It is in such a war, then, that
I am forced to be an abettor-one that is both
truceless and with fellow citizens. Again, on the
7th of February, when you had heard more
particulars of Pompey's designs, you end a certain
letter thus; "For my part, if Pompey quits Italy,
I should not advise your doing the same. For you
will be running a very great risk and be doing no
good to the Republic, to which you may be of some
service hereafter if you remain." What patriot or
statesman would not such advice, backed by the
weight of wisdom and friendship, have moved? Next,
on the 11th of February, you again answer my
request for advice thus: "You ask me whether I
advise flight, or defend delay, and consider it
the better course: for the present, indeed, my
opinion is that a sudden departure and hurried
start would be, both for yourself and Gnaeus
useless and dangerous, and I think it better that
you should be separate and each on his own
watchtower. But, on my honour, I think it
disgraceful for us to be thinking of flight!" This
"disgraceful" measure our friend
Gnaeus had contemplated two years ago: for so long
a time past has his mind been set on playing the
Sulla and indulging in proscriptions. Then, as I
think, after you had written to me again in
somewhat more general terms, and I had taken
certain expressions of yours as advising me to
leave Italy, you warmly disavow any such meaning
on the 19th of February. "I certainly have not
indicated in any letter of mine that, if Gnaeus
quits Italy, you should do so with him: or, if I
did so express myself, I was, I don't say
inconsistent, but mad." In another passage of the
same letter you say: "Nothing is left for him but
flight, in which I do not think, and never have
thought, that you, should share." This whole
question again you discuss in greater detail in a
letter of the 22nd of February: "If M. Lepidus and
L. Volcatius stay, I think you should stay also:
with the understanding, however, that, if Pompey
survives and makes a stand anywhere, you should
leave this inferno, and be more content to be
beaten in the contest along with him, than reign
with Caesar in the sink of iniquity which will
evidently prevail here." You adduce many arguments
to support this opinion. Then at the end you say:
"What if Lepidus and Volcatius depart? In that
case I doubt. So I think you must acquiesce in
whatever happens and whatever you have done." If
you had felt doubt before, you have now, at any
rate, no hesitation, since those two are still in
Italy. Again, when the flight had become an
accomplished fact, on the 25th of February:
"Meanwhile, I feel no doubt you had better remain
at Formiae. That will be the most suitable place
for waiting to see what turns up." On the 1st of
March, when Pompey had been four days at
Brundisium: "We shall be able to deliberate then
no longer, it is true, with quite free hands, but
certainly less fatally committed than if you had
taken the great plunge in his company." Then on
the 4th of March, though writing briefly, because
it was the eve of your attack of ague, you yet use
this expression: "I will write at greater length
tomorrow; however, speaking generally, I will say
this—that I do not repent my advice as
to your staying, and though with great anxiety,
yet, because I think it involves less evil than
your starting would do, I abide by my opinion and
rejoice that you have stayed." Moreover, when I was now in great pain, and was
fearing that I had been guilty of a base act, on
the 5th of March you say: "After all, I am not
sorry that you are not with Pompey. Hereafter, if
it turns out to be necessary, there will be no
difficulty: and at whatever time it takes place,
it will be welcome to him. But I speak on the
understanding that, if Caesar goes on as he has
begun, and acts with sincerity, moderation, and
wisdom, I shall have thoroughly to reconsider the
position, and to look with greater care into what
is for our advantage to do." On the 9th of March
you say that our friend Peducaeus also approves of
my having kept quiet; and his opinion has great
weight with me. From these expressions in your
letters I console myself with the belief that as
yet I have done no wrong. Only pray justify your
advice. There is no need to do so as far as I am
concerned, but I want others to be in the same
boat as myself. If I have done nothing wrong in
the past, I will maintain the same blamelessness
in the future. Only pray continue your exhortation
that direction, and assist me by communicating
your thoughts. Nothing has as yet been heard here
about Caesar's return. For myself, I have got thus
much good by writing this letter: I have read
through all yours, and have found repose in that.
FORMIAE, 18 MARCH
