DXLI (F XV, 19)
C. CASSIUS LONGINUS TO CICERO (AT
ROME)
BRUNDISIUM (JANUARY)
If you are well, I am glad. There is nothing,
by Hercules, that I more like doing on this tour
of mine than writing to you: for I seem to be
talking and joking with you in person. Nor does
this Come to pass owing to Catius's "images" :
1 for which expression I will in my next
retort on you by quoting such a number of
ill-educated Stoics, that you will acknowledge
Catius to have been a true-born Athenian. That our
friend Pansa left the city in military array with
such expressions of goodwill from everybody, I
rejoice both for his own sake and also, by
Hercules, for the sake of all our party. For I
hope that people will understand how odious
cruelty is to everybody, and how attractive
honesty and clemency: and that the
objects which bad men seek and desire above
everything come spontaneously to the good. For it
is difficult to persuade men that "the good is
desirable for its own sake": but that "pleasure"
and "peace of mind" 2 are obtained by
virtue, justice, and "the good" is both true and
convincing. In fact, Epicurus himself says-from
whom all your Catiuses and Amafiniuses, those poor
translators of his words, proceed—"to
live pleasantly is impossible without living well
and justly." So it is that Pansa, whose summum
bonum is "pleasure," keeps his virtue; and those
too who are called by you "pleasure-lovers" are
"lovers of the good" and "lovers of the just,"
3 and
practise and maintain all the virtues. Accordingly
Sulla, whose judgment we are bound to respect,
seeing that philosophers disagreed, did not ask
what was good, but bought up all goods
indifferently: whose death, by Hercules, I have
borne with some fortitude! Nor will Caesar, after
all, allow us to feel his loss very long: for he
has plenty of condemned persons to restore for us
in his place, nor will he be without some one to
bid at his auctions as long as Sulla's son is in
his sight. Now for public
affairs. Write and tell me what is going on in
Spain. Upon my life I feel anxious, and prefer to
have our old and merciful master rather than a new
and bloodthirsty one. You know what a fool Gnaeus
is: you know how he thinks cruelty is courage: you
know how he always thinks that we laugh at him. I
am afraid he will want to retort the joke in
rustic fashion with a blow of the sword. If you
love me, write and say what is happening. Dear,
dear, how I wish I knew whether you read this with
an anxious or a quiet mind! For then I should at
the same time know what it becomes me to do. Not
to be too wearisome, I will say good-bye. Love me
as ever. If Caesar has conquered, expect me with
all speed.
BRUNDISIUM (JANUARY)