CCLX (F III, 10)
TO APPIUS CLAUDIUS PULCHER (AT
ROME)
LAODICEA, MAY
WHEN information reached me of the rash
measure of those who were causing you trouble,
1
although I was at first greatly disturbed at the
news, since nothing could have happened more
contrary to my expectation, yet when I had
collected my thoughts, the sequel seemed to me to
present no difficulty, because I felt great
confidence in you and your friends, and many
reasons occurred to me for thinking that this
trouble would redound to your honour. One thing I
was really sorry for, when I saw that a most
certain and most thoroughly deserved triumph had
been snatched from you by this step on the part of
your jealous rivals. But if you rate it at the
value which I have always thought should be put
upon it, you will be acting wisely and will come
off victorious, the chagrin of your enemies
furnishing you with the most complete of triumphs.
For I see clearly that the effect of your energy,
power, and wisdom will be to make your enemies
bitterly repent their ill-considered measure. As
for myself, I solemnly promise and vow before
heaven that in support of your dignity—I
prefer that word to "safety "—I will in
this province, which you once governed, undertake
and carry through the duties and role of an
intercessor by my entreaties, of a relation by my
exertions, of a man beloved (I hope) among the
states by the exertion of my influence, of an
imperator by using the full weight of my office. I would have you both demand and
expect everything of me: I shall surpass your
expectations by my services. Q. Servilius
delivered me a very short letter from you, which
yet seemed to me unnecessarily long: for I think
myself wronged in being asked. I could have wished
that no such occasion had arisen for you to see
how highly I, how highly Pompey (who, as is only
right, is ever the first of men to me), how highly
Brutus values you: though you might have perceived
it in our daily intercourse, as you will now. But
since the occasion has arisen, if I omit anything
in my power, I shall confess to a crime and a
disgrace. Pomptinus, who has been treated by you
with eminent and exemplary good faith, and of
whose obligations to you I am a witness, has shewn
that he remembers you with all the affection which
you can justly claim. He left me, much against my
will, under the pressure of urgent private
affairs, yet, when he saw that it was of
importance to you, though on the point of
embarking at Ephesus, he returned to Laodicea.
When I see that you are likely to command
innumerable instances of similar zeal in your
service, I can have no manner of doubt that your
present anxiety will eventually strengthen your
position. If, indeed, you succeed in getting
censors elected, and if you conduct your
censorship as you both ought and can, I am
convinced that you will be for all time a tower of
strength not only to your-self, but to all your
family. Pray fight and strive that there be no
prolongation of my office, so that, when I have
done all you want for you here, I may have the
opportunity there also of giving practical
expression to my goodwill to you. What you tell me
of the support offered you by all men and all
ranks does not at all surprise me, and is
exceedingly grateful to my feelings: the same
account has reached me from my various friends.
Accordingly, it gives me great satisfaction, not
only that a proper tribute is paid to
you—whose friendship to me is a source
of pleasure as well as honour—but also,
in truth, that there is still left in our country
an almost unanimous feeling of affection for
gallant and energetic men: which in my eyes has
ever been the one reward for my own days of labour
and nights of toil. It has, I confess, caused me
great surprise that this young man—whom
I have twice defended to the utmost
of my power on capital charges—should be
so headstrong as, when entering on a course of
hostility to you, to forget the patron of his
fortunes and whole career; especially considering
that you had enough and to spare of every kind,
whether of honour or material support, while he
himself, to put it at the lowest, has large
deficiencies in these respects. Some silly and
childish talk of his had been already reported to
me by our friend M. Caelius; about which talk also
I have had many communications from you. For
myself, I should have been much more inclined to
break off an old connexion with a man who had
entered on a course of hostility to you, than to
make a new one. For you ought not to doubt the
warmth of my feelings towards you: it is notorious
to everyone in the province, and was not less so
in Rome. Nevertheless, a certain suspicion is
hinted at in your letter, and a doubt on your
part, in regard to which the present is not a
suitable time to remonstrate with you, yet the
occasion requires that I should clear myself. For
when, pray, did I hinder any embassy being sent to
Rome to convey an encomium upon you? Or, supposing
me to be your declared enemy, how could I have
done anything less likely to injure you, or how,
if your secret enemy, have more openly betrayed my
hostility? But if I had been as perfidious as
those who attribute these motives to us, yet I at
least should not have been such a fool as to
betray either an enmity which I wished to conceal,
or a burning desire to wound where it was
impossible to damage you. I remember certain
persons coming to me from Phrygia Epictetos, to
inform me that some excessive sums were being
voted for the expenses of some legates. To them I
expressed an opinion, rather than gave an order,
that votes for such expenses should conform as
closely as possible to the lex Cornelia. And that
I did not insist even on that is testified by the
accounts of the boroughs, in which each entered as
paid to your legates what they severally chose.
But what a pack of lies has been foisted on you by
a set of the most untrustworthy of men! Not only
that the votes were cancelled, but that, when the
legates had actually started, the money was
demanded and forcibly recovered from their agents,
and that many were thus prevented from going at
all! I should have expressed some
discontent and expostulated with you, had it not
been, as I before observed, that I preferred at
the present juncture to clear myself rather than
accuse you, and thought this the more proper
course. So not a word about you and your having
believed it: but about myself I will say a few
words as to why you ought not to have believed it.
For if you hold me to be a good man, if you hold
me to be worthy of the studies and philosophy to
which I have devoted myself from boyhood, if you
hold it proven in circumstances of the greatest
gravity that my courage is fairly high and my
wisdom none of the worst, you ought to know that
there is nothing in my conduct as a
friend—I don't say treacherous,
designing, or deceitful—but even mean or
cold. But if you choose to imagine me to be dark
and mysterious, what could be less consonant with
such a character than to disdain the friendship of
a man in the highest possible position, or to
attack his reputation in a province, after
defending his credit at home? Or to display one's
hostility where it was impossible to damage him,
or to select for an occasion of treachery what
would give the clearest indication of dislike, but
would be the least effectual in inflicting a blow
upon him? What reason, moreover, was there for my
being so implacable to you, when my own brother
had informed me that you had not been really
hostile to me, even at a time when the assumption
of such a part had almost been forced upon you?
2 When,
however, we had by mutual desire renewed our
friendship, can you mention any request which you
made to me during your consulship 3 in vain,
whether it was something you wished me to do, or a
vote you wished me to support in the senate? What
charge did you give me as I was seeing you off at
Puteoli, in which I have not more than fulfilled
your expectation by my energetic exertions? Again,
if it is above everything the mark of selfish
cunning to judge everything by the standard of
one's own advantage, what could better suit my
interests than the close alliance with a man of
the highest rank and greatest official dignity,
whose wealth, ability, sons, marriage connexions,
blood-relations, could all greatly promote my honour, or, I may say, my security? All
these advantages, after all, I did aim at in
seeking your friendship—which I did not
seek from any selfish cunning, but rather because
I had some sound sense. Again, how powerful are
those bonds in which I am the most willing of
prisoners !—sympathy of tastes, charm of
social intercourse, the refined pleasures of our
life and its environment, our interchange of ideas
in conversation, our deeper studies. And these all
belong to private life. What about public ties
between us? Our famous reconciliation, in which
any inadvertence even is impossible without a
suspicion of perfidy; our colleagueship in the
most illustrious priesthood—in which, in
the opinion of our ancestors, not only was no
breach of friendship possible without impiety, but
no election even into the college was permissible,
if a man were on had terms with any of the
existing members. But to pass over these ties,
numerous and important as they are, was there ever
anyone who valued another, or could or ought to
value another, as highly as I do Cu. Pompeius,
your daughter's father-in-law? For if services are
to count—I consider that I owe him the
restoration of country, children, life, rank, and,
in a word, of myself. If the charm of social
intercourse—what friendship between two
consulars in our city was ever closer than ours?
If those tokens of affection and
kindness— what confidence has he ever
withheld from me? What has he failed to discuss
with me? What motion affecting himself in the
senate has he wished should, in his absence, be
moved by anyone else? What marks of honour has he
not desired me to receive in the most
complimentary form? Finally, with what courtesy,
with what forbearance, did he endure my vehement
pleading for Milo, though at times opposed to his
own proposals! With what hearty zeal did he take
measures to prevent my being reached by the
hostile feelings aroused at that juncture,
protecting me by his ad vice, his influence, and
finally by his arms! 4 At that crisis, indeed, such was his
steadfastness, such his magnanimity, that, to say
nothing of crediting some Phrygian or Lycaonian,
as you did in the case of the legates, he would
not believe malevolent remarks about
me even from men of the highest rank. Therefore,
as his son is your son-in-law, and as I am well
aware, besides this connexion by marriage, how
dear you are to Cn. Pompeius, and how precious in
his sight, what ought my feelings towards you to
be? Especially as he has written me such a letter
that, had I been your enemy, as I am your most
affectionate friend, I should have been softened
towards you, and have surrendered myself to the
wishes and authority of a man to whom I owed so
much. But enough of this:
it has been expressed already, perhaps, at greater
length than was necessary. Let me now tell you
what I have actually done and arranged. 5 . .. And these things I am doing, and
shall continue to do, rather in support of your
dignity, than as a means of averting danger from
you. For I shall soon, I hope, hear of your being
censor; 6 and the duties of that
office, which require the greatest resolution and
tact, I think you should meditate upon with
greater earnestness and care than upon what I am
doing here on your behalf.
LAODICEA, MAY