CDLXII (F VII, 3)
TO M. MARIUS (AT POMPEII)
ROME (LATE IN MAY)
Very often, as I reflect upon the miseries in
which we have all alike been living these many
years past, and, as far as I can see, are likely
to be living, lam wont to recall that time when we
last met: nay, I remember the exact day. Having
arrived at my Pompeian villa on the evening of the
12th of May, in the consulship of Lentulus and
Marcellus, 1 you came to see
me in a state of anxiety. What was making you
uneasy was your reflexion both on my duty and my
danger. If I remained in Italy, you feared my
being wanting to my duty: if I set out to the
camp, you were agitated by the thought of my
danger. At that time you certainly found me so
unnerved as to be unable to unravel the tangle and
see what was best to be done. Nevertheless, I
preferred to be ruled by honour and reputation,
rather than to consider the safety of my life. Of
this decision I afterwards repented,
not so much on account of the danger I incurred,
as because of the many fatal weaknesses which I
found on arrival at my destination. In the first
place, troops neither numerous nor on a proper war
footing; in the second place, beyond the general
and a few others—I am speaking of the
men of rank—the rest, to begin with,
greedy for plunder in conducting the war itself,
and moreover so bloodthirsty in their talk, that I
shuddered at the idea of victory itself: and,
lastly, immense indebtedness on the part of the
men of the highest position. In short, there was
nothing good except the cause. Despairing of victory when I saw
these things, I first began advising a peace,
which had always been my policy; next, finding
Pompey vehemently opposed to that idea, I
proceeded to advise him to protract the war. Of
this he at times expressed approval, and seemed
likely to adopt the suggestion; and he perhaps
would have done so, had it not been that as a
result of a certain engagement 2 he
began to feel confidence in his soldiers. From
that day forth that eminent man ceased to be
anything of a general. He accepted battle against
the most highly seasoned legions with an army of
raw recruits and hastily collected men. Having
been shamefully beaten, with the loss also of his
camp, he fled alone. This
I regarded as the end of the war, as far as I was
concerned, nor did I imagine that, having been
found unequal to the struggle while still
unbeaten, we should have the upper hand after a
crushing defeat. I abandoned a war in which the
alternatives were to fall on the field of battle,
or to fall into some ambush, or to come into the
conqueror's hands, or to take refuge with Iuba, or
to select some place of residence as practically
an exile, or to die by one's own hand. At least
there was no other alternative, if you had neither
the will nor the courage to trust yourself to the
victor. Now, of all these alternatives I have
mentioned, none is more en-durable than exile,
especially to a man with clean hands, when no
dishonour attaches to it: and I may also add, when
you lose a city, in which there is nothing that
you can look at without pain. For my part, I
preferred to remain with my own
family—if a man may nowadays call
anything his own—and also
on my own property. What actually happened I
foretold in every particular. I came home, not
because that offered the best condition of life,
but that after all, if some form of a constitution
remained, I might be there as though in my own
country, and if not, as though in exile. For
inflicting death on myself there seemed no
adequate reason: many reasons why I should wish
for it. For it is an old saying, "When you cease
to be what once you were, there is no reason why
you should wish to live." But after all it is a
great consolation to be free of blame, especially
as I have two things upon which to rely for
support-acquaintance with the noblest kind of
learning and the glory of the most brilliant
achievements: of which the former will never be
torn from me while I live, the latter not even
after my death. I have
written these things to you somewhat fully, and
have bored you with them, because I knew you to be
most devoted both to myself and to the Republic. I
wished you to be acquainted with my entire views,
that in the first place you might know that it was
never a wish of mine that any one individual
should have more power than the Republic as a
whole; but that, when by some one's fault a
particular person did become so powerful as to
make resistance to him impossible, I was for
peace: that when the army was lost, as well as the
leader in whom alone our hopes had been fixed, I
wished to put an end to the war for the rest of
the party also: and, when that proved impossible,
that I did so for myself. But that now, if our
state exists, I am a citizen of it; if it does
not, that I am an exile in a place quite as suited
for the position, as if I had betaken myself to
Rhodes or Mytilene. I
should have preferred to discuss this with you
personally, but as the possibility of that was
somewhat remote, I determined to make the same
statement by letter, that you might have something
to say, if you ever fell in with any of my
critics. For there are men who, though my death
would have been utterly useless to the state,
regard it as a crime that I am still alive, and
who I am certain think that those who perished
were not numerous enough. Though, if these persons
had listened to me, they would now, however unfair
the terms of peace, have been living in honour;
for while inferior in arms they would have been
superior in the merits of their
cause. Here's a letter somewhat more wordy than
perhaps you would have wished; and that I shall
hold to be your opinion, unless you send me a
still longer one in reply. If I can get through
with some business which I wish to settle, I
shall, I hope, see you before long.
ROME (LATE IN MAY)