Dear Cicero,
DXXX
From M. Tullius Cicero To C. Cassius
Longinus,
Jan 45BCE
“I think you must be a little
ashamed at this being the third letter inflicted on you before I have
a page or a syllable from you. But I will not press you : I shall
expect, or rather exact, a longer letter. For my part, if I had a
messenger always at hand, I should write even three an hour. For
somehow it makes you seem almost present when I write anything to
you...”
Cicero, you too are present when I
write to you. I can see you sitting in your villa, or in the gardens
of your Roman house reading and writing and enjoying, as I enjoy, the
pursuit of literary pleasures. When I have a book of yours in my
hand, though I sit in the field, or in a tavern, you are there
speaking to me. We've been friends long enough now to know something
of each other's virtues and vices, and I hope that we can speak
plainly to one another. You have led me down a winding road, and
here in the darkness of the Civil War, I have come to see and to
understand something of the reality of your life. The strenuous
terror of civilian existence while armies march and burn and fight.
Your family on the run, your friends driven from Italy, your
convictions tested, broken, and tested again.
I come now to those dark days of
tyranny under the rule of Gaius Julius Caesar, those days in which
you condescended to live, rather than to follow Cato's example. This
is the time in which you are criticised for cowardice, but I think a
more reasoned mind would allow a more generous understanding. All
who live under the rule of a tyrant are ruled by fear, for there is
no other option. Or as Sophocles puts it:
In every tyrant's court, he a meer
slave becomes, who enters free.
(Quote
found in : The Works of Plato, abridg'd. Trans. A.Dacier &
Joseph Stennet. Jan 1701)
Is a man a coward simply because he
refuses to die? You saw the greed and avarice of your old allies in
the Pompeian camp and made the difficult decision to return to Rome,
to either await the victory of Caesar, and thus the judgement of a
tyrant, or the return of your old allies, and your probable execution
for deserting their cause. You had said that it was better to die
with the one than to succeed with the other, but in the end you chose
a third option. You chose to live for the Republic, for the sake of
your beloved Rome and for the sake of your beloved children. Yet in
choosing to live, you suffered the pangs of your conscience.
CCCCLXXXI
To P. Nigidius Figulus
Sept 46BCE
“...For although no signal injury
has been inflicted upon me personally apart from others, and although
it has never occurred to my mind to wish for anything in such
circumstances which Caesar has not spontaneously offered me, yet
nevertheless I am being so work out with anxieties that I regard
myself as doing wrong in the mere fact of remaining alive. For I
have lost not only many intimate associates whom either death has
snatched from me, or exile torn away, but also all the friends whose
affection my former successful defence of the Republic, accomplished
with your aid, had gained me. I am in the very midst of their
shipwrecked fortunes and the confiscation of their property...”
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