[522] In his poem de Consulatu suo, the second book of which (Urania) ends with a speech of Iupiter, who recommends his leaving politics for literature.
[523] A statue in the temple of Tellus.
[524] Brogitarus was a Galatian and connexion of Deiotarus. Clodius, as tribune, had done some services to Byzantium, and had also got Brogitarus the office of high priest of Cybele. He wants now to go and get his money for these favours.
[525] The prætorian elections, like the consular, had been put off till February. Those elected would therefore enter on their office at once, and so escape prosecution, to which they would have been liable if, as in ordinary years, they had been "prætors-designate" from July to January. Afranius's motion seems to have been for suspending the bribery laws pro hac vice. Cato had been beaten: if there had been an opportunity of impeaching his rivals he might have got in.
[526] Son of the dictator Sulla, who is known to have brought back from Athens a famous Aristotelian library.
[527] Pompey and Crassus, the consuls.
[528] Pompey, as the context shews. In the next clause ambulatio has a double meaning of physical walking and of a political course of conduct.
[529] Philotimus, a freedman of Terentia's, seems to have been engaged at Rome in the reconstruction of Cicero's house. The Spartan bath (Laconicum) was a hot-air bath, like a Turkish bath.
[530] The tribunes had no veto against the censors, they could only hinder them by the indirect method of obnuntiatio, declaring that the omens were bad, and so preventing business.
[531] This also is Phocylides's.
[532] In Pompey's new theatre.
[533] Some bore, unknown to us.
[534] The two boys seem to be receiving their education together at this time in the house of Quintus.
[535] It is all but impossible to explain these words. Some editors transfer them to the sentence after de Republica. But they are scarcely more in place there. The Greek quotation is not known.
[537] C. Anicius, a senator, seems to have obtained from Ptolemy Auletes, by gift or purchase, his state sedan and its attendants.
[538] The Pompeianum.
[539] An unintellible word, meant apparently for Greek (perhaps arce Ψυρίᾳ, see Att. xvi. 13), is in the text. The most probable conjecture refers it in some way to Arpinum, Cicero's hardy mountain birthplace.
[540] The de Oratore.
[541] The ruin of his country.
[542] For us to walk and converse in. It hardly refers to a supply of vegetables, as some suggest.
[543] A learned freedman of Atticus's.
[544] See p. 250. Censors were elected this year, but the powers of the censorship had been much curtailed by a law of Clodius in B.C. 58.
[545] Apius Claudius (brother of Clodius) was a candidate for the consulship of B.C. 54.
[546] Clodius, a revolutionary, like Appuleius Saturninus. The feminine gender is an insult.
[547] Either his poem "On his own Times," or the notes of events which he had promised in Letter CVIII, p. 231.
[548] A treatise on union (περὶ ὁμονοίας). The rhetorician Dionysius of Magnesia had been with Cicero during his tour in Asia.
[549] L. Egnatius, who owed Q. Cicero money.
[551] Apparently a money-lender.
[552] Perhaps at his sponsalia, as he was married towards the end of the year.
[553] C. Arrianus Evander, a dealer in statues, it seems, from whom Fadius had bought some for Cicero. He offers to let the debt for them (and so the interest) run from any day Cicero pleases.
[554] A well-known connoisseur, mentioned by Horace, Sat. ii. 3, 64, seq.. He seems to have offered to take the bargain off Cicero's hands.
[555] That is, for his palæstra or gymnasium, as he calls it, in his Tusculanum. See Letters I, II, VII.
[556] An ornamental leg or stand for table or sideboard (abacus). See picture in Rich's Dictionary of Antiquities.
[557] On the via Appia, where the canal across the marshes began. Cicero stops there a night between Formiæ and Pomptina Summa (Att. vii. 5).
[558] One who professes to be an amateur of art like Damasippus.
[559] As in Letter CVI, Tullia, not Terentia, seems to be in Cicero's confidence and presiding in his house. Terentia must already have been on bad terms with him, and perhaps was residing on her own property.
[560] Half-sister of Gaius Cassius.
[561] Communis, which is not satisfactory. But neither is the emendation proposed, cominus. For communis, "common," "vulgar," see de Off. ii. § 45.
[562] Whom Pompey employed to select the plays to be exhibited in his new theatre.
[563] Pliny (N. H. viii. § 21) says that the people were so moved that they loudly cursed Pompey.
[565] I do not like to think this letter a mere rhetorical exercise, as has been suggested, rather than a true account of Cicero's feelings as to the theatre and amphitheatre. He often expresses his want of interest in the latter. The vulgar display in the theatre, unlike the severe simplicity of Greek art, was an old evil (see Polyb. xxx. 14).
[566] Ego, ut sit rata, Schutz's reading, which seems the best for the unintelligible ergo et si irata of the MSS. It would mean, "though I regret not having been back for Domitius's election (if it has taken place), I am glad to have been away from the previous wrangling in the senate."
[567] Crassus starts for Syria; he compares him to L. Æmilius Paullus starting for the war with Perses (B.C. 168). Paullus was, like Crassus, sixty years old, and in his second consulship. Paullus set out with good omens, Crassus with a curse, denounced by the tribune C. Ateius Capito (de Div. i. § 29; Plutarch, Crass. 16).
[568] By his librarii. Atticus was again acting as his publisher.
[569] The date has been lost.
[570] Lit. "has been beheaded with the axe of Tenes," mythical founder and legislator of Tenedos, whose laws were of Draconian severity. A legatio from Tenedos, heard as usual in February, had asked that Tenedos might be made a libera civitas.
[571] Some publicanus who had made a charge on the Magnesians which they considered excessive.
[572] Lucretius seems to have been now dead, according to Donatus 15 October (B.C. 55), though the date is uncertain. I have translated the reading multæ tamen artis, which has been changed by some to multæ etiam artis. But the contrast in the criticism seems to be between the fine poetical passages in the de Rerum Natura and the mass of technical exposition of philosophy which must have repelled the "general reader" at all times. It suggests at once to Cicero to mention another poem on a similar subject, the Empedoclea of Sallustius, of which and its writer we know nothing. It was not the historian.
[573] Retaining populi convicio, and explaining populus to have the general meaning of the crowd, including senators and spectators. Cicero uses populus in this vague way elsewhere.
[574] Zeugma I take to mean the "territory of Zeugma," a town on the Euphrates, part of the Roman province of Syria, and close to the frontier of Commagene. Antiochus had asked that some stronghold should be reckoned as his rather than as belonging to the province.
[575] Appius, he insinuates, hoped to make money by granting the request of Antiochus, left king of Commagene by Pompey, for some special privileges, among which was the right of wearing the toga prætexta, which symbolized some position with a shadow of Roman imperium, while at the same time conveying a compliment to the Roman suzernainty. See Polyb. lib. xxvi.; xxx. 26; Suet. Aug. 60.
[576] Some petty prince of Bostra (Bozra), in Arabia, of whom we know nothing.
[577] Quintus was expecting, what he got, the offer of serving under Cæsar as legatus. Cæsar was preparing for his second invasion of Britain.
[578] Which will prevent meetings of the senate, and so give me no news to send you.
[579] There is a double entendre. Cold weather will prevent the meetings of the senate actually, but metaphorically politics will be also cold and dull, and that dullness will probably be nowhere so evident as in the deserted state of the consul Appius's house, which in all probability will miss its usual bevy of callers. This explanation—put forward by Prof. Tyrrell—is not wholly satisfactory, yet it is the best that has been given.
[580] Pompey had two functions at this time: he was governor of Spain and præfectus annonæ. The latter office, as being extraordinary, might be, perhaps, held with the other without an actual breach of law, but it was certainly against the spirit of the constitution. Cicero knows that Pompey's staying in Italy and governing his province by legati will not be acceptable to Cæsar, and he alludes to it in carefully guarded terms. He had been named his legatus when Pompey first undertook the care of the corn-supply, but it does not seem as if he ever seriously contemplated going on actual service.
[581] L. Cornelius Balbus, whom Cicero defended, and who acted as Cæsar's agent.
[582] The name of the person jocosely referred to by Cæsar is uncertain, from corruption of the text. Q. Lepta is Cæsar's præfectus fabrum.
[583] We cannot tell the allusion, not having the letter of Quintus. But he seems to have used the expression for something incongruous either in politics, or in regard to his contemplated services with Cæsar.
[584] I.e., the day he had to appear for trial, usually fixed by the prætor on the tenth day from the notice of prosecution. Cælius had been acqiuitted in B.C. 56, when Cicero defended him; this second trial appears to have in some way fallen through. The prætor Domitius is said to be Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, son of Lucius, but he was much too young to have been prætor this year. The former trial of Cælius (B.C. 56) had been before Cn. Comitius Calvinus, hence a difficulty about this passage. For the prætor Domitius of this year is not known. Domitius Calvinus was prætor B.C. 56.
[585] The publicani of Syria were enraged with Gabinius for neglecting his province while going to Egypt, thus allowing the pirates so to plunder that they could not collect enough dues to recoup them for their bargain to the state (Dio, xxxix. 59).
[586] L. Ælius Lamia, an eques, appears to have been one of the deputation of publicani who attended the senate to accuse Gabinius.
[587] The prætorian elections were again postponed from the previous year to the early months of B.C. 54. Appius Claudius found means to put them off till March by holding meetings of the senate each day—the electoral comita not being able to meet on the same day as the senate.
[588] The tribune C. Memmius was prosecuting Gabinius (Letter CXLVII). The judicial comita could meet, though not the electoral.
[589] Callisthenes of Olynthus wrote (1) a history of the Trojan war; (2) an account of Alexander the Great. Philistus of Syracuse (1) a history of Sicily; (2) a life of Dionysius the elder; (3) a life of Dionysius the younger. He imitated Thucydides (de Orat. § 17).
[590] Trebatius is going to join Cæsar, who is about to sail to Britain; hence the jest about the essedarii, drivers of Gallic and British war-chariots. Letter CXXXIII recommended him to Cæsar. The lines quoted are from the Medea of Ennius, adapted or translated from Euripides. I date these two letters from Cumæ, because he speaks of writing to Balbus, who was at Rome (p. 267).
[591] A banker at Puteoli.
[592] The six books on the Republic.
[593] A municipium of Campania nine miles from Naples.
[594] Vacerra, Manilius, Cornelius, well-known lawyers or jurists of the day.
[595] We shall afterwards see that Trebatius did not go to Britain.
[596] At Luca in the year B.C. 56.
[597] Comitia habendi causa. No such had been appointed since B.C. 202, and the irregular dictatorship of Sulla in B.C. 82 made the idea distasteful. Pompey was understood to wish for the appointment, now and later on. See pp. 326, 335.
[598] τοιαῦθ' ὁ τλήμων πόλεμος ἐξεργάζεται (Eur. Supp. 119).
[600] That is, as an interlocutor in the dialogue "On the Republic," which Cicero was engaged in writing.
[601] A law re-enacting the lex Didia, and enacting under penalties that no law was to be brought forward without due publication beforehand.
[602] A law which enabled the magistrates and tribunes to stop legislation by obnuntiatio.
[603] Procilius had been condemned de vi (p. 280). The rumours, I suppose, were as to the jury having been corrupted.
[604] The consul L. Domitius Ahenobarbus and C. Lucceius Hirrus, the latter a warm partisan of Pompey, who was supposed to be agitating for a dictatorship.
[605] L. Æmilius Paullus (consul B.C. 50) restored the basilica built by his ancestor M. Æmilius Lepidus in B.C. 179, and appears to have added largely to it, or even built a new one.
[606] These works seem to have been contemplated by the censors and senate, and Cicero speaks of himself and Oppius as doing them because they supported the measure. They were partly carried out by Cæsar but not completed till the time of Augustus.
[607] Because the tribunes stopped it—the formal act at the end of the Censor's office—by obnuntiationes.
[608] The name of the law mentioned here is uncertain. The lex Cincia de munuibus forbade advocates taking fees for pleading.
[609] M. Nonius Sufenas and C. Cato were charged with bribery and other illegal proceedings during their tribuneship: Procilius for riot (de vi) when some citizen was killed.
[610] Q. Hortensius, the great orator.
[611] This refers to the famous waterfall of Terni. An artificial cutting drained the River Velinus (which otherwise covered the high valley as a lake) into the Nar, which is in the valley below. What was good for the people of Reate was, of course, dangerous for the people of Interamna living below. M. Curius Dentatus was consul B.C. 290.
[612] σἠμα δἐ τοι ἐρέω (Hom. Il. xxiii. 326).
[613] Because Atticus lent money.
[614] For the death (in September) of his daughter Iulia, wife of Pompey.
[615] A nickname, it is said, of Vacerra (perhaps because he stuttered), who had been a teacher of Trebatius.
[616] To Ptolemy Auletes, who had agreed to pay large sums to certain persons for supporting his interests in the senate.
[617] In the "Banqueters" (σύνδειπνοι) of Sophocles, Achilles is excluded from a banquet in Tenedos. Some social mishap seems to have occurred to Quintus in camp.
[618] Sending coals to Newcastle.
[619] ῥαθυμότερα.
[621] The porticus is a kind of cloister round the peristylium or atrium.
[622] Calventius is said to stand for L. Calpurnius Piso Cæsoninus, the consul of B.C. 58, against whom Cicero's speech was spoken in B.C. 55 in the senate. He calls him Calventius from his maternal grandfather, and Marius because—as he had said, in the speech, § 20—he had himself gone into exile rather than come to open fight with him; just as Q. Metellus had done in B.C. 100, when, declining to take the oath to the agrarian law of Saturninus, rather than fight Marius, who had taken the oath, he went into exile. This seems rather a roundabout explanation; but no better has been proposed, and, of course, Quintus, who had lately read the speech, would be able better to understand the allusion.
[623] I.e., with money.
[624] This tragedy of Quintus's never reached Cicero. It was lost in transit. Perhaps no great loss.
[625] Milo was ædile and had just given some splendid games.
[626] Maiestas. He would be liable to this charge, under a law of Sulla's, for having left his province to interfere in Egypt.
[628] Apparently referring to the death of his daughter Iulia.
[629] δευτέρας φροντίδας from Eurip. Hipp. 436, αἱ δευτέραι πως φροντίδες σοφωτέραι.
[630] Or, "as kindly and critical at once as Aristophanes (of Byzantium)," as though Quintus had written a Caxtonian criticism of his son's style.
[631] γυῶθι πῶς ἄλλω κέχρηται.
[632] Of his poem "On his own Times." Piso in Macedonia, where he had been unsuccessful with border tribes: Gabinius in going to Egypt to support Ptolemy. He left many of his soldiers there.
[633] The object of the existing consuls in making such a bargain was to get to their provinces without difficulty, with imperium, which had to be bestowed by a formal meeting of the old comitia curiata. But that formality could be stopped by tribunes or other magistrates "watching the sky," or declaring evil omens: and just as these means were being resorted to to put off the elections, so they were also likely to be used in this matter. If it was thus put off into the next year, Domitius and Appius, not being any longer consuls, would have still greater difficulty. Corrupt as the arrangement was, it seems not to have come under any existing law, and both escaped punishment. Appius went as proconsul to Cilicia, in spite of the lex curiata not being passed, but Domitius Ahenobarbus seems not to have had a province. The object of Domitius Calvinus and Memmius in making the compact was to secure their own election, which the existing consuls had many means of assisting, but it is not clear what Memmius's object in disclosing it was. Perhaps anger on finding his hopes gone, and an idea that anything that humiliated Ahenobarbus would be pleasing to Cæsar. He also seems to have quarrelled with Calvinus. Gaius Memmius Gemellus is not to be confounded with Gaius Memmius the tribune mentioned in the next letter.
[634] There is considerable uncertainty as to the exact nature of iudicium tacitum, here rendered "a trial with closed doors," on the analogy of the senatus consultum tacitum described by Capitolinus, in Gordian. ch. xii. It is not, I think, mentioned elsewhere (iudiciis tacitis of 2 Off. § 24, is a general expression for "anonymous expressions of opinion"), and the passage in Plutarch (Cato min. 44) introduces a new difficulty, for it indicates a court in which candidates after election are to purge themselves. Again, quæ erant omnibus sortita is very difficult. Cicero nowhere else, I believe, uses the passive sortitus. But, passing that, what are the consilia meant? The tense and mood shew, I think, that the words are explanatory by the writer, not part of the decree. I venture, contrary to all editors, to take omnibus as dative, and to suppose that the consilia meant are those of the album iudicum who had been selected to try cases of ambitus, of which many were expected. There is no proof that the iudices in a iudicium tacitum had to be senators, and the names in the next sentence point the other way. The senate proposed that the law should allow this selection from the album to form the iudicium tacitum, which would give no public verdict, but on whose report they could afterwards act.
[635] M. Æmilius Scaurus was acquitted on the 2nd of September on a charge of extortion in Sardinia. The trial had been hurried on lest he should use the Sardinian money in bribing for the consulship. Hence he could not begin distributing his gifts to the electors till after September 2nd, and his rivals Domitius and Messalla got the start of him. See Asconius, 131 seq.