Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Cic. Att.]. | ||
<<Cic. Att. 1.19 | Cic. Att. 1.20 (Latin) | >>Cic. Att. 2.1 |
XXV (A I, 20)
TO ATTICUS (IN EPIRUS)
On my return to
are both affectionate and wise, and the course you suggest does not differ substantially from my own policy—for I must neither budge an inch from the position imposed upon me by my rank, nor must I without forces of my own enter the lines of another, while that other, whom you mention in your letter, has nothing large-minded about him, nothing lofty, —nothing which is not abject and time-serving. However, the course I took was, after all, perhaps not ill-calculated for securing the tranquillity of my own life; but, by heaven, I did greater service to the Republic than, by suppressing the attacks of the disloyal, I did to myself, when I brought conviction home to the wavering mind of a man of the most splendid fortune, influence and popularity, and induced him to disappoint the disloyal and praise my acts. Now if I had been forced to sacrifice consistency in this transaction, I should not have thought anything worth that price; but the fact is that I have so worked the whole business, that I did not seem to be less consistent from my complacency to him, but that he appeared to gain in character by his approbation of me. In everything else I am so acting, and shall continue so to act, as to prevent my seeming to have done what I did do by mere chance. My friends the loyalists, the men at whom you hint, and that "
Some are stark naught, and some care not at all.
[Note]
However, how our friends the fish-breeders
[Note]
envy me I will write you word another time, or will reserve it till we meet. But from the senate-house nothing shall ever tear me: either because that course is the right one, or because it is most to my interests, or because I am far from being dissatisfied with the estimation in which I am held by the senate.
As to the Sicyonians, as I wrote to you before,
[Note]
there is not much to be hoped for in the senate. For there is no one now to lay a complaint before it. Therefore, if you are waiting for that, you will find it a tedious business. Fight some other way if you can. At the time the decree was passed no one noticed who would be affected by it, and besides the rank and file of the senators voted in a great hurry for that clause. For cancelling the senatorial decree the time is not yet ripe, because there are none to complain of it, and because also many are glad to have it so, some from spite, some from a notion of its equity. Your friend Metellus is an admirable consul: I have only one fault to find with him—he doesn't receive the news from
strongly; and Paetus's own affairs I recommend to your kindness, for which he thanks you extremely. A prompt visit from yourself is a thing which I do not merely ask for, I advise it.
Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Cic. Att.]. | ||
<<Cic. Att. 1.19 | Cic. Att. 1.20 (Latin) | >>Cic. Att. 2.1 |