Latin Texts & Translations

DCCCVIII (F XI, 7)

TO DECIMUS BRUTUS (IN CISALPINE GAUL) ROME, 19 DECEMBER

LUPUS having brought both Libo and your cousin Servius to see me at my town house, I think that you will have learnt from Marcus Seius, who was present at our conversation, what opinion I expressed. The rest you will be able to learn from Graeceius, though he did stay long behind Seius. But the head and front of it all is that I wish you most carefully to notice and to remember that you must not wait to be authorized by the senate in preserving the safety of the Roman people, for the senate is not yet free. If you do so, in the first place you condemn your own action, for you freed the Republic without any public authority—which makes it still more glorious-and, in the second place, you decide that this young man, or rather this boy, Caesar has acted without justification in having assumed such a grave public responsibility on his own initiative. Lastly, you convict of madness those who are indeed rustics, but yet are most

gallant soldiers and loyal citizens ^[Note] —in the first place veterans who have served with you of old, and in the next place the Martian and the fourth legions, ^[Note] which have adjudged their own consul to be a public enemy and have transferred their services to the support of the safety of the Republic. The wishes of the senate must be regarded as its authorization, since that authorization is prevented by fear. Lastly, you have now twice espoused this cause: first on the Ides of March, and again recently by collecting a new army and new forces. Wherefore you ought to be prepared for everything, and inspired with the resolution not to decline doing anything without instructions, but to do what will secure universal praise and the greatest admiration.