Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Cic. Fam.]. | ||
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DCLXIX (F XIII, 4)
TO Q. VALERIUS ORCA (IN ETRURIA)
Marcus Cicero [Note] greets Quintus Valerius, son of Quintus, legatus pro praetore. [Note] I have very close ties with the townsmen of Volaterrae. In fact, having received great kindness from me, they repaid me to the full: for they never failed me either in my prosperity or my adversity. And even if there were no special reason for our union, yet, having a very warm affection for you, and feeling that you have a high value for me, I should have warned and urged you to have a regard
for their fortunes, especially as their case for the retention of civil rights is unusually strong: first, because by the blessing of heaven they contrived to elude the vindictive measures of the Sullan epoch; and secondly, because my defence of them in my consulship received the hearty approval of the Roman people.
[Note]
Thus far the purpose of my words is to exhort and persuade you. What remains will be of the nature of a personal request. For I don't wish you to think that I offer you advice for your own sake only, but that I am also preferring a request to you and asking for what is of consequence to myself. Well then, you will oblige me in the highest degree, if you decide that the Volaterrani are to be left intact in
every respect and in full possession of their rights. Their homes and houses, their property and fortunes—which have already been preserved by the immortal gods, as well as by the most eminent citizens of our Republic with the warmest approval of the Roman people—I commend to your honour, justice, and liberality. If circumstances had granted me the power, proportionate to my old influence, of defending the Volaterrani in the same way as I was accustomed to protect my friends, there is no service, no struggle in fact calculated to be of use to them, that I would have omitted. But since I feel sure that with you I have no less influence than I ever had with all the world, I beg you in the name of close ties and of the mutual and equal goodwill existing between us, to serve the people of Volaterrae in such a way as to make them think that you have been set over that business by a special interposition of providence, as the one man with whom I, their undeviating supporter, was able to exert the greatest influence.
Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Cic. Fam.]. | ||
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