Latin Texts & Translations

CCLXXI (F II, 17)

TO GNAEUS SALLUSTIUS (PROQUAESTOR IN SYRIA) TARSUS, 18 JULY

Your orderly delivered me your letter at Tarsus on the 17th of July, and I will now proceed to answer it, as I perceive is your wish, in detail. About my successor I have heard nothing, and I don't think there will be one. There is no reason for my not leaving the province to the day, especially as all fear from the Parthians is removed. I am strongly inclined to stop nowhere. I think I shall go to Rhodes for the sake of the boys, but of even that I am not certain. I wish to arrive outside the city as soon as possible, yet the course of politics and events in Rome will guide the course of my journey. Your successor cannot in any case make such haste as to enable you to meet me in Asia. As to delivering the copies of accounts, your non-delivery of them, for which you say Bibulus gave you licence, is no inconvenience to me: but I scarcely think you are justified in so doing by the Julian law, which Bibulus disregards on a certain settled principle, ^[Note] but which I think you ought certainly to observe. You say that the garrison ought not to have been withdrawn from Apamea; I see that others think the same, and I am much annoyed that rather unpleasant remarks have been made by my ill-wishers. As to whether the Parthians have crossed or not I perceive that you are the only man who has any doubt. Accordingly, all the garrisons, which I had raised to a state of great effectiveness I have been induced by the positive assertions I hear made to dismiss. As to my quaestor's accounts, it was neither reasonable that I should send them to you, nor were

they then made up. I think of depositing them at Apamea. Of the booty taken by me no one, except the quaestors of the city—that is, the Roman people—has touched or will touch a farthing. At Laodicea I think I shall accept sureties for all public money, so that both I and the people may be insured against loss in transit. As to what you say about the 100,000 drachmae, in a matter of that kind no concession to anyone is possible on my part. For every sum of money is either treated as booty, in which case it is administered by the praefecti or it is paid over to me, in which case it is administered by the quaestor. You ask me what my opinion is as to the legions which the senate has ordered for Syria. ^[Note] I had my doubts before about their coming; now I feel no doubt, if news is received in time of there being peace in Syria, that they will not come. I see that Marius, the successor to the province, will be slow in coming precisely because the Senate has decreed that he should accompany the legions.

There's the answer to one letter. Now for the second. You ask me to recommend you as earnestly as possible to Bibulus. In this matter inclination on my part is not wanting, but it seems to me to be a proper opportunity for expostulating with you: for you are the only man of all Bibulus's staff who never informed me of his complete and causeless alienation from me. For a number of people reported to me that, when there was a great alarm at Antioch, and great hopes were entertained of me and my army, he was accustomed to say that they would prefer to endure any-thing rather than be thought to have wanted my help. I am not at all annoyed that, from the loyalty due from a quaestor to his praetor, you say nothing of this: although I was informed of the treatment you are receiving. He, for his part, when writing to Thermus about the Parthian war, never sent me a line, though he knew that the danger from that war specially affected me. The only subject on which he wrote to me was the augurship of his son: ^[Note] in regard to which I was

induced by compassion, and by the friendly feelings I had always entertained to Bibulus, to be at the pains of writing to him with the greatest cordiality. If he is universally ill-natured—which I never thought—I am the less offended by his conduct to me: but if he is on special bad terms with me, a letter from me will do you no good. For instance, in his despatch to the senate, Bibulus took the whole credit for matters in which we both had a share. He says in it that he had secured that the rate of exchange should be to the public advantage. Again—and this is wholly my doing—the declining to employ Transpadane auxiliaries he mentions as a concession of his own, also to the profit of the people. On the other hand, when a thing is entirely his own doing, he brings me into it: "When WE demanded more corn for the auxiliary cavalry" he writes. Surely, again, it is the mark of a small mind, and one which from sheer ill-nature is poor and mean, that because the senate conferred the title of king on Ariobarzanes through me, and commended him to me, he in his despatch does not call him king, but the "son of king Ariobarzanes." Men of this temper are all the worse if favours are asked of them. Nevertheless, I have yielded to your wish, and have written him a letter, with which you can do what you like when you have received it.