[1]: The murder of Trebonius by Dolabella. See pp.189, 210.
[2]: Gaius Antonius, to whom his brother had caused the senate to transfer the province of Macedonia from himself, having previously transferred it from M. Brutus, who had been nominated by Caesar. Brutus had seized him and was keeping him prisoner.
[3]: The letter containing this jest of Cicero's is lost. The title Philippics was the current one by the time of Iuvenal at any rate (x. 125), and Plutarch (Cic. 24) says that Cicero himself placed that title on the copies. Against this the authority of Aulus Gellius (vii. II; xiii. I, 21), who calls them Orationes Antonianae, is not worth much.
[4]: Vetus apparently brought the money sent by Appuleius the quaestor from Asia. See pp.190, 224.
[5]: L. Aemilius Paullus, who was afterwards put on the proscription lists by the triumvirs with at any rate the consent of his brother.
[6]: Lepidus was married to Iunia, half-sister to Brutus; Cassius to Tertia, her sister.
[7]: See p.207.
[8]: Quaestor of Trebonius in Asia. See pp.272-280.
[9]: The rest of the letter has been lost.
[10]: Trebonius, who had gone as governor of Asia soon after the murder of Caesar, was avowedly collecting troops and money and fortifying towns with a view of supporting the tyrannicides. When Dolabella arrived at Smyrna on his way to Syria he was still consul, but Trebonius declined to admit him there or at Pergamus. Dolabella went on his way to Ephesus, followed by a body of men whom Trebonius sent to watch him. He, however, laid a trap for them, captured or killed them, and, hurrying back to Smyrna, surprised and captured Trebonius, who according to one story was at once put to death, and according to another was tortured for two days first. On news of this reaching Rome, Dolabella was on the motion of Cicero declared a hostis, and Cassius was authorized to wage war against him (Phil. 11.29, sq.; Appian, B.C. 3.26).
[11]: The eleventh Philippic.
[12]: See p.205.
[13]: That is, that Antony should have shared the fate of Caesar. See pp.174, 214, etc.
[14]: Cicero puts the converse in Phil. 2.113, when he says that "peace is liberty without war," pax est tranquilla libertas.
[15]: That is, when Caesar was murdered. Cicero still labours under the delusion that the revolution all depended on one man. If Antony had been murdered on the Ides of March, were there no others ready to play his part, and still more ably? Augustus is the best answer. It is well to observe how little mere assassination has ever been able to effect in political movements.
[16]: The despatch in which Brutus announced that he had taken possession of Macedonia, and was beleaguering Gaius Antonius in Apollonia (see Phil. 10.26). A second despatch announced his capture.
[17]: Young Cicero is said to have defeated Gaius Antonius in an engagement at Byllis, near Apollonia (Plutarch, Brut. 26).
[18]: Who was praetor urbanus (p.207), and therefore presided in the senate in the absence of the consuls.
[19]: The province of Macedonia had been assigned during Caesar's life to Brutus, probably by a lex. After his death Antony induced the senate to nominate himself (App. B.C. 3.24). Later on in B.C. 44, by a lex proposed by a tribune, Cisalpine Gaul was transferred to Antony (App. 3.30). Macedonia was therefore vacant, and a sortitio held in the senate on the 28th of November gave it to Gaius Antonius (Phil. 3.26). As a matter of fact, however, the outgoing proconsul Q. Hortensius had handed over his province and army to Brutus (Plut Brut. 25), and the senate, now under Cicero's influence, would only acknowledge Brutus as proconsul. For Dolabella, see p.210.
[20]: That is, the contention (causa) that M. Brutus was the legal proconsul in Macedonia.
[21]: That is, that the bearer of the public despatch brought no private letters at the same time, as we have seen was the almost invariable custom. For as there was no postal services, such messengers were always used for this purpose. It was a good argument against the genuineness of the letter.
[22]: Me maximo otio egisse. I doubt the soundness of the text, and the meaning of it as it stands. Whatever compliments Cicero may deserve, mildness in regard to the Antonies can scarcely he one of them.
[23]: Plaut. Trin. ii. 2, 42.
[24]: The victory of Forum Gallorum See p.211 sq.
[25]: Cicero argues that Octavian's consciousness of having done the loyalists a good service will attach him the more to them. He will be unwilling to forfeit the good opinion he has earned. He little knew Octavian and his secret purposes.
[26]: This appears to have been caused by the action of the praetor Ventidius Bassus, who enrolled two legions of veterans, and was supposed to be coming to Rome to seize Cicero and the leading opponents of Antony. He, however, marched to Ariminum, and succeeded in joining Antony after the battle by a splendid march across country to Vado (Appian, B.C. 3.66).
[27]: The rostra of course was not on the Capitol, and this has been put forward as an argument against the genuineness of the letter. I think Cicero may be putting the story shortly. The procession first went to the Capitol to offer thanks to Iupiter, and then came down to the forum to be addressed from the rostra.
[28]: That is, in sparing Gaius Antonius. See p.215.
[29]: In storming Antony's camp a week after the battle of Forum Gallorum (21st April).
[30]: Pansa appears to have retired wounded to Bononia after the battle. It is rather remarkable that Galba says nothing of his being wounded in Letter DCCCXXXVIII.
[31]: It turned out that Caesar had refused to join Decimus Brutus in the pursuit of Antony.
[32]: Vetus had evidently brought to Brutus what was properly public money. It may be the C. Antistius Vetus who in the previous year was in Syria engaged in attacking Caecilius Bassus. See p. 15.
[33]: I do not think this can mean a libera legatio. Vetus was going home apparently to stand for the praetorship. If he could not get that, owing to the elections being suspended in the absence of the consuls, he would accept the office of legatus under Brutus.
[34]: Ventidius Bassus, the praetor, who had marched from Ariminum and joined Antony at Vada Sabata. See pp.218, 221, 230.
[35]: Cicero means that he had thought Brutus ought to pursue Dolabella, though before the success at Mutina it was important for the Optimates at Rome to have Brutus near at hand in case of danger. Now that the battle of Mutina had relieved them of that fear, there can be no reason why Brutus should not go to Asia, or anywhere else that was necessary.
[36]: The college of the pontifices. Two vacancies had occurred by the death of Iulius Caesar and P. Servilius Isauricus. They were filled up later in the year by Ventidius Bassus and Cornelius Balbus.
[37]: Marius went to Cappadocia in B.C. 99-98 on a votiva legatio to the mother of the gods, really with a view to see the state of things in regard to the encroachments of Mithradates, against whom he wished to be appointed to command. The lex Domitia, B.C. 104, left the right of co-optatio in a modified form to the sacred colleges. Two of the existing members nominated a man, who was next elected by seventeen of the tribes in the sacerdotum comitia, and was then—as though by a congé d' élire-co-opted by the whole college. This had since that time been again modified by Sulla, the intermediate process of election by the seventeen tribes being omitted or in some way reduced to a mere form; but after Sulla the old practice was resumed.
[38]: That is, whether you wish them to be candidates. L. Domitius Ahenobarbus (who fell at Pharsalia) married Porcia, a sister of Cato Uticensis, and Brutus was married to Porcia, a daughter of the same Cato. Therefore the son of Domitius—Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus and young Cato, the son of Cato Uticensis, were connexions of Brutus, and he might wish to back them.
[39]: The same difficulty had occurred in B.C. 49, when both consuls were abroad (see vol. ii., pp.331, 349). The lesser magistrate cannot "create," i.e., hold the election for, the greater. In old times, when the consuls were the only curule magistrates, in case of their disappearance by death or otherwise, the auspicia—the right of taking the auspices, without which there could be no valid election-were said to revert to the patres of the senate. The senate then nominated interreges, who held the election. But the question is now complicated by the fact that there are other curule magistrates who possess the auspicia, which therefore cannot revert to the patres unless they abdicate. In B.C. 52 the question did not arise, for the elections having been all prevented till after the 1st of January, all curule magistrates had vacated their offices, and therefore the auspicia had reverted to the patres. By a "patrician magistrate," Cicero practically means a curule magistrate, originally confined to the patricians: the term is still used, though the old "patrician" monopoly of the auspicia had long disappeared.
[40]: Brutus could not have known of the death of the consuls, which indeed was not known at first even at Rome. Galba's letter (pp.211-213) says nothing even of Pansa's wound, and as Brutus refers below to the last words of Letter DCCCXLI (p.219), he could not have as yet received DCCCXLIII.
[41]: According to Dio (46, 40), Decimus Brutus and his besieged garrison made no sortie during the battle, nor took any part in it. But there is nothing surprising in M. Brutus having heard that he did. The inaccuracy of the reports during the war has again and again been apparent.
[42]: Brutus seems to be referring to those members of the party who were in favour of severities to the opposition, partly from desire for vengeance, and partly with an eye to confiscations and other personal advantages. We heard much of this in the early times of the civil war. See vol. ii., pp.294, 310, etc.
[43]: The end of the letter is lost.
[44]: The textual history of this and the following letter (to Atticus) is strong enough, and the references in Plutarch's Brutus (ch. xxii) are sufficient to prove that they, or documents exceedingly like them, existed in his time and were believed to be genuine. To my mind the letter to Atticus has much the stronger internal signs of genuineness of the two. For in spite of every attestation one is loath to think that the present letter was really written by a man who enjoyed as high a reputation among his contemporaries as Brutus did. It is so querulous, poor, ill-expressed, and tautological—so entirely unworthy of the subject and the writer and the recipient—that we should be glad to know of a dull pupil in a rhetorical school being discovered to be its author. To read arguments in favour of its being Brutus's usual style reminds one of a criticism of Charles Lamb, who, being told that somebody's sonnets were like those of Petrarch, replied, "Yes, they are like Petrarch's, if we could suppose Petrarch to have been born a fool." I have left these letters in the place assigned them in Messrs. Tyrrell and Purser's edition; but one of the gravest objections to them is the difficulty of deciding to what particular juncture they can refer: and for some reasons it seems to me to be most natural to put at any rate the first of them before the battle of Mutina.
[45]: This of course recalls Shakespeare, and may have suggested, I had as lief not be as live to be In awe of such a thing as I myself. Jul. Caes. i. 2, 95.
[46]: Octavius by adoption in Caesar's will was now C. Iulius Caesar Octavianus. Brutus never calls him Octavianus, as that would acknowledge the adoption, and only Caesar ironically.
[47]: A verse of Stasimus is quoted by Polybius (23, 10) on the policy of killing sons as well as fathers nh/pios o(\s pate/ra ktei/nas ui(ou\s katalei/pei, "Oh fool! to slay the sire and leave the sons!"
[48]: That is, he is as bitter to Casca as Bestia was formerly to himself. L. Calpurnius Bestia had been a partisan of Catiline (pro Sest. § 11). Yet Cicero defended him on a charge of ambitus in B.C. 56 (see vol. i., p.216). There were two brothers Casca—C. Servilius Casca and P. Servilius Casca—engaged in the assassination. Publius was tribune in B.C. 44-43. From ad Att. 16.159, p.159, it would seem that Octavian had protested against his tribuneship (cp. Phil. 13.31, p.189). It seems almost too great an inconsistency to be believed that Cicero should ever have reproached any man with the death of Caesar.
[49]: It seems necessary in the context that this sentence should mean that Atticus despaired of remedial measures. Various emendations have been proposed. I have simply changed desperatam to desperatum, and regarded posse sanari as a substantive, "the possibility of a cure," which is a rather characteristic usage in these letters.
[50]: Atticus—we should observe—had only one child, a daughter. But perhaps we may pass liberi as a facon de parler.
[51]: Salvidienus Rufus, an early friend of Octavian's, who had been with him at Apollonia. He was a man of obscure origin (ex infima fortuna, Suet. Aug. 66), but was employed on confidential matters for some time by Augustus. He has now apparently been sent to Rome with Octavian's demand for the consulship. In B.C. 42 and 41 he was employed against Sextus Pompeius in Sicily, and from thence was despatched to secure Gaul and Spain: and returned to take part in the siege of Perusia. After the fall of Perusia (B.C. 40), he went with Augustus to Gaul, where he was left in command, and designated consul for B.C. 39. But in the autumn of B.C. 40, when Antony came to Brundisium, he seems to have told Augustus that Salvidienus had been tampering with the loyalty of the Gauls, and he was convicted of maiestas and declared a hostis by the senate; and thereupon put to death (App. B.C. 5.52-56; Dio, 48, 13-33).
[52]: For Philippus would not address him as Caesar, at any rate when he first came to Italy. See p.21.
[53]: Porcia, if we are to accept the consolatio (Letter DCCCXCVII) as genuine, seems to have died soon after this.
[54]: Half-sisters: Iunia married to Lepidus, Tertia to Cassius. We have no means of knowing to whom Brutus is referring-perhaps to Lepidus, to whom Cicero may have asked him to write.
[55]: This letter-forming in the MSS. the latter part of DCCCLIII-is imperfect. The first part of it appears to have been lost.
[56]: The honours proposed to Octavian after the battles at Mutina.
[57]: We have already heard of the constitutional difficulty as to the election of consuls in the places of Pansa and Hirtius (p. 228). Octavian sent to Rome soon after the battles of Mutina, demanding to be allowed to stand for the consulship, and Cicero had already on the 1st of January proposed that, whenever he was a candidate for it, he should be assumed to have held the quaestorship (Phil. 5.47). According to Appian (B.C. 3.82; cp. Dio, 46; 42; Plutarch, Cic. 46), Octavian proposed to Cicero to be his colleague, promising to leave the administration to him, and Cicero agreed to the proposal, and tried to induce the senate therefore to admit his candidature—as it had to do afterwards under compulsion of his army. This story is rejected by Cicero's admirers as a Caesarian invention, I don't quite know why. It seems not highly improbable in itself; and this letter of Brutus—especially the last sentence—seems to shew that there were at any rate rumours afloat at the time to that effect.
[58]: He had by two separate senatus consulta been invested first with the rank of propraeter and the consularia ornamenta (the honorary rank of consul), and with imperium. This last was on the 5th of January.
[59]: See note p.233. This rumour of course was false; but it may have been connected with the belief that Cicero had listened to Octavian's suggestion.
[60]: Candavia is a mountain across which the Egnatian Way went, about eighty miles from Dyrrachium. Ima Candavia seems to mean the district at the foot of the mountain. Brutus is therefore marching down the Egnatia into Macedonia proper.
[61]: In the college of pontifices, for which Cicero asked his son to stand (see p. 227). I think by aut commendationem, Brutus means politely to hint that he is sure of getting it, though of course there will be the form of election.
[62]: Glyco was said to have poisoned Pansa's wounds, and Octavian's enemies asserted that he did so at his instigation—a scandal that took a long time dying out (see Suet. Aug. 11; Tacitus, A. i. io). Torquatus was Pansa's quaestor.
[63]: L. Tillius Cimber, who struck the first blow in the assassination of Caesar (Suet. Iul. 82). He went afterwards—in virtue of Caesar's nomination—to the governorship of Bithynia. In the course of the next year (B.C. 42) he came to Macedonia with a fleet to aid Brutus and Cassius. He fell at Philippi, or immediately afterwards.
[64]: Praefectus fabrum of Brutus. See p.250.
[65]: The people of Dyrrachium had for some years had some special connexion with Cicero. He may have acted for them in some way. See vol. i., p.575.
[66]: Two of the sons of Bibulus perished in a mutiny at Alexandria, and in B.C. 50 we find him trying in vain to get a third surviving son elected augur. This L. Calpurnius Bibulus may be a son of Porcia, and therefore stepson to Brutus, of whom he lived to write a memoir (vol. ii., p.184).
[67]: To the augurship.
[68]: Vol. ii., p 19; vol. iii., p.224.
[69]: That is, half a legion.
[70]: The Thracian Chersonese.
[71]: Brutus seems to have had five legions originally. He added one when he took Gaius Antonius, and enlisted two more in the province (App. B.C. 3.79).
[72]: Reading, with Mueller, quarta decima Antoni. .. magis mihi probatur militum severitas quam tua. If this is right, what seems to have happened is that the fourteenth legion were guilty of a riotous demonstration against Gaius Antonius, which Brutus punished as a breach of military discipline. Appian (B.C. 3.79) says that Antonius was eventually put to death for tampering with the legions; Plutarch (Brut. 28) that he was put to death by Brutus in retaliation for the murder of Cicero. In that case it was not till December; but Cicero evidently shews that he was in favour of getting rid of him in any way. According to Dio (47, 24), Brutus left him at Apollonia—when he went to Asia—under the charge of Gaius Clodius, who put him to death to prevent his being rescued by his brother Marcus.
[73]: Q. Metellus Creticus conquered the Cretans in B.C. 68-66.
[74]: That is, he was the centurion of the first ordo in the eighth cohort of a legion: there were ten cohorts in a legion, and each cohort had six ordines with a centurion to each.
[75]: See vol. iii., p.64. Mr. Tyrrell sees in this a reflexion on the disinterestedness of Brutus. No doubt money was sorely needed (see p.224), and rich men were welcome at the camp.
[76]: Fufius Calenus, who desired terms made with Antony (Phil. 8.11).
[77]: Twice quoted before. See vol. i., p.189.
[78]: Very different froni the language which Cicero employs to Decimus himself. The fact is that Decimus could not possibly pursue Antony effectively. His garrison had suffered greatly from want of food in Mutina, and from natural excess after the siege was raised. He had no transport. Octavius refused ahsolutely to assist him, or to have anything to do with him. And the fourth and Martian legions stuck to Octavius, as did most of the veterans with Hirtius and Pansa. Antony had two days' start at least, and was not—as Cicero fondly imagined-leading away a demoralized army. His cavalry was intact, and the splendid march by Acqui to Vado, and then by the Riviera to Frejus, shews that the rest of his forces was in no desperate case.
[79]: See vol. iii., pp.197, 201. Cicero there says that Brutus's letter gave him no consolation. This letter is to condole with Brutus on the death of his wife Porcia. The ordinary story—told by Plutarch and others—is that she committed suicide by swallowing burning charcoal after the death of Brutus. But there was another account that she died a natural death. Her illness is alluded to p. 252. If this letter is genuine the latter account must be the true one.
[80]: See pp.205, 313.
[81]: The celebrated M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus, the protector of Tibullus. See p.76. For Vetus see p.308.
[82]: According to Eusebius,Messalla was born in B.C. 59. He would in that case be now only between fifteen and sixteen, and could not possibly have done anything to justify this panegyric or to account for it. Accordingly, it has been argued that he was born in B.C. 70, one of the many expedients that have had to be resorted to to prove the genuineness of these letters. He survived to make the motion in the senate (B.C. 2) conferring on Augustus the title of pater patriae (Suet. Aug. 58). As, however, he was contemporary with young Marcus at Athens, he was probably born about B.C. 65. See vol. iii., p.225.
[83]: This is founded on Phil. 5.45
[84]: When Lepidus was declared a public enemy. See p.300.
[85]: See p. 216.
[86]: Servilia and his half-sister Iunia, wife of Lepidus.
[87]: Q. Antistius Labeo—one of the assassins—caused a slave to kill him in his tent after the battle at Philippi (App. B.C. 4.135). For Casca see p.249. M. Scaptius had carried on a banking business in Cilicia, and was the agent of Brutus there. See vol. ii., pp.128, 135 sq.
[88]: That is, in the case of a guarantee of conduct, which necessarily depends on the persons for whom the guarantee is given being willing to conform to a certain standard of behaviour. The allusion is to Octavian.
[89]: The sons of Lepidus and Iunia.
[90]: This and the assertion in the previous letter seem directly contradictory to Letter DCCCCIV, p.314.