11 April 44 BCE: To Atticus (at Rome) from Cicero (at Astura)
This Octavius Guy Is Probably Not A Big Deal, Right?
I hope you are as we wish you, since you were fasting after a slight indisposition; but still, I would like to know how you’re doing. It is a fine sign that Bald-head1 is troubled that Brutus is suspicious of him. But it is not a good sign if legions are on the march with their standards from Gaul.2 What do you think about those that were in Spain? Won’t they demand the same thing? And then those that Annius took across? Asinius,3 I meant to say—a fault of memory. What a great mix-up the bathman is making!4 Because really, this conspiracy of Caesar’s freedmen would be suppressed easily if Antony had any common sense.
How stupid my sense of shame was, when I refused the position of legate before the recess, so that I wouldn’t look like I was deserting this inflamed business; certainly if I could remedy it, I ought not to be absent. But you see the magistrates (if indeed they are magistrates), and you see, still, the tyrant’s satellites in power, you see his armies, you see the veterans on our flank, and these things are all ready to combust. Meanwhile, the men who should be watched over by the whole world—and not just protected, but called great—are only just lauded and loved, and are imprisoned in their homes. Yet they are happy, whatever the circumstances, while the state is miserable.5
But I want to know how the arrival of Octavius went—whether there is any rushing to meet him, and whether there is any suspicion of revolution. For my part, I don’t think so, but still, whatever happens, I would like to know. I wrote this to you as I set out from Astura on the 11th.
Read Ad Atticum 14.5 in Latin here | Check the glossary here
Gaius Matius.
This is a pun on the word signum, which can mean sign or military standard.
Shackleton Bailey guesses that this refers to Pseudo-Marius.
The Liberatores’ happiness regardless of bad circumstance, coupled with Cicero also frequently using the word for happy (beati) when writing about the philosophical ‘good life’ (beata vita) makes me suspect Cicero is thinking about Brutus and Cassius’ philosophies here.