Salvete, patres subscripti.
This email contains the start (and tragically not the much more fun second half) of Cicero’s thirteenth Philippic oration. As I’ve said before, I’ve chosen to include these orations in e-pistulae for several reasons: they provide political context for most of the rest of Cicero’s letters; they are Cicero’s other ‘serialised’ work from this period; and the Second Philippic was published rather than being delivered, and then passed around via letters.
The Thirteenth Philippic is the other ‘epistolary’ Philippic, in that while the Second Philippic was a speech that was distributed like a letter, a large part of the Thirteenth Philippic quotes directly and responds to a letter from Mark Antony, and so is effectively Cicero’s letter in reply, delivered as a speech.
The translation is by W.C.A. Ker, taken from Attalus, with a few minor edits, and the footnotes (marked ‘**’) link to Ker’s footnotes on Attalus. There is a link at the end of this email to read the rest of the speech, as well as the Latin text.
For context: At some point before March 20th, the governors Lepidus and Plancus both sent letters to the Senate advocating for making peace with Antony, who was still besieging Decimus Brutus at Mutina. These letters were read out in the Senate, and a debate followed over how the Senate should respond, during which Cicero delivered the Thirteenth Philippic. Cicero addresses Lepidus’ letter in his speech, but interestingly makes no mention of Plancus’; Shackleton Bailey suggests that Cicero did in fact respond to Plancus in the original Thirteenth Philippic, but edited it out in the published version because he received a (non-extant) letter from Plancus a few days later, saying he had changed his mind about peace with Antony.
The greater part of the Thirteenth Philippic is Cicero replying to a letter sent by Antony to Hirtius and Octavian. Shackleton Bailey points out that, remarkably, ‘no other speech in the corpus of 58 extant Ciceronian orations devotes so much space to the quotation of the words of another.’ Cicero ventriloquised the absent Antony by heavily quoting select parts of his letter; and the version of Antony that Cicero summoned was one that conveniently confirmed Cicero’s narrative that peace with Antony was impossible—and, as in the Second Philippic, one that Cicero could easily defeat in a battle of words.
From the beginning of this war, conscript fathers, which we have undertaken against disloyal and abandoned citizens, I have feared lest some insidious negotiation for peace should quench our zeal for the recovery of liberty. For the very name of peace allures, while peace itself brings not only delight but safety. Now it seems to me that a man does not hold dear our private hearths, or the public laws, or the rights of liberty, who delights in discord, in massacres of citizens, in civil war; that man should, I think, be ejected from the ranks of his fellows, and banished from the confines of human nature.
Therefore, whether it were Sulla or Marius, or both of them, or Octavius, or Cinna, or Sulla again, or the other Marius and Carbo, or any other who has desired civil war, that man I account a citizen born to be held accursed by the Republic. For why should I speak of the last of them, ** whose acts we defend while we confess their author himself was justly slain? There is then nothing fouler than such a citizen, than such a man, if we can regard either as a citizen or as a man one who desires civil war.
But we must consider this first, conscript fathers, whether peace is possible with all men, or whether there is a sort of war that is inexpiable, in which an agreement for peace is a law sanctioning slavery. Peace with Scipio Sulla either made or pretended to make; but there were no grounds for despair of an endurable political condition if they had agreed on terms. If Cinna had been willing to establish harmony with Octavius, the condition of men in the Republic might have remained healthy. In the last war, if Pompeius had relaxed somewhat of his inflexibility, and Caesar much of his cupidity, we should have been permitted to possess a stable peace, and some remnants of a commonwealth.
But what is the present position? can there be peace with the Antonii? with Censorinus, Ventidius, Trebellius, Bestia, Nucula, Munatius, Lento, Saxa? I have named a few by way of illustration; you yourselves see the countless numbers and the savagery of the rest. Add to these those wrecks among Caesar's friends, the Barbae Cassii, Barbatii, Pollios; add Antonius' fellow-gamblers and comrades, Eutrapelus, ** Mela, Pontius, Coelius, Crassicius, Tiro, Mustela, Petissius; their following I disregard; I name the leaders. With these must be classed the legion of the Larks ** and the rest of the veterans, a nursery for jurymen of the third panel ** who, now their own property is exhausted and Caesar's bounties are devoured, have become covetous of our fortunes.
O trusty right hand of Antonius with which he has butchered many citizens! O ratified and sanctified treaty which we shall make with the Antonii! If Marcus shall attempt to violate it the conscientiousness of Lucius will call him back from the crime! If there shall be place in this city for those men there will be no place for the city itself. Set before your eyes their faces, especially those of the Antonii, their gait, their look, their countenances, their demeanour, of their friends some walking by their side, some walking in front. What a reek of wine, what insults and threatening speech think you will come from them? But perhaps the very fact of peace will appease them, and in particular, when they enter this assembly, they will greet us kindly, and courteously address each one of us!
By the immortal Gods! do you not recall what resolutions you have passed against those men? You have rescinded the acts of Marcus Antonius; you have annulled his laws; you have decided they had been proposed by violence and in defiance of the auspices; you have set afoot levies through the whole of Italy; his colleague and partner ** in all crimes you have adjudged an enemy. With this man what peace is possible? Were he a foreign enemy, it could hardly be after such treatment, yet it might somehow. Seas, mountains, wide regions would intervene; you might hate a man you did not see. ** These men will fasten themselves upon your eyes, and - when once they get the power - upon your throats; for in what pens shall we confine such savage beasts?
But, it may be said, the issues of war are uncertain. It is surely the part of brave men, as you should be, to display courage - for that much they can do - and not to dread the whims of fortune. But since from this our order not merely fortitude, but also wisdom, is required - though these qualities seem scarcely severable, yet let us sever them - fortitude bids us fight, it kindles a righteous hatred, it urges us to the conflict, it calls us to the peril.
What says Wisdom? She employs more cautious counsels, she looks to the future, she is in every respect more guarded. What then is her opinion? for we must obey, and regard that conclusion as best that is founded most on Wisdom's precepts. If this be her precept, that I should think nothing of more consequence than my life, should not contend at the peril of my life, should avoid all risk, I will ask her: ‘Even when, if I do so, I must be a slave?’ If she say ‘Aye,’ verily to that Wisdom, however learned she may be, I will not hearken. But if she shall reply: ‘Nay; may you guard your life and person, your fortunes, your private possessions, but only as ranking them after liberty, and only as desiring their enjoyment if it can be had in a free Republic, and not sacrificing liberty for these, but for the sake of liberty flinging them away as if they were very guarantees of injustice,’ ** then should I seem to hear the voice of Wisdom, and would obey her as a God.
Therefore if, when these men are taken back, we can be free, let us overcome our hatred and put up with peace; but if with these men unpunished no quiet is possible, let us rejoice that a chance of fighting them has been offered. For we shall either by their deaths enjoy a victorious Republic; or, if we are crushed - may Jupiter avert the omen! - we shall live, if not with the breath of life, at least with the fame of our virtue.
But, it will be said, Marcus Lepidus, who has been twice an imperator, who is pontifex maximus, and in the last civil war deserved well of the Republic, exhorts us to peace. ** No man's influence, conscript fathers, is greater with me than that of Marcus Lepidus, whether on account of his owns merits or on account of the dignity of his family. To these reasons may be added many great private kindnesses on his part towards me, and some services on my part towards him. But I count it the greatest benefit of all that he entertains his present feelings towards the Republic, which has been always dearer to me than my life. For when by his influence he induced Pompeius Magnus, a most noble youth, the son of a most eminent father, to make peace, and without a conflict freed the Republic from the utmost peril of civil war, then I think by this benefit he held me bound in an obligation even greater than my utmost ability can fulfil. Accordingly, I proposed for him the fullest honours I could, and you agreed with me; and I have never ceased to have and to express the best hopes of him.
The Republic holds Marcus Lepidus bound by many great pledges. His birth is of the noblest, there are all his honours, his most distinguished priesthood, his own numerous embellishments of the city, and the monuments of his brother and of his ancestors, a most respected wife, children most to his desire, a private fortune not only ample but pure of the stain of civil bloodshed. No citizen has been injured by him, many by his kindness and pity have been made free. Such a man, then, and citizen may make a slip in judgement; in inclination he cannot in any way be at variance with the Republic.
Marcus Lepidus wishes for peace. Admirable! if he can bring about such a peace as he lately brought about, under which peace the Republic will again see the son of Gnaeus Pompeius, and will welcome him back to her bosom and embrace, accounting it a restoration not only of him but of her own self. This was the reason why you voted him a statue on the rostra with an honourable inscription, ** and a triumph in his absence. For although he had done in war great things and deserving a triumph, yet a grant ** could not be made to him which was not made either to Lucius Aemilius or Scipio Aemilianus, or to the elder Africanus, or to Marius, or Pompeius, who had conducted greater wars; but because he had quietly brought to an end a civil war, the first moment you were able, you conferred on him the greatest honours,
Do you think then, Marcus Lepidus, that the Antonii will be in the Republic such citizens as the Republic is likely to find Pompeius? In the one is modesty, firmness, moderation, integrity; in them - and when I denounce them, I pass over in my mind no one of that gang of brigands - lust, crime, and an immeasurable audacity in working any wickedness. In the next place, conscript fathers, which of you, I entreat you, does not see what Fortune herself, though she is called blind, has seen? For without prejudice to the acts of Caesar, which for the sake of peace we defend, his own house will be open to Pompeius, and he will buy it back at a price not less than Antonius bought it for; the house, I say, of Gnaeus Pompeius his son will buy back. ** A bitter fact! But these things have been bewailed long enough and fully. You have voted to Pompeius a sum ** as great as a conquering enemy would have realised from his father's goods in a partition of booty.
But, having regard to my friendship and connection with his father, this disposal of the sum I claim for myself. He will buy back his pleasure-grounds, his house, and certain urban properties, which Antonius holds; for the silver-plate, the garments, the furniture and the wine, which that glutton has squandered, ** he will be content to lose. The Alban and Formian estates he will recover from Dolabella; also from Antonius the Tusculan; and let those who are now attacking Mutina and besieging Decimus Brutus - let the Ansers ** be driven out of the Falernian. There are others, perhaps, but they slip from my memory. I say too that those who are not of the number of our enemies will restore to the son the possessions of Pompeius at the price they gave.
It was inconsiderate enough, not to say audacious, to lay hands on anything out of that property; but who will be bold enough to retain it when its noble master is restored? Or will not that fellow restore it, he who embracing the patrimony of his master, as a dragon does a treasure, the slave of Pompeius, ** the freedman of Caesar, has taken possession of the estates in Lucania? And that sum of seven hundred million sesterces ** which you, conscript fathers, have promised the young man will be so allotted as to make the son of Gnaeus Pompeius appear to have been settled in his patrimony by you.
So far the Senate; the rest the Roman people will carry out in the case of a family it has marked as the worthiest. First it will give him, in the place of his father, the augurship to which, that I may return to the son what I received from the father, I will nominate him as a colleague. ** Which of the two then shall we the more willingly sanction as augur of Jupiter the Best and Greatest of Gods, whose interpreters and messengers we are? which of the two will the Roman people? Pompeius or Antonius? To me indeed it seems that, by the inspiration of the immortal Gods, Fortune has determined that, in spite of our confirmation and ratification of the acts of Caesar, the son of Gnaeus Pompeius should be able to recover his dignity and the fortune of his father.
And there is something else, conscript fathers, which I do not think I should pass over in silence, the fact that those illustrious envoys, Lucius Paulus, Quintus Thermus, and Gaius Fannius, whose unremitting and steadfast good will towards the Republic you have realised, announce that they turned aside to Massilia in order to meet Pompeius, and recognised that he was most ready to go to Mutina with his forces, but feared to offend the veterans. ** But he is the son of a father who achieved much with wisdom no less than with bravery; so you understand he was ready in spirit, and not wanting in judgement.
And Marcus Lepidus should see to it, too, that he does not appear to act with greater assumption than befits his character. For if he scare us with an army he does not bear in mind that that army belongs to the Senate and the Roman people, indeed to the whole Republic, and is not his own. ‘But he can use it as his own.’ What then? are good men to do everything they have the power to do, even if those things are base, are pernicious? even if it will be altogether unlawful? And what can be baser, or fouler, or less decent than to march an army against the Senate, against fellow-citizens, against one's country? what in truth is more blameworthy than to do what is unlawful? Now it is not lawful for any man to march an army against his country; if by ‘lawful’ we mean what is allowed by the law, and the customs and institutions of our ancestors. For what a man can do is not necessarily lawful, nor, if there be no prohibition, is it therefore also permitted. For to you, Lepidus, as to your ancestors, your country gave an army on her own behalf. With this you will resist an enemy, will extend the frontiers of our rule; the Senate and the Roman people you will obey, if they shall happen to transfer you to some other task.
If you think of these things, you are Marcus Lepidus, pontifex maximus, the great-grandson of Marcus Lepidus, pontifex maximus; but if you consider that what is lawful for men is measured by their power, beware of seeming to prefer to follow precedents foreign to your family, and those new ones, rather than those which are both ancient and of your own household. But if you interpose your authority without resort to arms, I do indeed praise you the more; but consider whether doing so is not itself unnecessary. For although there resides in you an authority as great as a man of very noble birth should have, yet the Senate does not despise itself, and never in truth has it been more dignified, more steadfast, more courageous. We are all of us carried along by a fiery zeal to recover our liberty; by no man's authority can such ardour of Senate and Roman people be quenched; ‘we hate; we fight in our wrath’; ** our arms cannot be wrested from our hands; no note of retreat or of recall from war can we hear; we hope for the best; even the utmost hardship we prefer to suffer rather than be slaves.
Caesar has got together an unbeaten army; two most valiant consuls are present with their forces; the various and large reinforcements of Lucius Plancus, the consul-elect, are not wanting; the contest centres in the safety of Decimus Brutus; a single maddened gladiator with a gang of most savage brigands is waging war against his country, against our Household Gods, against our altars and hearths, against four ** consuls. Are we to yield to this man? is it to this man's conditions we are to listen? is it with this man we are to believe peace is possible?
Latin text of the Twelfth Philippic | Glossary | Historia Civilis video overview of 44-43 BCE