22 April 44 BCE: To Atticus (at Rome) from Cicero (at Puteoli)
'Octavius is here with me, very respectful and very friendly. [...] it is not possible for him to be a good citizen.'
Oh, my Atticus, I fear that the Ides of March have given us nothing except for delight, and satisfaction for our hatred and suffering. The things that are reported from Rome! The things I see here! It was a beautiful deed—but incomplete. You know how I have special regard for the Sicilians, and how I judge it an honour to have them as my clients. Caesar did much for them, and I was not opposed to it—although granting them the Latin Rights was intolerable.1 But as I was saying. Antony (who has received an enormous amount of money) has posted up a law carried in the assemblies by the dictator, which would make the Sicilians Roman Citizens; a matter about which Caesar made no mention of while he was alive. What’s that? Is our Deiotarus’ case no similar? Of course, he deserves the whole of his kingdom—but not through Fulvia.2 And there are a thousand similar cases. But I return to this: will we not achieve at least some of our aims regarding Buthrotum, when the matter is so well-known, so well-attested, and so just? And we can be more certain of it the more this sort of thing happens.
Octavius is here with me, very respectful and very friendly. Of course, his people address him as Caesar, but Philippus doesn’t, and so I don’t either.3 I tell you, it is not possible for him to be a good citizen. So many surround him, who threaten our friends with death, and say that the current situation is unbearable. What do you think—when the boy reaches Rome, where the Liberators cannot have their safety assured? They will have eternal fame, and will even be blessed in the knowledge of their achievement; but we, unless I am mistaken, shall lie lifeless.
And so I wish to leave to ‘Where I may hear neither name nor deed of the Pelopidae,’ as they say.4 Nor do I have much love for the consuls designate,5 who have even urged me to declaim, so that I cannot relax even here by the water. But this is because I am just too good-natured. It used to be that these things were almost a necessity, but now, however things turn out, it is not the same.
How long it’s been since I have had anything to write to you about! But I write to you, not to delight you with my letters, but to entice your replies. Write to me about anything else, and certainly anything about Brutus. I write all this on the 22nd, at the dinner table with Vestorius, who is a man inexperienced in dialectics, but practised enough in arithmetic.
Read Ad Atticum 14.12 in Latin here | Check the glossary here
Cicero had strong ties with Sicily after he prosecuted Gaius Verres, a corrupt former governor of Sicily, on behalf of certain Sicilians in 70 BCE. Latin Rights were a legal status that fell short of full Roman citizenship.
Deiotarus of Galatia had been deprived of parts of his kingdom by Caesar. Evidently Cicero suspected that Antony’s wife Fulvia was involved in passing things off as Caesar’s unpublished acts.
Octavius accepted his inheritance from Caesar, and so changed his name from Gaius Octavius to Gaius Iulius Caesar Octavianus. It is conventional to call him Octavian from the period just after the assassination of Caesar to 27 BCE, when the Senate gave him the name Augustus. I’m following what Cicero calls him. Watch out for when that changes.
Cicero quotes this line several times. It might be from a play by Accius or Ennius—or maybe from an Atellan farce?
Gaius Vibius Pansa and Aulus Hirtius.