43 BCE?: To Octavian from Cicero
One last haunting
[...]1 Remember your promises.2 […]
Cic. Letter Fragments 29 | Glossary | Historia Civilis video overview of 44-43 BCE
This letter fragment is preserved as a quotation in the De Compendiosa Doctrina of Nonius Marcellus, a 4th or 5th century CE grammarian. I have used Shackleton Bailey’s Loeb edition of the Latin text.
The fragment has no associated date or context, but is last in the sequence of fragmentary letters from Cicero to Octavian in Shackleton Bailey’s edition. It has haunted me since I first read it. I have chosen to place it here in the narrative.
Octavian, Mark Antony, and Lepidus formed an alliance called the Second Triumvirate on November 27th. Antony’s condition for joining was that Cicero would be the first person killed in their proscriptions.
News of Octavian’s betrayal would have reached Cicero who was in ‘retirement’ at Tusculum by early December. Cicero knew the danger he was in and tried to escape by sea. We have no further letters.
Wow. Hits hard.