Late February 43 BCE: The Eleventh Philippic
You Must Give Cassius The Authority And Legions To Defeat Horrible Horrible Dolabella
Salvete, patres subscripti.
Here is the first half-ish of Cicero’s eleventh Philippic oration! You can guess why it’s only the first half. Once again, 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 in A Letter-like Manner.
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.
In late February news reached the Senate that Cicero’s former son-in-law Dolabella, who had set out early to govern his proconsular province of Syria, had on his way there tortured and killed Trebonius, who was the governor of Asia and one of the assassins of Caesar. By the time Cicero sent this letter to him, Trebonius was probably already dead.
In May last year (44 BCE) Cicero loved it when Dolabella executed people without a trial (until Dolabella didn’t pay back Cicero’s daughter’s dowry!)—but Cicero was at this point wholly negative towards Dolabella. Quintus Fufius Calenus (who Cicero did not get along with) immediately moved that the Senate should declare Dolabella a public enemy and confiscate his property; the Senate passed this motion. This was bad news for Cicero ever getting his daughter’s dowry back, but great news for his anti-Antony agenda. Cicero hoped the Senate’s quick and aggressive action against Dolabella would lead to similar action against Antony.
The Senate met again soon after to discuss how to prosecute the war against Dolabella, including who the choice of general should be. Cicero’s argument in the Eleventh Philippic was that all the proposed options were terrible, and that the Senate should instead authorise Cassius, who was rumoured to be in Syria instead of his assigned province of Cyrene, to take charge of all forces in the area in order to defeat Dolabella. (In Cicero’s letters to Cassius he assumed he was in Syria, and hoped he had raised an army already, but he really didn’t know for certain.) Cicero also moved that Cassius should be appointed proconsul of Syria, given extraordinary powers over neighbouring provinces, and that Rome’s client rulers in the area should help him.
The Senate did not pass Cicero’s motion, and instead voted that the consuls should draw lots for command over the war against Dolabella, after they had lifted Antony’s siege on Decimus Brutus at Mutina.
In the great sorrow, conscript fathers, or rather lamentation, which the cruel and wretched death of a citizen so loyal and a man so temperate as Gaius Trebonius ** has caused us, there is yet something which I think will benefit the Republic. For we have realised what a degree of savagery there was in those men who have taken up their accursed arms against their country. For here we have two creatures, the foulest and filthiest since the creation of human beings, Dolabella and Antonius, of whom one has effected what he wished, while what the other proposed stands revealed. Lucius Cinna was cruel; Gaius Marius in his anger persistent; Lucius Sulla violent; but in revenge the bitterness of none of these extended beyond infliction of death; and yet that was held a penalty too cruel to be inflicted on citizens.
Here you find a pair of twins in wickedness, unprecedented, unheard of, fierce, barbarous. And so the very men between whom, you remember, there was the utmost hatred and dissension formerly have been since bound together by a singular unanimity and affection springing from the similarity of their most reprobate nature and infamous lives. Accordingly, what Dolabella has effected where he had the power Antonius also threatens todo to many, But Dolabella, being far from our consuls and armies, and not yet having perceived that the Senate has united with the Roman people, relied on the forces of Antonius, and committed those crimes which he thought had already been committed at Rome by the partner of his frenzy.
What other object, what other wish, do you suppose Antonius has? or what do you, in fact, suppose is our reason for war? All of us whose sentiments on State affairs are those of free men, who have expressed opinions that become us, who have wished the Roman people to be free, he has determined to be, not merely unfriendly, but his enemies. But he contemplates greater punishments against us than against an enemy; death he regards as a penalty due to nature, but that to anger belong torment and tortures. What sort of enemy then should we see in him, at whose hands, if victorious, death, if not accompanied by tortures, is counted in the light of a kindness?
Wherefore, conscript fathers, though you need no prompter - for you yourselves of your own accord are fired with longing to regain your liberty - yet defend your liberty with the greater spirit and enthusiasm inasmuch as you see the greater penalties that in slavery await the vanquished. Antonius has invaded Gaul, Dolabella Asia, each of them another man's province. ** The one Brutus has confronted, and has, at the risk of his own life, checked the onset of the madman who longs to harass and pillage everything; he has stayed his progress; he has put a curb on his return; by allowing himself to be besieged he has bound Antonius fast on both sides.
The other has burst into Asia. Why? ** If, to pass on into Syria, there was a way open to him, one defined and not long; but if to join Trebonius, where was the necessity of sending forward with a legion some Marsian or other called Octavius, an accursed and needy brigand, to devastate the land, to harass the cities, not with the hope of establishing his private fortune - those that know him say he cannot preserve that, for to me this Senator is unknown - but to reach some ready pasture for his mendicant condition? Dolabella followed him. There being then no suspicion of war - for who could think of it? - there followed most intimate conversations with Trebonius, and embraces, false indications of the highest good-will amid the pretence of love; pledges by right hands, the usual witnesses to good faith, were perfidiously and criminally violated; there was an entry by night into Smyrna, as into a city of enemies, not of our most trusty and longstanding allies; Trebonius was crushed; if as by an open enemy, from lack of caution; if as by one who still bore the guise of a fellow-citizen, miserably.
From his example no doubt Fortune wished us to receive a proof of what the vanquished had to dread. A consular holding the province of Asia with consular command Dolabella handed over to Samiarius an exile; he was unwilling to slay his captive at once, in order, I suppose, not to appear too generous in his victory. After scarifying that noblest of men with abuse from his filthy lips, he then under the lash and the rack held an inquest as to public moneys, ** and that for two days. Afterwards, when he had broken his neck he cut off his head, and ordered it to be carried about fixed on a spear; the rest of his body, after it had been dragged about and mangled, he cast into the sea.
This is the enemy with whom we must wage war, one by whose savage cruelty all barbarism has been surpassed. Why should I speak of the slaughter of Roman citizens? of the plunder of temples? Who in terms befitting the atrocity of the facts could deplore such calamities? And now he wanders through all Asia, he flits about like a king; he thinks we are hampered by another war; as if the war against this impious pair were not one and the same!
You see in Dolabella the image of the cruelty of Marcus Antonius; on him it has been modelled; it is from him Dolabella's schooling in villainy has been received. Do you think Antonius, if he be allowed, will be more lenient in Italy than Dolabella was in Asia? To me indeed it seems, both that Dolabella has advanced as far as the madness of a savage could go, and that, given the power, there is no punishment of which Antonius will forgo the exaction of even a fragment.
Set therefore before your eyes, conscript fathers, that picture, wretched and tearful as it is, yet one necessary to stir our feelings: the night attack on the finest city of Asia; the irruption of armed men into Trebonius' house, when that wretched man saw the brigands' swords before he heard what the matter was; the entry of the raging Dolabella, his foul speech and his infamous mouth; the bonds, the stripes, the rack, the torturer and executioner Samiarius; all of which they say Trebonius bore with fortitude and patience. That is great praise, and in my judgement the greatest praise. For it is the part of a wise man to resolve beforehand that whatever can happen to a man should be borne calmly if it shall befall him. It needs altogether greater judgement to provide against such evil happening, and no less courage to bear it with fortitude if it shall befall. And Dolabella was so regardless of human feeling - though in that he never bad any part - as to practise his insatiable cruelty not only on the living, but even on the dead, and in the mangling and molestation of the body, as he could not glut his soul, he fed his eyes.
O Dolabella, much more miserable than he whom you wished to be most miserable! Anguish Trebonius endured to the full; but many from the severity of disease endure greater, yet we do not call them miserable, but afflicted. Two days' anguish was long; yet many have felt it for many years; and the tortures of executioners are indeed not more severe than are sometimes the torments of disease. There are other tortures, others, I say, you most abandoned and insensate wretches! and much more miserable. For in proportion as the strength of the mind is greater than that of the body, so those ills are more severe that are contracted in the mind than those contracted in the body. More wretched then is he who incurs the guilt of a crime than he who is compelled to undergo the misdeed of another. Trebonius was tortured by Dolabella, and Regulus too by the Carthaginians; and since on that account the Carthaginians have been adjudged most cruel in the case of an enemy, in the case of a citizen what should be our judgment of Dolabella?
Can we really make here any comparison, or doubt which is the more wretched? he whose death the Senate and the Roman people long to avenge, or he who by all the votes of the Senate has been adjudged an enemy? For, indeed, in all the other features of their lives who could, without the greatest insult to Trebonius, compare the life of Trebonius with Dolabella's? Who does not know the prudence of the one, his genius, his humanity, his innocence, his strength of mind displayed in the liberation of his country? To the other from boyhood cruelty was a sport; then came such baseness of lust that he himself has always exulted in his doings being such as he could not be reproached with even by an enemy who was a modest man.
And this man, Heavens! was at one time my connection! ** for his vices were hidden from one who made no enquiry. And perhaps now I should not be alienated from him, had he not been proved hostile to you, to the walls of his country, to this city, to the Household Gods, to the altars and hearths of all of us, in a word, to nature and to all mankind. Warned by his example, let us more diligently and more watchfully beware of Antonius.
For Dolabella had not with him so many notorious and manifest brigands; but you see whom Antonius has, and how many they are. First, his brother Lucius. Heavens! what a firebrand! what a heap of crime and iniquity? what a sink, what an abyss of prodigality! What is there, do you suppose, that he is not mentally absorbing, is not gulping down in imagination? whose blood is he not drinking? on whose possessions and fortunes does he not in hope and fancy fix his most shameless eyes? What of Censorinus? who in words stated his desire to be urban praetor, but was, in fact, ** certainly unwilling.
What of Bestia, who proclaims his candidature for the consulship in the place of Brutus? May Jupiter avert this detestable omen! And how absurd it is for a man who could not become praetor to seek the consulship! ** unless perhaps he considers a conviction as a praetorship. Let that second Caesar Vopiscus, ** a man of highest intellect, of highest influence, who after the aedileship stands for the consulship, be exempted from the laws, though the laws do not bind him by reason, I imagine, of his extraordinary distinction! But this man - I being defending counsel - was five times acquitted; it is hard, even for a gladiator, to win a sixth triumph in Rome. ** But for this the blame is with the jury, not with me. I defended him in the best of faith; their duty it was to keep within the community this most noble and most illustrious Senator. And yet now he seems to have no other object than to make us understand that those whose verdict we annulled ** decided well and in the interest of the Republic.
And this does not apply to this man alone; there are others in the same camp honestly condemned, disgracefully restored. What do you think will be the design of these men, the enemies of all good men, except a most cruel one? There is in addition a certain Saxa, whom Caesar gave us out of the wilds of Celtiberia as tribune of the plebs, a measurer of camps before, ** now to be, as he hopes, a measurer out of the city; but, since he is a stranger to it, may the omen ** fall on his own head without harm to us! With this man is the veteran Cafo, than whom the veterans hate no man worse. On these men, as a sort of addition to the dowry they had received during our civil troubles, Antonius has lavished Campanian lands that they might have foster-mothers ** for their other farms. Would they had been content with that! we might bear with it, though it was intolerable; but anything was to be endured to free us from this most hideous war.
What more? do you not set before your eyes those luminaries of Marcus Antonius' camp? First of all the two colleagues ** of the Antonii and Dolabella, Nucula and Lento, the parcellers of Italy under the law which the Senate has declared carried by violence, of whom the one has composed mimes, the other has acted in a tragedy. ** What shall I say of Domitius, the Apulian? whose goods lately I have seen posted up for sale - such is the negligence of his agents. ** But the man recently lavished poison on his sister's son, not a mere dose. But men cannot live otherwise than extravagantly who are hoping as they do for our goods while they lavish their own. **
I have also seen the auction of that eminent man Publius Decius, who, following the precedents of his ancestors, has devoted himself as a victim ** - for debt. Yet at that auction not a single buyer could be found. A silly fellow to think he can escape debts to others by selling what belongs to others! For what shall I say of Trebellius, on whom the Furies of the debtors seem to have taken vengeance? for we see a new bill avenging the clean bill. ** What of Titus Plancus, whom that most eminent citizen Aquila drove out of Pollentia, with a broken leg too? would it had happened to him before to prevent him returning here! ** One shining light and ornament of that army I nearly passed over, Titus Annius Cimber, the son of Lysidicus, a Lysidicus himself in Greek phrase, for he has caused the dissolution of all laws; ** but perhaps a Cimber had a right to slay one germanely related. **
Seeing that Antonius has this lot with him, and a number of the same sort, what crime will he forbear, when Dolabella has involved himself in so many murders though he has with him a troop of brigands by no means equal? Wherefore, as I have often unwillingly dissented from Quintus Fufius, so I willingly assent to his proposal; from this you should judge that I do not usually disagree with the man, but with the cause.
Accordingly I not only assent, but I also thank Fufius; for he has made a motion, severe and dignified in terms, and one worthy of the Republic; he has declared that Dolabella is an enemy, and that his estate should be confiscated by public order. Though nothing could be added to this - for what proposal could be made in stronger and severer terms? - still he said that if any of the Senators afterwards called upon were to propose a heavier penalty, he would vote for him, Who can fail to praise such severity?
Now, as Dolabella has been adjudged an enemy, he must be followed up in war. For he is not inactive; he has a legion, he has fugitive slaves, he has an accursed gang of rebels. he is himself headstrong, uncontrollable, destined to a death like a gladiator's. Wherefore, since Dolabella was yesterday pronounced by decree an enemy, and we must wage war, we must choose a general.
Two opinions have been delivered, ** of which I approve neither; the one because I always regard it as dangerous, save where inevitable; the other because I think it unsuited to these times.
Latin text of the Eleventh Philippic | Glossary | Historia Civilis video overview of 44-43 BCE
"Publius Decius, who, following the precedents of his ancestors, has devoted himself as a victim ** - for debt" holy shit marce tulli