Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero | Page 9

entirely plundered. Piso, as you say, I hope will always
be our friend. As to the manumission of the slaves you need not be
uneasy. To begin with, the promise made to yours was that you would
treat them according as each severally deserved. So far Orpheus has
behaved well, besides him no one very markedly so. With the rest of
the slaves the arrangement is that, if my property is forfeited, they
should become my freedmen, supposing them to be able to maintain at
law that status. But if my property remained in my ownership, they
were to continue slaves, with the exception of a very few. But these are
trifles. To return to your advice, that I should keep up my courage and
not give up hope of recovering my position, I only wish that there were
any good grounds for entertaining such a hope. As it is, when, alas!
shall I get a letter from you? Who will bring it me? I would have
waited for it at Brundisium, but the sailors would not allow it, being
unwilling to lose a favourable wind. For the rest, put as dignified a face
on the matter as you can, my dear Terentia. Our life is over: we have
had our day: it is not any fault of ours that has ruined us, but our virtue.
I have made no false step, except in not losing my life when I lost my
honours. But since our children preferred my living, let us bear
everything else, however intolerable. And yet I, who encourage you,
cannot encourage myself. I have sent that faithful fellow Clodius

Philhetaerus home, because he was hampered with weakness of the
eyes. Sallustius seems likely to outdo everybody in his attentions.
Pescennius is exceedingly kind to me; and I have hopes that he will
always be attentive to you. Sicca had said that he would accompany me;
but he has left Brundisium. Take the greatest care of your health, and
believe me that I am more affected by your distress than my own. My
dear Terentia, most faithful and best of wives, and my darling little
daughter, and that last hope of my race, Cicero, good-bye!
29 April, from Brundisium.
VI
To His BROTHER QUINTUS (ON HIS WAY TO ROME)
THESSALONICA, 15 JUNE
BROTHER! Brother! Brother! did you really fear that I had been
induced by some angry feeling to send slaves to you without a letter?
Or even that I did not wish to see you? I to be angry with you! Is it
possible for me to be angry with you? Why, one would think that it was
you that brought me low! Your enemies, your unpopularity, that
miserably ruined me, and not I that unhappily ruined you! The fact is,
the much-praised consulate of mine has deprived me of you, of children,
country, fortune; from you I should hope it will have taken nothing but
myself. Certainly on your side I have experienced nothing but what was
honourable and gratifying: on mine you have grief for my fall and fear
for your own, regret, mourning, desertion. I not wish to see you? The
truth is rather that I was unwilling to be seen by you. For you would not
have seen your brother--not the brother you had left, not the brother
you knew, not him to whom you had with mutual tears bidden farewell
as be followed you on your departure for your province: not a trace
even or faint image of him, but rather what I may call the likeness of a
living corpse. And oh that you had sooner seen me or heard of me as a
corpse! Oh that I could have left you to survive, not my life merely, but
my undiminished rank! But I call all the gods to witness that the one
argument which recalled me from death was, that all declared that to
some extent your life depended upon mine. In which matter I made an

error and acted culpably. For if I had died, that death itself would have
given clear evidence of my fidelity and love to you. As it is, I have
allowed you to be deprived of my aid, though I am alive, and with me
still living to need the help of others; and my voice, of all others, to fail
when dangers threatened my family, which had so often been
successfully used in the defence of the merest strangers. For as to the
slaves coming to you without a letter, the real reason (for you see that it
was not anger) was a deadness of my faculties, and a seemingly endless
deluge of tears and sorrows. How many tears do you suppose these
very words have cost me? As many as I know they