B.C. 46, ÆT. 60
and Ampia's[1] tears I gathered that you were less confident
than your letter would suggest. Moreover, they thought
that in their absence from your side you would be in much
more serious anxiety. Wherefore I thought it of very great
importance, for the sake of alleviating your pain and sorrow
that you should have stated for certain what was in fact
certain.
You know that hitherto it has been my habit to write to you rather in the tone of one consoling a man of courage and wisdom, than as holding out any sure hope of restoration beyond that which, in my opinion, was to be expected from the Republic itself as soon as the present excitement died down. Remember your writings, in which you always shewed me a spirit at once great and firmly prepared to endure whatever might happen. Nor was I surprised at that, since I remembered that you had been engaged in public affairs from your earliest youth, and that your terms of office had coincided with the most dangerous crises in the safety and fortunes of the community,[2] and that you entered on this very war not solely with the idea of being in prosperity if victorious, but also, if it so happened, of bearing it philosophically if beaten. In the next place, since you devote your time to recording the deeds of brave men,[3] you ought to think yourself bound to abstain from doing anything to prevent your shewing yourself exactly like those whom you commend. But this is a style of talk better suited to the position from which you have now escaped: for the present merely prepare yourself to endure with us the state of things here. If I could find any remedy for that, I would impart the same to you. But our one refuge is philosophy and literature, to which we have always been devoted. In the time of our prosperity these seemed only to be an en-*
- ↑ The wife and daughter of T. Ampius.
- ↑ T. Ampius Balbus was a tribune in B.C. 63, and prætor in B.C. 59, the first the Catilinarian year, the second the year of Cæsar's consulship, which Cicero regards as fatal to the constitution. He had always been an ardent Pompeian, having proposed special honours to Pompey in B.C. 63 for his Eastern campaign. For his activity at the beginning of the Civil War, see vol. ii., p. 271. He was not, it seems, at the battle of Pharsalia, but was in Asia, where he tried to seize the treasures of the temple at Ephesus (Cæs. B. C. iii. 105).
- ↑ This work is quoted apparently by Suetonius, Iul. 77.
