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Epistulae ad Familiares, IV. vii.

might be, or either at Mitylene or in Rhodes. But, seeing that the power of the man we dread is so widespread as to have embraced the whole world, would you not rather reside without danger in your own house than reside with danger in the house of another? For my own part, I would sooner be at home and in my own country, even if it meant my facing death, than in any strange and foreign land. This is what all those feel who are fond of you; and as might be expected from your very great and distinguished merits, their number is great.

5 I am also concerned for your private property, which I should be sorry to see dissipated; it is true that it can suffer no damage likely to be permanent, for that will not be permitted either by him who rules the Republic, nor by the Republic itself; but apart from that I don't want to see an assault of brigands upon your estate. Who these brigands are,[1] I should make bold to tell you now, were I not sure that you are well aware of them.

6 At Rome there is, above all others, one man whose anxious efforts, one man whose copious and unceasing tears are ever interceding for you—your excellent cousin, C. Marcellus[2]; in solicitude and sorrow I come next, in entreaties I lag behind him, not having the right of entry, because I stand in need of intercession myself,[3] and I have only such influence as a defeated man may command. But for all that, in the way of counsel and active devotion I am still loyal to Marcellus. By the rest of your relatives I am not called into consultation; there is nothing I am not prepared for.

  1. ↑ Possibly, as Manutius thinks, the relatives of M. Marcellus (other than his cousin C. Marcellus, mentioned below). An instance of the seizure of Pompeians' property at this time is the seizure of Varro's house at Casinum by Antony (Phil ii. 103). Tyrrell.
  2. ↑ Three of the Marcelli were consuls in three successive years, Marcus, who writes this letter, in 51, Gaius, his first cousin, in 50, and Gaius, his brother, in 49. As the second Gaius, the brother of Marcus, appears to have died in 48, the C. Marcellus to whom Cicero here refers must almost certainly be M. Marcellus's cousin, and not his brother, frater being used elsewhere also by Cicero for "a first cousin."
  3. ↑ That Cicero had no personal intercourse with Caesar at this time is evident from iv. 13. 6, and vi. 13. 3.
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