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Epistulae ad Familiares, V. xa.-xb.

I swear if I had the cheek of Appius,[1] whose place I was elected to fill, even then I could not tackle such a job. What about it then? Whatever I know you want done I shall be careful to do. He is being defended by Q. Volusius,[2] a pupil of yours, if haply that fact can rout his opponents; there lies his best hope.

3 As for myself, if there be any need for it where you are, you will defend me. Caesar is still treating me unjustly. He still refuses to bring before the Senate the question of the supplications[3] due to me and of my Dalmatian exploits, as though forsooth what I achieved in Dalmatia did not most fully justify even a triumph. For if I have got to wait till I have brought the whole war to a close, well, Dalmatia has twenty towns to start with, and those they have annexed are over sixty. If I have no supplication decreed me unless I take them all by storm, my treatment is very different from that of any other commander in the world.

Xb[4]

The same to the same

Narona, December 5, 45 B.C.

After the supplications had been decreed me, I I set out for Dalmatia; six towns I stormed by force and captured . . . . This single town,[5] the largest of them all, I have now taken four times; for I took

  1. ↑ Probably Appius Claudius Pulcher, who preceded Cicero as governor of Cilicia. The vacancy in the college of augurs caused by his death in 48 seems to have been filled by Vatinius.
  2. ↑ He had been with Cicero in Cilicia. Cf. Ep. xx. 3, in this book.
  3. ↑ A supplicatio had been granted to Vatinius in September, but no arrangements had been made for its celebration, nor did Caesar bring the matter before the Senate. Vatinius resented this and the ignoring of his subsequent Dalmatian exploits in November and December. He did eventually obtain a triumph at the end of the following year, 43.
  4. ↑ This letter, according to Tyrrell, was written before, and not after Xa.
  5. ↑ Ulcinium (another reading suggested) is a coast town a little north of Dyrrachium
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