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Cicero's Letters to his Friends

Book VI

I

Cicero to A. Torquatus^[1]

Rome, January, 45 B.C.

¹ Although the universal confusion of affairs is such that every man complains of his own lot as being worse than any other, and there is not a man who would not rather be anywhere else in the world than where he is, still I have no doubt that the worst form of misery at the present time for an honest citizen is to be at Rome. For although, wherever a man is, he has the same feeling of exasperation at the ruin both of the public and of his private interests, still his eyes intensify his grief, being compelled to see what others only hear, and forbidding any distraction of his thoughts from his woes. Accordingly, though you cannot but be distressed by the thought of all you have lost, you must at any rate rid your mind of that special sorrow which I am told afflicts you most—the fact of your not being at Rome. For great as is your annoyance at being cut off from your family

↑ Aulus Manlius Torquatus presided at the trial of Milo, probably as praetor in 52 B.C. He had been a follower of Pompey, and was now in exile at Athens, though in 45 he seems to have been allowed to return to Italy, but not to Rome. Cicero refers to him in his De finibus as "vir optimus nostrique amantissimus," "the best of men and warmly attached to myself." The following letters to him are almost wholly of a philosophical character.

427

[1] Aulus Manlius Torquatus presided at the trial of Milo, probably as praetor in 52 B.C. He had been a follower of Pompey, and was now in exile at Athens, though in 45 he seems to have been allowed to return to Italy, but not to Rome. Cicero refers to him in his De finibus as "vir optimus nostrique amantissimus," "the best of men and warmly attached to myself." The following letters to him are almost wholly of a philosophical character.

[1]