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Epistulae ad Familiares, VI. xxii.

XXII

Cicero to Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus[1]

Rome, month uncertain, 46 B.C.

1 It was not the fact of your having sent me no letter that put me off writing to you after your arrival in Italy; no, it was because I could not think of any promise I could make you, being myself utterly destitute, or of any course of action I could recommend, having no policy whatever of my own, or of any consolation I could offer you in these terrible times. Although the present situation shows no improvement whatever and is even far more hopeless than it was, still I thought that a letter from me with nothing in it would be better than no letter at all.

2 If I believed that you had attempted in the interests of the state to undertake a task[2] beyond your power to accomplish, I should still urge you, to the best of my ability, to accept such terms of life as were offered you, and were available. But seeing that you have resolved that the policy you so honourably and gallantly adopted should cease from the very moment when it had pleased fortune herself to put an end to our struggles,[3] I beg and implore of you in the name of our old and intimate connexion and of my most sincere affection for you, and of yours, just as sincere, for myself, to keep yourself out of harm for all our sakes, for the sake of your mother,[4] your wife, and all your family, to whom you are and always have been

  1. ↑ Son of Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, a staunch aristocrat, who was compelled by his own troops to surrender to Caesar at Corfinium in 49. He commanded Pompey's left wing at the battle of Pharsalia, and fell by the hand of Antony. His son Gnaeus, to whom Cicero writes, was also present at Pharsalia, but was pardoned by Caesar, and returned to Italy in 46, after the battle of Thapsus in that year. He was inclined in his despair to join the remnants of the Pompeian party in Spain, but Cicero had dissuaded him from doing so.
  2. ↑ i.e., to follow your uncle Cato to Africa and fight there.
  3. ↑ By the defeat of Pompey at Pharsalia.
  4. ↑ Porcia, sister of Cato of Utica.
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