CCCCLXXXIII (F IV, 8)
TO M. CLAUDIUS MARCELLUS[1] (AT MITYLENE)
Rome (September)
I do not venture to advise a man of your consummate
wisdom, nor to offer encouragement to a man of the highest
spirit and the most conspicuous gallantry—certainly not to
console him in any way whatever. For if you bear what has
happened as I am told you do, I ought rather to congratulate
you on your manliness than console your sorrow. But if
these great disasters to the state are breaking your heart, I
have no ingenuity to spare for finding consolations for you,
when I cannot console myself. All that remains, therefore,
for me to do is at every point so to display and guarantee
my services, and to be in such a way ready to undertake
whatever your friends may wish, as to shew that I hold
myself your debtor not only for everything that is within my
power to do, but also for what is beyond it. Nevertheless,
please to consider that in what follows I have given you a
warning, or (if you like) expressed an opinion, or from
affection for you have been unable to refrain from saying—that
you, as I do myself, should make up your mind, if there
is to be a republic at all, that the first place in it is your
due in everybody's judgment as well as in actual fact, though
you are necessarily yielding to the circumstances of the hour:
but if there is none, that after all this is the place best fitted
for living even in exile. For if we are seeking freedom, what
place is free from the master's hand? But if all we want is
some place, no matter of what sort, what residence is
pleasanter than one's own home? But believe me, even the
- ↑ M. Claudius Marcellus, consul B.C. 51, though he had offended Cæsar by his action as to the magistrate at Comum (vol. ii., p. 30), and had been with Pompey in Epirus, had been since Pompey's defeat living at Mitylene unmolested. It was on his recall that Cicero delivered the speech (pro Marcello) in the senate this year. See pp. 136-137.
