B.C. 46, ÆT. 60 man who now dominates everything favours men of talent: moreover, he opens his arms to high birth and lofty position, as far as circumstances and his own party needs allow. But I have said more than I intended. I return, therefore, to that one fact—that I am yours, and will be by the side of your friends, always provided that they are yours: if not, I will in any case satisfy the claims of our attachment and affection in all particulars. Good-bye.
CCCCLXXXIV (F IV, 7)
TO M. CLAUDIUS MARCELLUS (AT MITYLENE)
Rome (September)
Though I am aware that as yet you have maintained a
policy of a nature that I do not venture to rebuke—not
that I do not myself disagree with it, but because I judge
you to be so wise a man, that I do not presume to prefer my
view to yours—nevertheless, both the antiquity of our
friendship and your eminent affection for me, which I have
known from your childhood, have urged me to write to you
what I believed would make for your personal security, and
thought was not inconsistent with your honour. I have a
vivid recollection that you were wise enough to discern the
first signs of these disasters long before they occurred, and
that you administered the consulship with the utmost splendour
and in the most loyal spirit. But I also was conscious
of this—that you were not satisfied with the policy of the
civil war, nor with Pompey's forces,[1] nor the nature of his
army,[2] and were always deeply distrustful of it: in which*
- ↑ That is, with the amount of forces Pompey had to depend upon at the beginning of B.C. 49 (see Cæs. B. C. i. 1), whence Marcellus is said to have proposed that Cæsar's demand should not be brought before the senate until the levies had been held and an army enrolled. See also vol. ii., p. 247.
- ↑ That is, of the heterogeneous character of the army in Epirus,
