sentiment I think you remember that I also shared. Accordingly, you did not take much part in active service, and I always strove not to do so. For we were not fighting with the weapons with which we might have prevailed—deliberation, weight of character, and the righteousness of our cause, in all of which we had the superiority—but with muscles and brute force, in which we were not his equals. Accordingly, we were beaten, or, if worth cannot really be beaten, at least we were crushed and rendered powerless. And in this no one can do otherwise than highly praise your resolution, in that with all hope of victory you cast aside all desire of keeping up the contest also; and shewed that a wise man and a good citizen takes the first steps in a civil war with reluctance, but with pleasure declines taking the last. Those who did not adopt the same course as yourself I perceive to have split up into two classes. Either they endeavoured to renew the war—and these have betaken themselves to Africa: or, like myself, they trusted themselves to the victor. Your course was a kind of compromise between the two, since you perhaps regarded the second as cowardice, the first as blind obstinacy. I confess that by most people, or I should say by everybody, your plan has been judged to be wise, by many even magnanimous and courageous. But your policy, as it seems to me at least, has a certain limit, especially as in my opinion nothing is wanting to your being able to keep your entire fortune, except your own willingness to do so. For I have gathered that there is nothing else which causes him who is now all-powerful to feel any hesitation, except the fear that you would not regard it as a favour at all.[1] As to which there is no occasion for me to say what I think, since my conduct speaks for itself. However, even if you had already made up your mind, that you preferred being absent from Rome to seeing what was repugnant to your feelings, yet you ought to have reflected that, wherever you were, you would be in
- [Footnote: made up of all nations, Asiatic as well as European. See vol. ii.,
p. 329.]
- ↑ As a matter of fact, when Marcellus, shortly after this letter, had his permission to return home, he shewed by no means any haste to avail himself of it. He did not leave Mitylene till the next spring, when he was murdered in the Piræus on his way home, as we shall hear.
