CCCCLXXXV (F IV, 9)
TO M. CLAUDIUS MARCELLUS (AT MITYLENE)
Rome (September)
Though it is only a very few days ago that I gave Quintus
Mucius a letter for you written at considerable length, in
which I set forth in what state of mind I thought you
ought to be, and what I thought you ought to do, yet,
since your freedman Theophilus was starting, of whose
fidelity and affection to you I had satisfied myself, I was
unwilling that he should reach you without a letter from me.
On the same considerations, then, as I did in my previous
letter, I again and again exhort you, to make up your mind
to become a resident member of the Republic, whatever its
nature may be, at the earliest possible time. You will perhaps
see many things disagreeable to your feelings, but not
more after all than you daily hear. Moreover, you are
not the man to be affected by the sense of sight alone, and
to be less afflicted when you learn the same things by the
ear, which indeed are usually even magnified by imagination.[1]
But—you object—you will yourself be obliged to
say something you do not feel, or to do something you do
not approve. To begin with, to yield to circumstances,
that is to submit to necessity, has ever been held the part
of a wise man: in the next place, things are not—as matters
now stand at least—quite so bad as that. You may not
be able, perhaps, to say what you think: you may certainly
hold your tongue. For authority of every kind has been
committed to one man. He consults nobody but himself,
not even his friends. There would not have been much
difference if he whom we followed were master of the
Republic. Can we think that the man who in a time of
- ↑ "When we only know a thing by hearsay, we are apt to exaggerate its gravity: when we see it we know better its true proportions." The reverse is often stated by Cicero himself, that what is seen gives keener pain than what is heard (see p. 138, etc.). Both are in a way true.
