B.C. 46, ÆT. 60
- clining this command of Achaia,[1] as I always had approved
of it, much more did I do so after reading your last letter. For all the reasons which you mention are thoroughly sound, and in the highest degree worthy of your character and wisdom. As to your thinking that the matter has turned out otherwise than you expected, in that I do not at all agree with you. The fact is this: the disorganization and confusion are so great, the general dismay and collapse caused by a most shocking war are so complete, that each man thinks the place where he happens to be the most wretched in the world. That is why you feel dissatisfied with your policy, and why only we who are still at home appear to you to be happy: while on the contrary to us you seem, not indeed entirely free from distress, but happy in comparison with ourselves. And in fact your lot is better than ours in this: you venture to say in your letter what is giving you pain; we cannot do even that much safely. Nor is this the fault of the victor, whose moderation cannot be surpassed, but of the victory itself, which in the case of civil wars is always offensive. In one point I have had the better of you—that I knew of the recall of your colleague Marcellus[2] a little before you did; and also, by Hercules, that I saw how that matter was actually managed. For be assured that since these unhappy events, that is, since the appeal to arms was begun, nothing else has been transacted with any proper dignity. For, in the first place, Cæsar himself, after inveighing against the "bitter spirit" shewn by Marcellus—for that was the term he used—and having commended in the most complimentary terms
- ↑ Achaia was not an organized province at this time; its communities were free (liberi populi, Cæs. B. C. iii. 3), though in a certain sense it was a province, as owing some allegiance to Rome, and is so classed by Cicero in B.C. 59, along with Marseilles, Rhodes, Sparta, Athens, Thessaly, and Bœotia (pro Flacc. § 100). But Cæsar had been in military occupation of it since B.C. 48, having sent Q. Fufius Calenus there with a legion (Cæs. B.C. iii. 56), and though after Pharsalia the legion was withdrawn (ib. 106), Fufius seems to have remained there with some forces during part of B.C. 47 (see p. 37; Cæs. B. Alex. 44). Fufius returned to Rome with Cæsar in the course of B.C. 47, and it was then, it appears, that Sulpicius was asked by Cæsar to accept charge of Achaia, with authority in other parts of Greece also.
- ↑ M. Marcellus, consul with Sulpicius B.C. 51 (see p. 113). It was on Cæsar's consenting to his recall that Cicero now explains why he made the speech in the senate.
