DXXIX (F XV, 18)
B.C. 45. Dictator, r.p.c, C. Iulius Cæsar III. Magister Equitum, M. Æmilius Lepidus. Coss., C. Iulius Cæsar IV., sine collega. Q. Fabius Maximus, mort., C. Caninius Rebilus, C. Trebonius. During this year Cicero remained at Rome or some of his country villas, till the death of his daughter Tullia after childbirth. In deep grief he retired to Astura, where he sought consolation partly in prosecuting a design for building a temple in her memory, partly in writing. He produced a Consolatio, and the two treatises, de Finibus and Academica (the latter first in two books, afterwards rearranged in four). He also projected, but did not carry out, a treatise on the reconstruction of the constitution, to be addressed to Cæsar. In December of the previous year Cæsar had started for Spain to attack the Pompeian army commanded by Gnæus and Sextus Pompeius. The victory of Munda (17th March) and the subsequent death of Gnæus seemed to settle the question of Spain—though the opposition under Sextus Pompeius survived many years—and Cæsar returned to Rome in October. Much of the correspondence of this year concerns Cicero's grief for his daughter. When he touches on political affairs, however, his discontent with the Cæsarian government and general policy is made very evident.
TO C. CASSIUS LONGINUS (AT BRUNDISIUM)
Rome (January?)[1]
My letter would have been longer, had not the messenger
come for it when he was just on the point of starting for
you. It would have been longer also if it had any persiflage
in it, for we cannot be serious with safety. "Can we laugh,
then?" you will say. No, by Hercules, not very easily.
Yet other means of distraction from our troubles we have
none. "Where, then," you will say, "is your philosophy?"
Yours indeed is in the kitchen, mine in the schools.[2] For I*
- ↑ I think this letter must belong to the early part of B.C. 45, not to December, B.C. 46, as Messrs. Tyrrell and Purser and Mueller place it. Cæsar only left Rome for Spain on the 2nd of December, and Cicero could hardly have been expecting news so soon. Moreover, Cassius—who declined to accompany Cæsar to Spain—seems to have gone on his tour in the early part of B.C. 45, and to be staying at Brundisium.
- ↑ Reading, in palæstra est. Mueller, however, retains the MS. reading, molesta est, "only gives me annoyance," as though it reminded
