B.C. 45, ÆT. 61 shall have happened to me, even before, which is held out as the most formidable of all terrors. For to live on the terms on which one would then have to live, is a most miserable thing, while no philosopher has asserted death to be a miserable thing even for a prosperous man. But you are in a city in which the very walls of the houses seem capable of telling you these things, even at greater length and in nobler style. I assure you of this—though the miseries of others supply but a poor consolation—that you are now in no greater danger than anyone else, either of those who went away,[1] or of those who remained. The one party are now in arms, the other in terror of the conqueror. But this, I repeat, is a poor consolation. There is another, which I hope you use, as I certainly do: I will never, while I live, let anything give me pain, so long as I have done nothing wrong: and if I cease to live, I shall cease to have any sensation. But to write this to you is again a case of "an owl to Athens."[2] To me both you and your family and all your interests are, and while I live will be, the subject of the greatest concern. Good-bye.
DXXXIX (F VI, 4)
TO AULUS MANLIUS TORQUATUS (AT ATHENS)
Rome (January)
I have no news to give you, and if there is some after all,
I know that you are usually informed of it by your family.
About the future, however, difficult as it always is to speak,
you may yet sometimes get nearer the truth by conjecture,
when the matter is of the kind whose issue admits of being
foreseen. In the present instance I think that I perceive
thus much, that the war will not be a protracted one, though. See vol. i., p. 290; vol. iii., p. 73.]
