Page:The Letters of Cicero Shuckburg III.pdf/13



HE correspondence in this volume (January, 48–February,  44) opens with a letter to Atticus from Pompey's headquarters in Epirus. There are only nine letters during the fifteen or sixteen months which intervene between Cicero's departure from Italy and his return after the battle of Pharsalia. One of these is from Cælius (p. 4), foreshadowing the disaster which soon afterwards befell that facile intelligence but ill-balanced character; and one from Dolabella (p. 6), inspired with a genuine wish—in which Caesar shared—that Cicero should withdraw in time from the chances and dangers of the war. Cicero's own letters deal mostly with the anxiety which he was feeling as to his property at home, which was at the mercy of the Cæsarians, and, in case of Pompey's defeat, would doubtless be seized by the victorious party, except such of it as was capable of being concealed or held in trust by his friends. He was no doubt prevented from writing freely on the state of affairs in the camp, and on war news generally, by a sort of military censorship to which letters were exposed; but he is by the beginning of 48 evidenτὸ μηδὲν μέγα αὐτῷ χρῇσθαι Πομπήιονtly in the lowest spirits, and not in the least hopeful of Pompey's success. This may partly be accounted for by ill-health (p. 10), but from the very first he seems to have been convinced that things were going wrong. He says that he avoided taking active duties of any sort, because of his dissatisfaction with what was being done. But part of this dissatisfaction seems really to have arisen from the fact that Pompey did not offer him any employment of importance. This made him still more inclined to listen to