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 CCCCLXXXV (F IV, 9)

TO M. CLAUDIUS MARCELLUS (AT MITYLENE)



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. 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