Page:The Letters of Cicero Shuckburg III.pdf/293

 I am by this time hardened to such things, and have divested myself of all human feelings. I look forward to your letter to-day, not that I expect anything new, for what should there be? But all the same

DCII (A XIII, 27)

TO ATTICUS (AT ROME)



I had always determined, and on very good grounds, that your friends should read my letter to Cæsar before it was sent. If I had acted otherwise, I should have been wanting in courtesy to them, and almost rash in regard to my own danger in case my letter should prove offensive to him. Now your friends have acted frankly, and have obliged me by not suppressing their opinion; but best of all by suggesting so many alterations, that I have no reason for writing it all over again. And yet, in the matter of the Parthian war, what ought I to have kept in view except what I thought was Cæsar's wish? What, in fact, was the point of my letter at all except to say smooth things to him? Do you suppose that if I had wanted to give him the advice which I thought best, I should have been at a loss for language? Therefore the whole letter is altogether superfluous. For when no great "hit" is possible, and a "miss," however slight, would bring unpleasant consequences, what need to run the risk? Especially as it occurs to me that, as I have not written to him before, he will think that I should probably not have written had not the war been over. Moreover, I fear his thinking that I meant, a strong word. Speaking frankly to Atticus, Cicero makes no concealment of his real dislike of Cæsar's policy and of his own unwilling submission to force majeure.]