Page:The Letters of Cicero Shuckburg III.pdf/38

 CCCCVII (F IX, 9)

DOLABELLA TO CICERO (IN EPIRUS)

If you are well, I am glad. I am quite well, and so is our dear Tullia. Terentia has been rather unwell, but I am assured that she has now recovered. In all other respects things are quite as they should be at your house. Though at no time did I deserve to be suspected by you of acting from party motives rather than from a regard to your interests, when I urged you either to join Cæsar and myself, or at least to retire from open war, especially since victory has already inclined in our favour, it is now not even possible that I should create any other impression than that of urging upon you what I could not, with due regard to my duty as your son-in-law, suppress. On your part, my dear Cicero, pray regard what follows—whether you accept or reject the advice—as both conceived and written with the best possible intention and the most complete devotion to yourself.

You observe that Pompey is not secured either by the glory of his name and achievements, or by the list of client kings and peoples, which he was frequently wont to parade: and that even what has been possible for the rank and file, is impossible for him,—to effect an honourable retreat: driven as he has been from Italy, the Spanish provinces lost, a veteran army captured, and now finally inclosed by his enemy's lines. Such disasters I rather think have never

his own restoration, which had not been included in the revocation of other exiles. Milo, however, had already fallen; and when Cælius proceeded to raise forces on his own account, before he could do anything material, he was killed near Thurii by some foreign auxiliary soldiers, whom he attempted to win over. (Cæs. B.C. iii. 20-22; Dio Cass. xlii. 21.)]*
 * [Footnote: he attempted to join Milo in Apulia, who was trying to secure by force