Translation:Letters to Friends/7.28

Rome, August 46 BC
M. Cicero says hello to Curius

I remember when you seemed to me to act foolishly because you were living with those people rather than with us. For a residence of this city, when this was a city, was much more suited to your refinement and pleasantness than the entire Peloponnesus, though not Patrae. Now, however, you seem to me to have had great foresight when you brought yourself to Greece, with the affairs here near hopeless, and at this moment you seem not only wise for being away from here, but also happy. Yet who can be happy now who is wise in any respect?

But what you, who were allowed to do so, have achieved with your feet, that you might be there ‘where of the Pelopidae neither’ (you know the rest), I’m achieving nearly the same thing by another method. For after I gave myself to a visit of my friends, which is happening even more often than it used to, clearly because they seem to see a citizen who has sound views as a white bird, I withdraw to my library. And so, I’m finishing as many works as perhaps you’ll believe; for I understood from a certain conversation of yours, when at your house you were blaming my sorrow and hopelessness, that you said you missed my spirit from my books.

But by Hercules, I was then mourning the Republic, which not only from its kindness toward me but from mine toward it was dearer to me than my own life, and at this moment, although not only reason which ought to be the strongest consoles me, but also the day, which is accustomed to cure idiots as well, I’m in such grief that the common good has fallen apart that not even hope will ever be left better. Nor indeed is there now blame on him, in whose power everything resides, unless by chance that very fact should not have been so; but some things by chance, also others by my fault have happened in such a way that no complaint must be made about matters gone by. I see no hope left. So I go back to the beginning: you left behind things here wisely if by intention, luckily if by chance.