CCCCVII (F IX, 9)
DOLABELLA TO CICERO (IN EPIRUS)
Cæsar's Camp in Epirus (May or June)
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.[1] Such disasters I rather think have never
- [Footnote: he attempted to join Milo in Apulia, who was trying to secure by force
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.)]*
- ↑ This refers to the lines, fifteen miles long, drawn by Cæsar round Pompey's position on the bay of Dyrrachium. They were not, however, completed at the southern extremity, and shortly afterwards
