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XVIII
XVIII
To M. Porcius Cato (at Rome)
Cilicia, January, 50 B.C.
Your own immense prestige and my unvarying belief in your consummate
virtue have convinced me of the great importance it is to me that you should
be acquainted with what I have accomplished, and that you should not be
ignorant of the equity and disinterestedness with which I protected our allies
and governed my province. For if you knew these facts, I thought I should with
greater ease secure your approval of my wishes.
Having entered my province on the last day of July, and seeing that the
time of year made it necessary for me to make all haste to the army, I spent
but two days at Laodicea, four at Apamea, three at Synnada, and the same at
Philomelium. Having held largely attended assizes in these towns, I freed a
great number of cities from very vexatious tributes, excessive interest, and
fraudulent debt. Again, the army having before my arrival been broken up by
something like a mutiny, and five cohorts - without a legate or a military
tribune, and, in fact, actually without a single centurion - having taken up
its quarters at Philomelium, while the rest of the army was in Lycaonia, I
ordered my legate M. Anneius to bring those five cohorts to join the main
army; and, having thus got the whole army together into one place, to pitch a
camp at Iconium in Lycaonia. This order having been energetically executed by
him, I arrived at the camp myself on the 24th of August, having meanwhile, in
accordance with the decree of the senate, collected in the intervening days a
strong body of reserve men, a very adequate force of cavalry, and a contingent
of volunteers from the free peoples and allied sovereigns. While this was
going on, and when, after reviewing the army, I had on the 28th of August
begun my march to Cilicia, some legates sent to me by the sovereign of
Commagene announced, with every sign of panic, yet not without some
foundation, that the Parthians had entered Syria. On hearing this I was
rendered very anxious both for Syria and my own province, and, in fact, for
all the rest of Asia. Accordingly, I made up my mind that I must lead the army
through the district of Cappadocia, which adjoins Cilicia. For if I had gone
straight down into Cilicia, I could easily indeed have held Cilicia itself,
owing to the natural strength of Mount Amanus - for there are only two defiles
opening into Cilicia from Syria, both of which are capable of being closed by
insignificant garrisons owing to their narrowness, nor can anything be
imagined better fortified than is Cilicia on the Syrian side - but I was
disturbed for Cappadocia, which is quite open on the Syrian side, and is
surrounded by kings, who, even if they are our friends in secret, nevertheless
do not venture to be openly hostile to the Parthians. Accordingly, I pitched
my camp in the extreme south of Cappadocia at the town of Cybistra, not far
from Mount Taurus, with the object at once of covering Cilicia, and of
thwarting the designs of the neighbouring tribes by holding Cappadocia.
Meanwhile, in the midst of this serious commotion and anxious expectation of a
very formidable war, King Deiotarus, who has with good reason been always
highly honoured in your judgment and my own, as well as that of the senate - a
man distinguished for his good will and loyalty to the Roman people, as well
as for his eminent courage and wisdom - sent legates to tell me that he was on
his way to my camp in full force. Much affected by his zeal and kindness, I
sent him a letter of thanks, and urged him to hasten. However, being detained
at Cybistra five days while maturing my plan of campaign, I rescued King
Ariobarzanes, whose safety had been intrusted to me by the senate on your
motion, from a plot that, to his surprise, had been formed against him: and I
not only saved his life, but I took pains also to secure that his royal
authority should be respected. Metras and Athenaeus (the latter strongly
commended to me by yourself), who had been exiled owing to the persistent
enmity of Queen Athenais, I restored to a position of the highest influence
and favour with the king. Then, as there was danger of serious hostilities
arising in Cappadocia in case the priest, as it was thought likely that he
would do, defended himself with arms - for he was a young man, well furnished
with horse and foot and money, and relying on those all who desired political
change of any sort - I contrived that he should leave the kingdom: and that
the king, without civil war or an appeal to arms, with the full authority of
the court thoroughly secured, should hold the kingdom with proper dignity.
Meanwhile, I was informed by despatches and messengers from many sides,
that the Parthians and Arabs had approached the town of Antioch in great
force, and that a large body of their horsemen, which had crossed into
Cilicia, had been cut to pieces by some squadrons of my cavalry and the
praetorian cohort then on garrison duty at Epiphanea. Wherefore, seeing that
the forces of the Parthians had turned their backs upon Cappadocia, and were
not far from the frontiers of Cilicia, I led my army to Amanus with the
longest forced marches I could. Arrived there, I learnt that the enemy had
retired from Antioch, and that Bibulus was at Antioch. I thereupon informed
Deiotarus, who was hurrying to join me with a large and strong body of horse
and foot, and with all the forces he could muster, that I saw no reason for
his leaving his own dominions, and that in case of any new event, I would
immediately write and send to him. And as my intention in coming had been to
relieve both provinces, should occasion arise, so now I proceeded to do what I
had all along made up my mind was greatly to the interest of both provinces,
namely, to reduce Amanus, and to remove from that mountain an eternal enemy.
So I made a feint of retiring from the mountain and making for other parts of
Cilicia: and having gone a day`s march from Amanus and pitched a camp, on the
12th of October, towards evening, at Epiphanea, with my army in light marching
order I effected such a night march, that by dawn on the 13th I was already
ascending Amanus. Having formed the cohorts and auxiliaries into several
columns of attack - I and my legate Quintus (my brother) commanding one, my
legate C. Pomptinus another, and my legates M. Anneius and L. Tullius the rest
- we surprised most of the inhabitants, who, being cut off from all retreat,
were killed or taken prisoners. But Erana, which was more like a town than a
village, and was the capital of Amanus, as also Sepyra and Commoris, which
offered a determined and protracted resistance from before daybreak till four
in the afternoon - Pomptinus being in command in that part of Amanus - we
took, after killing a great number of the enemy, and stormed and set fire to
several fortresses. After these operations we lay encamped for four days on
the spurs of Amanus, near the Arae Alexandri, and all that time we devoted to
the destruction of the remaining inhabitants of Amanus, and devastating their
lands on that side of the mountain which belongs to my province. Having
accomplished this, I led the army away to Pindenissus, a town of the
Eleutherocilices. And since this town was situated on a very lofty and
strongly fortified spot, and was inhabited by men who have never submitted
even to the kings, and since they were offering harbourage to deserters, and
were eagerly expecting the arrival of the Parthians, I thought it of
importance to the prestige of the empire to suppress their audacity, in order
that there might be less difficulty in breaking the spirits of all such as
were anywhere disaffected to our rule. I encircled them with a stockade and
trench: I beleaguered them with six forts and huge camps: I assaulted them by
the aid of earth-works, pent-houses, and towers: and having employed
numerous catapults and bowmen, with great personal labour, and without
troubling the allies or costing them anything, I reduced them to such
extremities that, after every region of their town had been battered down or
fired, they surrendered to me on the fifty-seventh day. Their next
neighbours were the people of Tebara, no less predatory and audacious: from
them after the capture of Pindenissus I received hostages. I then dismissed
the army to winter quarters; and I put my brother in command, with orders to
station the men in villages that had either been captured or were disaffected.
Well, now, I would have you feel convinced that, should a motion be
brought before the senate of these matters, I shall consider that the highest
possible compliment has been paid me, if you give your vote in favour of a
mark of honour being bestowed upon me. And as to this, though I am aware that
in such matters men of the most respectable character are accustomed to ask
and to be asked, yet I think in your case that it is rather a reminder than a
request which is called for from me. For it is you who have on very many
occasions complimented me in votes which you delivered, who have praised me to
the skies in conversation, in panegyric, in the most laudatory speeches in
senate and public meeting: you are the man to whose words I ever attached such
weight as to hold myself in possession of my utmost ambition, if your lips
joined the chorus of my praise. It was you finally, as I recollect, who said,
when voting against a supplication in honour of a certain illustrious and
noble person, that you would have voted for it, if the motion had related to
what he had done in the city as consul. It was you, too, who voted for
granting me a supplicatio, though only a civilian, not as had been done in
many instances, "for good services to the state," but, as I remember, "for
having saved the state." I pass over your having shared the hatred I excited,
the dangers I ran, all the storms that I have encountered, and your having
been entirely ready to have shared them much more fully if I had allowed it;
and finally your having regarded my enemy as your own; of whose death even -
thus shewing me clearly how much you valued me - you manifested your approval
by supporting the cause of Milo in the senate. On the other hand, I have borne
a testimony to you, which I do not regard as constituting any claim on your
gratitude, but as a frank expression of genuine opinion: for I did not confine
myself to a silent admiration of your eminent virtues - who does not admire
them? But in all forms of speech, whether in the senate or at the bar; in all
kinds of writing, Greek or Latin; in fine, in all the various branches of my
literary activity, I proclaimed your superiority not only to contemporaries,
but also to those of whom we have heard in history.
You will ask, perhaps, why I place such value on this or that modicum of
congratulation or compliment from the senate. I will be frank with you, as our
common tastes and mutual good services, our close friendship, nay, the
intimacy of our fathers demand. If there ever was anyone by natural
inclination, and still more, I think, by reason and reflexion, averse from the
empty praise and comments of the vulgar, I am certainly the man. Witness my
consulship, in which, as in the rest of my life, I confess that I eagerly
pursued the objects capable of producing true glory: mere glory for its own
sake I never thought a subject for ambition. Accordingly, I not only passed
over a province after the votes for its outfit had been taken, but also with
it an almost certain hope of a triumph; and finally the priesthood, though, as
I think you will agree with me, I could have obtained it without much
difficulty, I did not try to get. Yet after my unjust disgrace - always
stigmatized by you as a disaster to the Republic, and rather an honour than a
disaster to myself - I was anxious that some very signal marks of the
approbation of the senate and Roman people should be put on record.
Accordingly, in the first place, I did subsequently wish for the augurship,
about which I had not troubled myself before; and the compliment usually paid
by the senate in the case of success in war, though passed over by me in old
times, I now think an object to be desired. That you should approve and
support this wish of mine, in which you may trace a strong desire to heal the
wounds inflicted upon me by my disgrace, though I a little while ago declared
that I would not ask it, I now do earnestly ask of you: but only on condition
that you shall not think my humble services paltry and insignificant, but of
such a nature and importance, that many for far less signal successes have
obtained the highest honours from the senate. I have, too, I think, noticed
this - for you know how attentively I ever listen to you - that in granting or
withholding honours you are accustomed to look not so much to the particular
achievements as to the character, the principles and conduct of commanders.
Well, if you apply this test to my case, you will find that, with a weak army,
my strongest support against the threat of a very formidable war has been my
equity and purity of conduct. With these as my aids I accomplished what I
never could have accomplished by any amount of legions: among the allies I
have created the warmest devotion in place of the most extreme alienation; the
most complete loyalty in place of the most dangerous disaffection; and their
spirits fluttered by the prospect of change I have brought back to feelings of
affection for the old rule.
But I have said too much of myself, especially to you, in whom singly the
grievances of all our allies alike find a listener. You will learn the truth
from those who think themselves restored to life by my administration. And
while all with nearly one consent will praise me in your hearing as I most
desire to be praised, so will your two chief client states - the island of
Cyprus and the kingdom of Cappadocia - have something to say to you about me
also. So, too, I think, will Deiotarus, who is attached to you with special
warmth. Now, if these things are above the common run, and if in all ages it
has been rarer to find men capable of conquering their own desires than
capable of conquering an enemy`s army, it is quite in harmony with your
principles, when you find these rarer and more difficult virtues combined with
success in war, to regard that success itself as more complete and glorious.
I have only one last resource - philosophy: and to make her plead for me,
as though I doubted the efficacy of a mere request: philosophy, the best
friend I have ever had in all my life, the greatest gift which has been
bestowed by the gods upon mankind. Yes! this common sympathy in tastes and
studies - our inseparable devotion and attachment to which from boyhood have
caused us to become almost unique examples of men bringing that true and
ancient philosophy (which some regard as only the employment of leisure and
idleness) down to the forum, the council chamber, and the very camp itself -
pleads the cause of my glory with you: and I do not think a Cato can, with a
good conscience, say her nay. Wherefore I would have you convince yourself
that, if my despatch is made the ground of paying me this compliment with your
concurrence, I shall consider that the dearest wish of my heart has been
fulfilled owing at once to your influence and to your friendship.
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