Petrarch: Epistula M. Tullio Ciceroni

Si te superior offendit epistola (verum enim, ut ipse soles dicere, quod ait familiaris tuus in Andria: "Obsequium amicos, veritas odium parit"), accipe quod offensum animum ex parte mulceat, nec semper odiosa sit veritas; quoniam veris reprehensionibus irascimur, veris laudibus delectamur. Tu quidem, Cicero, quod pace tua dixerim, ut homo vixisti, ut orator dixisti, ut philosophus scripsisti. Vitam ego tuam carpsi, non ingenium aut linguam, ut qui illud mirer, hanc stupeam.

If the previous epistle offended you (for truly, as you yourself are wont to say, what your familiar says in the Andria: "Obsequium amicos, veritas odium parit"), receive something that may in part soothe the offended spirit, and that truth be not always odious; since at true reproofs we grow angry, by true praises we are delighted. You indeed, Cicero, if I may say this with your leave, lived as a man, spoke as an orator, wrote as a philosopher. It was your life that I picked at, not your genius or your tongue, as one who marvels at that, is astonished at this.

Neque tamen in vita tua quidquam praeter constantiam requiro, et professioni philosophicae debitum quietis studium, et a civilibus bellis fugam, extincta libertate ac sepulta iam et complorata Republica. Vide ut aliter tecum ago ac tu cum Epicuro multis in locis, sed expressius in libro De Finibus agebas. Eius enim ubilibet vitam probas, rides ingenium.

Nor yet in your life do I require anything beyond constancy, and, as due to the philosophic profession, a zeal for quiet, and a flight from civil wars, liberty having been extinguished and the Republic already buried and bewailed. See how I deal with you otherwise than you with Epicurus in many places, but more expressly in the book On Ends. For you everywhere approve his life, you laugh at his genius.

Ego nihil in te rideo, vitae tamen compatior, ut dixi, ingenio gratulor eloquiove. O Romani eloquii summe parens, nec solus ego, sed omnes tibi gratias agimus, quicumque Latinae linguae floribus ornamur; tuis enim prata de fontibus irrigamus, tuo ductu directos, tuis suffragiis adiutos, tuo nos lumine illustratos ingenue confitemur: tuis denique, ut ita dicam, auspiciis ad hanc, quantulacumque est, scribendi facultatem ac propositum pervenisse. Accessit et alter poeticae viae dux; ita enim necessitas poscebat, ut esset et quem solutis et quem fraenatis gressibus praeuntem sequeremur, quem loquentem, quem canentem miraremur, quoniam cum bona venia amborum neuter ad utrumque satis erat, ille tuis aequoribus, tu illius impar angustiis.

I laugh at nothing in you; nevertheless I have compassion for your life, as I said, and I congratulate you on your genius and your eloquence. O highest parent of Roman eloquence, and not I alone, but all of us give thanks to you, whoever are adorned with the flowers of the Latin language; for we irrigate our meadows from your fountains, we candidly confess ourselves to have been directed by your guidance, aided by your suffrages, illuminated by your light: finally, under your auspices, so to speak, we have come to this capacity and purpose of writing, however small it is. There has also come another guide of the poetic way; for necessity so demanded, that there might be one whom we should follow going before with unbridled steps and one with bridled steps, one whom we might admire speaking, one singing, since, with the good leave of both, neither was sufficient for both: he unequal to your open seas, you unequal to his narrow straits.

Non ego primus hoc dicerem fortasse, quamvis plane sentirem; dixit hoc ante me, seu ab aliis scriptum dixit, magnus quidem vir Annaeus Seneca Cordubensis, cui te, ut idem ipse conqueritur, non aetas quidem sed bellorum civilium furor eripuit. Videre te potuit, sed non vidit, magnus tamen operum tuorum atque illius alterius laudator. Apud hunc ergo quisque, suis eloquentiae finibus circumscriptus, collegae suo cedere iubetur in reliquis.

Not I would be the first to say this, perhaps, although I clearly felt it; this was said before me—or he said what had been written by others—by the great man Annaeus Seneca of Corduba, from whom, as he himself laments, you were snatched away not by age indeed but by the fury of civil wars. He could have seen you, but did not see you, yet he was a great praiser of your works and of that other’s. With this man, therefore, each person, circumscribed by his own bounds of eloquence, is bidden to yield to his colleague in the rest.

Verum expectatione te torqueo; quisnam dux ille sit quaeris? nosti hominem, si modo nominis meministi: Publius Virgilius Maro est, Mantuanus civis, de quo egregie vaticinatus es. Cum enim, ut scriptum legimus, iuvenile quoddam eius opusculum miratus, quaesivisses auctorem, eumque iuvenem iam senior vidisses, delectatus es, et de inexhausto eloquentiae tuae fonte, cum propria quidem laude permixtum verum tamen praeclarumque ac magnificum illi testimonium reddidisti. Dixisti enim:

But I rack you with expectation; who then is that leader, you ask? You know the man, if only you remember the name: it is Publius Vergilius Maro, a citizen of Mantua, about whom you vaticinated excellently. For when, as we read written, having admired a certain youthful opuscle of his, you had asked the author, and, already an elder, had seen him as a youth, you were delighted, and from the inexhaustible fount of your eloquence, though indeed mixed with personal praise, yet true and distinguished and magnificent, you rendered to him a testimony. For you said:

Magnae spes altera Romae.

The second hope of great Rome.

Quod dictum ex ore tuo auditum adeo sibi placuit inseditque memoriae, ut illud post annos viginti, te pridem rebus humanis exempto, divino operi suo eisdem penitus verbis insereret ; quod opus si videre licuisset metatus esses, de primo fiore tam certum te venturi fructus praesagium concepisse. Nec non et Latinis gratulatus Musis, quod insolentibus Graiis vel reliquissent ambiguam, vel certam victoriam abstulissent ; utriusque enim sententiae auctores sunt: te, si ex libris animum novi, quem noscere mihi non aliter quam si tecum vixissem videor, ultimae assertorem futurum, utque in oratoria dedisti, sic in poetica palmam Latio daturum, atque ut Aeneidi cederet Ilias iussurum fuisse non dubito, quod iam ab initio Virgiliani laboris Propertius asseverare non timuit. Ubi enim Pierii operis fundamenta contemplatus est, quid de illis sentiret, et quid speraret aperte pronunciavit his versibus:

Which saying, heard from your mouth, so pleased him and settled into his memory, that after twenty years, you having long since been removed from human affairs, he inserted it into his divine work in the very same words through and through ; which work, if it had been permitted you to see, you would have gauged that from the first blossom you had conceived so certain a presage of the fruit to come. Nor would you have failed also to congratulate the Latin Muses, that to the insolent Greeks they had either left an ambiguous victory, or had taken away a certain one ; for there are authorities for both opinions: you, if I know your mind from your books, which I seem to myself to know not otherwise than if I had lived with you, would be a champion of the latter, and as you have given the palm in oratory, so in poetry you would give it to Latium, and that you would have ordered the Iliad to yield to the Aeneid I do not doubt, which Propertius already from the beginning of Virgil’s labor did not fear to assert. For when he beheld the foundations of the Pierian work, what he felt about them, and what he hoped, he openly pronounced in these verses:

Cedite Romani scriptores, cedite Graii;
Nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade.

Yield, Roman writers, yield, Greeks;
I know not what greater is being born than the Iliad.

Haec de altero Latinae duce facundiae, magnaeque Romae spe altera. Nunc ad te revertor. Quid de vita, quid de ingenio tuo sentiam audisti.

These things about the other leader of Latin eloquence, and the other hope of great Rome. Now I return to you. You have heard what I think of your life, and what of your genius.

Expectas audire de libris tuis quaenam illos exceperit fortuna, quam seu vulgo seu doctioribus probentur. Extant equidem praeclara volumina, quae ne dicam perlegere, sed nec enumerare sufficimus. Fama rerum tuarum celeberrima atque ingens et sonorum nomen; perrari autem studiosi, seu temporum adversitas, seu ingeniorum hebetudo et segnities, seu quod magis arbitror, alio cogens animos cupiditas causa est.

You expect to hear about your books, what fortune has received them, how they are approved either by the vulgar or by the more learned. There do indeed exist preeminent volumes, which we are sufficient neither—let me not say to read through—nor even to enumerate. The fame of your affairs is most celebrated and vast, and your name sonorous; yet the studious are very rare—the cause is either the adversity of the times, or the dulness and sluggishness of wits, or, as I rather think, a cupidity compelling minds elsewhere.

Itaque librorum aliqui (nescio an irreparabiliter) nobiscum qui nunc vivimus, nisi fallor, procul dubio periere; magnus dolor meus, magnus saeculi nostri pudor, magna posteritatis iniuria. Neque enim satis infame visum est ingenia nostra negligere, ne quid inde fructuosum perciperet sequens aetas, nisi laboris etiam vestri fructum crudeli prorsus et intoleranda corrupissemus incuria. Namque quod in tuis conqueror et in multis virorum illustrium libris accidit; tuorum sane, quia de iis mihi nunc sermo erat, quorum insignior iactura est, haec sunt nomina: Reipublicae, Rei Familiaris, Res Militaris, De Laude Philosophiae, De Consolatione, De Gloria, quamvis de hoc ultimo magis mihi spes dubia, quam desperatio certa sit.

Therefore some of the books (I know not whether irreparably) have, unless I am mistaken, without doubt perished along with us who now live; a great pain of mine, a great shame of our age, a great injury to posterity. For it did not seem sufficiently infamous to neglect our ingenia, lest the following age should take anything fruitful therefrom, unless we also corrupted the fruit of your labor by utterly cruel and intolerable negligence. For that which I complain of in yours has happened also in many books of illustrious men; of yours indeed—since my discourse was now about them, of which the loss is more signal—these are the titles: On the Republic, On Household Affairs, Military Affairs, On the Praise of Philosophy, On Consolation, On Glory; although concerning this last I have rather a doubtful hope than a certain despair.

Quin et superstitum librorum magnas partes <...>, ita ut, veluti ingenti praelio oblivione et ignavia superatis, duces nostros non extinctos modo sed truncos quoque vel perditos necesse sit lugere. Hoc enim et in aliis multis, sed in tuis maximo Oratoris, atque Academicorum, et Legum libris patimur, qui ita truncati foedatique evaserunt, ut proprie melius fuerit periise.

Indeed even of the surviving books great portions <...>, such that, as if in a vast battle, with oblivion and ignavia having prevailed, it is necessary for us to mourn our leaders not only as extinguished but also as truncated or lost. For this we suffer in many others too, but in yours most especially in the books of the Orator, and of the Academics, and of the Laws, which have come forth so truncated and defiled that, properly speaking, it would have been better for them to have perished.

Reliquum est ut urbis Romae ac Romanae Reipublicae statum audire velis, quae patriae facies, quae civium concordia, ad quos rerum summa pervenerit, quibus manibus quantoque consilio fraena tractentur imperii? Isterne et Ganges, Iberus, Nilus et Tanais limites nostri sint? An vero quisquam surrexerit

It remains that you be willing to hear the state of the city of Rome and of the Roman Republic, what the face of the fatherland is, what the citizens’ concord, to whom the sum of affairs has come, by whose hands and with how great counsel the reins of the imperium are handled? Are the Ister and the Ganges, the Iberus, the Nile and the Tanais our boundaries? Or indeed has anyone arisen

Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris,

An empire with Ocean for its boundary, a fame that would terminate at the stars,

aut

super et Garamantas et Indos
Proferat imperium,

over both the Garamantes and the Indians
let him extend the empire,

ut amicus ille tuus Mantuanus ait. Haec et his similia cupidissime auditurum te auguror; id enim pietas tua suggerit, et amor erga patriam usque in tuam perniciem notissimus. Verum enim tacere melius fuerit.

as that Mantuan friend of yours says. These things and others like them I augur you will most eagerly hear; for your piety suggests it, and your love toward the fatherland, most well-known even unto your own ruin. But indeed to be silent would have been better.

Crede enim mihi, Cicero, si quo in statu res nostrae sunt audieris, excident tibi lacrimae, quamlibet vel coeli vel erebi partem teneas. Aeternum vale. Apud superos, ad sinistram Rhodani ripam in Transalpina Gallia eodem anno, XIV Kalendas Ianuarii.

Believe me, Cicero, if you should hear in what state our affairs are, tears will fall from you, whatever part of heaven or of Erebus you may hold. Farewell forever. Among the gods above, on the left bank of the Rhone in Transalpine Gaul in the same year, 14 Kalends of January.