Authors, Latin -- Biography; Cicero, Marcus Tullius; Statesmen -- Rome -- Biography
From thence he wrote to Atticus, saying that he hardly saw the advantage
of complying with advice which had been given to him that he should
travel incognito to Rome. But it is the special reason given which
strikes us as being so unlike the arguments which would prevail to-day:
"Nor have I resting-places on the way sufficiently convenient for me to
pass the entire daytime within them."[130] The "diversorium" was a place
by the roadside which was always ready should the owner desire to come
that way. It must be understood that he travelled with attendants, and
carried his food with him, or sent it on before. We see at every turn
how much money could do; but we see also how little money had done for
the general comfort of the people. Brundisium is above three hundred
miles from Rome, and the journey is the same which Horace took
afterward, going from the city.[131] Much had then been done to make
travelling comfortable, or at any rate cheaper than it had been
four-and-twenty years before. But now the journey was not made. He
reminds Atticus in the letter that if he had not written through so long
an interval it was not because there had been a dearth of subjects. It
had been no doubt prudent for a man to be silent when so many eyes and
so many ears were on the watch. He writes again some days later, and
assures Atticus that Caesar thinks well of his "lictors!" Oh those
eternal lictors! "But what have I to do with lictors," he says, "who am
almost ordered to leave the shores of Italy?"[132] And then Caesar had
sent angry messages. Cato and Metellus had been said to have come home.
Caesar did not choose that this should be so, and had ordered them away.
It was clearly manifest to every man alive now that Caesar was the actual
master of Italy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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