What portentous news I read daily you may understand from the pamphlet enclosed in this packet. Lentulus is at Puteoli, and, Caesius says, in a quandary what to do. He dreads a fiasco like that at Corfinium. He thinks he has done his duty by Pompey. He is influenced by Caesar's kindness; but he is influenced more by future prospects.
To think that you can bear this! Everything is
nihil miserius. Pompeius N. Magium de pace misit et tamen oppugnatur. Quod ego non credebam, sed habeo a Balbo litteras, quarum ad te exemplum misi. Lege, quaeso, et illud infimum caput ipsius Balbi optimi, cui Gnaeus noster locum, ubi hortos aedificaret, dedit, quem cui nostrum non saepe praetulit? Itaque miser torquetur. Sed, ne bis eadem legas, ad ipsam te epistulam reicio. Spem autem pacis habeo nullam. Dolabella suis litteris III Idus Mart. datis merum bellum loquitur. Maneamus ergo in illa eadem sententia misera et desperata, quando hoc miserius esse nihil potest.
[Sidenote: _Scr. Romae circ. X K. Apr. 705._]
Caesar nobis litteras perbreves misit; quarum exemplum subscripsi. Brevitate epistulae scire poteris eum valde esse distentum, qui tanta de re tam breviter scripserit. Si quid praeterea novi fuerit, statim tibi scribam.
A. d. VII Idus Martias Brundisium veni, ad murum castra posui. Pompeius est Brundisi. Misit ad me N. Magium de pace. Quae visa sunt, respondi. Hoc vos statim scire volui. Cum in spem venero de compositione aliquid me conficere, statim vos certiores faciam."
Quo modo me nunc putas, mi Cicero, torqueri, postquam rursus in spem pacis veni, ne qua res eorum compositionem impediat? Namque, quod absens
wretched, but nothing more wretched than this. Pompey sent N. Magius to speak of peace, and yet he is under siege. I did not believe it; but I have a letter from Balbus of which I send you a copy. Read it, please, and that clause at the end which contains the remarks of the good Balbus himself, to whom Pompey gave a site for his estate and whom he had often preferred to all of us. So he is in an agony of grief. But, that you may not have to read the same, twice over, I refer you to the letter. Of peace I have no hope. Dolabella in his letter of the 13th of March speaks of war pure and simple. So let us stick to the same opinion, that there is no hope, for nothing can be worse than all this.