at any rate to have been the case-with respect of your duty two
positions may be maintained, either the one which I am in the habit of
taking, that your loyalty and friendship to Caesar are to be praised, or
the one which some people take, that the freedom of one's fatherland is
to be esteemed more than the life of one's friend. I wish that my
discussions springing out of these conversations had been repeated to
you.
"Indeed, who mentions either more gladly or more frequently than I the
two following facts, which are especially to your honor? The fact that
you were the most influential opponent of the Civil War, and that you
were the most earnest advocate of temperance in the moment of victory,
and in this matter I have found no one to disagree with me. Wherefore I
am grateful to our friend Trebatius for giving me an opportunity to
write this letter, and if you are not convinced by it, you will think
me destitute of all sense of duty and kindness; and nothing more
serious to me than that or more foreign to your own nature can happen."
In all the correspondence of Cicero there is not a letter written with more force and delicacy of feeling, none better suited to accomplish its purpose than this letter to Matius. It is a work of art; but in that fact lies its defect, and in that respect it is in contrast to the answer which it called forth from Matius, The reply of Matius stands on a level with another better-known non-Ciceronian epistle, the famous letter of condolence which Servius wrote to Cicero after the death of Cicero's daughter, Tullia; but it is finer, for, while Servius is stilted and full of philosophical platitudes, Matius, like Shakespeare's Antony, "only speaks right on," in telling Cicero of his grief at Caesar's death, of his indignation at the intolerant attitude of the assassins, and his determination to treasure the memory of Caesar at any cost. This is his letter:
"Matius to Cicero, greeting[146]
"I derived great pleasure from your letter, because I saw that you held
such an opinion about me as I had hoped you would hold, and wished you
to hold; and although, in regard to that opinion, I had no misgivings,
still, inasmuch as I considered it a matter of the greatest importance,
I was anxious that it should continue unchanged. And then I was
conscious of having done nothing to offend any good citizen; therefore
I was the less inclined to believe that you, endowed as you are with so
many excellent qualities, could be influenced by any idle rumors,
especially as my friendship toward you had been and was sincere and
unbroken. Since I know that matters stand in this respect as I have
wished them to stand, I will reply to the charges, which you have often
refuted in my behalf in such a way as one would expect from that
kindness of heart characteristic of you and from our friendship. It is
true that what men said against me after the death of Caesar was known
to me. They call it a sin of mine that I sorrow over the death of a man
dear to me, and because I grieve that he whom I loved is no more, for
they say that 'fatherland should be above friendship,' just as if they
had proved already that his death has been of service to the state. But
I will make no subtle plea. I confess that I have not attained to your
high philosophic planes; for, on the one hand, in the Civil War I did
not follow a Caesar, but a friend, and although I was grieved at the
state of things, still I did not desert him; nor, on the other hand,
did I at any time approve of the Civil War, nor even of the reason for
strife, which I most earnestly sought to extinguish when it was
kindling. Therefore, in the moment of victory for one bound to me by
the closest ties, I was not captivated by the charm either of public
office or of gold, while his other friends, although they had less
influence with him than I, misused these rewards in no small degree.
Nay, even my own property was impaired by a law of Caesar's, thanks to
which very law many who rejoice at the death of Caesar have remained at
Rome. I have worked as for my own welfare that conquered citizens might
be spared.
"Then may not I, who have desired the welfare of all, be indignant
that he, from whom this favor came, is dead? especially since the very
men who were forgiven have brought him both unpopularity and death. You
shall be punished, then, they say, 'since you dare to disapprove of our
deed.' Unheard of arrogance, that some men glory in their crime, that
others may not even sorrow over it without punishment! But it has
always been the unquestioned right, even of slaves, to fear, to
rejoice, to grieve according to the dictates of their own feelings
rather than at the bidding of another man; of these rights, as things
stand now, to judge from what these champions of freedom keep saying,
they are trying to deprive us by intimidation; but their efforts are
useless. I shall never be driven by the terrors of any danger from the
path of duty or from the claims of friendship, for I have never thought
that a man should shrink from an honorable death; nay, I have often
thought that he should seek it. But why are they angry at me, if I wish
them to repent of their deed? for I desire to have Caesar's death a
bitter thing to all men.
"'But I ought as a citizen to desire the welfare of the state.' Unless
my life in the past and my hope for the future, without words from me,
prove that I desire that very end, I do not seek to establish the fact
by words. Wherefore I beg you the more earnestly to consider deeds more
than words, and to believe, if you feel that it is well for the right
to prevail, that I can have no intercourse with dishonorable men. For
am I now, in my declining years, to change that course of action which
I maintained in my youth, when I might even have gone astray with hope
of indulgence, and am I to undo my life's work? I will not do so. Yet I
shall take no step which may be displeasing to any man, except to
grieve at the cruel fate of one most closely bound to me, of one who
was a most illustrious man. But if I were otherwise minded, I would
never deny what I was doing lest I should be regarded as shameless in
doing wrong, a coward and a hypocrite in concealing it.
"'Yet the games which the young Caesar gave in memory of Caesar's victory
I superintended.' But that has to do with my private obligation and not
with the condition of the state; a duty, however, which I owed to the
memory and the distinguished position of a dear friend even though he
was dead, a duty which I could not decline when asked by a young man of
most excellent promise and most worthy of Caesar. 'I even went
frequently to the house of the consul Antony to pay my respects!' to
whom you will find that those who think that I am lacking in devotion
to my country kept coming in throngs to ask some favor forsooth or
secure some reward. But what arrogance this is that, while Caesar never
interfered with my cultivating the friendship of men whom I pleased,
even when he himself did not like them, these men who have taken my
friend from me should try to prevent me by their slander from loving
those whom I will.
"But I am not afraid lest the moderation of my life may prove too weak
to withstand false reports, or that even those who do not love me
because of my loyalty to Caesar may not prefer to have friends like me
rather than like themselves. So far as I myself am concerned, if what I
prefer shall be my lot, the life which is left me I shall spend in
retirement at Rhodes; but if some untoward circumstance shall prevent