Dialogue XVII

MARCUS BRUTUS--POMPONIUS ATTICUS.

Brutus.--Well, Atticus, I find that, notwithstanding your friendship for Cicero and for me, you survived us both many years, with the same cheerful spirit you had always possessed, and, by prudently wedding your daughter to Agrippa, secured the favour of Octavius Caesar, and even contracted a close alliance with him by your granddaughter’s marriage with Tiberius Nero.

Atticus.--You know, Brutus, my philosophy was the Epicurean. I loved my friends, and I served them in their wants and distresses with great generosity; but I did not think myself obliged to die when they died, or not to make others as occasions should offer.

Brutus.--You did, I acknowledge, serve your friends, as far as you could, without bringing yourself, on their account, into any great danger or disturbance of mind: but that you loved them I much doubt. If you loved Cicero, how could you love Antony? If you loved me, how could you love Octavius? If you loved Octavius, how could you avoid taking part against Antony in their last civil war? Affection cannot be so strangely divided, and with so much equality, among men of such opposite characters, and who were such irreconcilable enemies to each other.

Atticus.--From my earliest youth I possessed the singular talent of ingratiating myself with the heads of different parties, and yet not engaging with any of them so far as to disturb my own quiet. My family was connected with the Marian party; and, though I retired to Athens that I might not be unwillingly involved in the troubles which that turbulent faction had begun to excite, yet when young Marius was declared an enemy by the Senate, I sent him a sum of money to support him in his exile. Nor did this hinder me from making my court so well to Sylla, upon his coming to Athens, that I obtained from him the highest marks of his favour. Nevertheless, when he pressed me to go with him to Rome, I declined it, being as unwilling to fight for him against the Marian party, as for them against him. He admired my conduct; and at his departure from Athens, ordered all the presents made to him during his abode in that city to be carried to me. I remind you of this only to show that moderation in all contentions of this kind had been always my principle; and that in the instances you mentioned I did not act from any levity or inconstancy in my nature, but from a regular consistent plan of conduct, which my reason convinced me was the wisest I could follow.

Brutus.--I remember indeed that you observed the same neutrality between Pompey and Julius Caesar.

Atticus.--I did so--and that I might be able to do it with dignity, and without the reproach of ingratitude, I never would accept any office or honour from either of those great men; nor from Cicero, though my sister had married his brother; nor from you, Marcus Brutus, whose friendship I thought the greatest honour of my life.

Brutus.--Are there no obligations to a good heart, Pomponius, but honours and offices? Or could you, by refusing to encumber yourself with these, dissolve all other ties? But, setting aside any considerations of private affection or esteem, how was you able to reconcile your conduct with that which is the ruling principle in the heart of every virtuous man, and more especially a virtuous Roman, the love of the public?

Atticus.--The times I lived in were so bad, and the conflict of parties had so little to do in reality with the love of the public, that I thought my virtue much safer and purer by avoiding than mixing in the fray.

Brutus.--Possibly, in the dispute between Marius and Sylla, and even in that between Pompey and Caesar, a virtuous man might see so much to blame on both sides, and so much to fear, whichever faction should overcome the other, as to be justified in not engaging with either. But let me say, without vanity, in the war which I waged against Antony and Octavius you could have nothing to blame, for I know you approved the principle upon which I killed Julius Caesar. Nor had you anything to fear if our arms had succeeded, for you know that my intentions were upright and pure; nor was it doubtful that Cassius was as much determined as I to restore the Republic. How could you, then, with any sense of virtue in your heart, maintain an indifference and neutrality between the deliverers and the tyrants of your country?

Atticus.--My answer to this will necessarily require explanations, which my respect to the manes of Brutus makes me wish to avoid.

Brutus.--In the other world I loved truth, and was desirous that all might speak it with freedom; but here even the tender ears of a tyrant are compelled to endure it. If I committed any faults, or erred in my judgment, the calamities I have suffered are a punishment for it. Tell me then, truly, and without fear of offending, what you think were my failings.

Atticus.--You said that the principle upon which you killed Julius Caesar had my approbation. This I do not deny; but did I ever declare, or give you reason to believe, that I thought it a prudent or well-timed act? I had quite other thoughts. Nothing ever seemed to me worse judged or worse timed; and these, Brutus, were my reasons. Caesar was just setting out to make war on the Parthians. This was an enterprise of no little difficulty and no little danger; but his unbounded ambition, and that restless spirit which never would suffer him to take any repose, did not intend to stop there. You know very well (for he hid nothing from you) that he had formed a vast plan of marching, after he had conquered the whole Parthian Empire, along the coast of the Caspian Sea and the sides of Mount Caucasus into Scythia, in order to subdue all the countries that border on Germany, and Germany itself; from whence he proposed to return to Rome by Gaul. Consider now, I beseech you, how much time the execution of this project required. In some of his battles with so many fierce and warlike nations, the bravest of all the barbarians, he might have been slain; but, if he had not, disease, or age itself, might have ended his life before he could have completed such an immense undertaking. He was, when you killed him, in his fifty-sixth year, and of an infirm constitution. Except his bastard by Cleopatra, he had no son; nor was his power so absolute or so quietly settled that he could have a thought of bequeathing the Empire, like a private inheritance, to his sister’s grandson, Octavius. While he was absent there was no reason to fear any violence or maladministration in Italy or in Rome. Cicero would have had the chief authority in the Senate. The praetorship of the city had been conferred upon you by the favour of Caesar, and your known credit with him, added to the high reputation of your virtues and abilities, gave you a weight in all business which none of his party left behind him in Italy would have been able to oppose. What a fair prospect was here of good order, peace, and liberty at home, while abroad the Roman name would have been rendered more glorious, the disgrace of Crassus revenged, and the Empire extended beyond the utmost ambition of our forefathers by the greatest general that ever led the armies of Rome, or, perhaps, of any other nation! What did it signify whether in Asia, and among the barbarians, that general bore the name of King or Dictator? Nothing could be more puerile in you and your friends than to start so much at the proposition of his taking that name in Italy itself, when you had suffered him to enjoy all the power of royalty, and much more than any King of Rome had possessed from Romulus down to Tarquin.