United States or Jersey ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The trial had been hurried on lest he should use the Sardinian money in bribing for the consulship. Hence he could not begin distributing his gifts to the electors till after September 2nd, and his rivals Domitius and Messalla got the start of him. Favonius was a close imitator of Cato's Stoicism.
Later, after his defeat and submission, Messalla had of course to suppress every indication that might connect him with "tyrannicide" stock or faction. The poem, therefore, must have been written before Messalla's surrender in 42 B.C. The poet's silences and hesitation in touching upon this subject of civil war are significant of his mood.
But there is another poem addressed to Messalla that is equally full of personal interest. Messalla, as we know from Plutarch's Brutus, drawn partly from the young man's diary, joined Cassius in Asia, and did noteworthy service in helping his general win the Eastern provinces from the Euxine to Syria for the Republican cause.
Your Augustus and you, after the ruin of our liberty, made Rome a Greek city, an academy of fine wits, another Athens under the government of Demetrius Phalareus. I had much rather have seen her under Fabricius and Curius, and her other honest old consuls, who could not read. Messalla. Yet to these writers she will owe as much of her glory as she did to those heroes.
Had you not better have gone into a voluntary exile, where you would not have seen the face of the tyrant, and where you might have quietly practised those private virtues which are all that the gods require from good men in certain situations? Messalla. No; I did much more good by continuing at Rome.
* Some believe this tomb to have been that of Messalla Corvinus, the historian and poet, a friend of Augustus and Horace; others ascribe it to his son, Aurelius Messallinus Cotta. Trans. Pierre, having driven in a cab as far as the tomb of Caecilia Metella, continued his excursion on foot, going slowly towards Casale Rotondo.
There may well have been a number of similar epigrams directed at Antony himself, but if so they would of course have been destroyed during the reign of the triumvirate. Antony's vindictiveness knew no bounds, as Rome learned when Cicero was murdered. Vergil's dedication of the Ciris to Valerius Messalla was, as the poem itself reveals, written several years after the main body of the poem.
I can see that our friend Messalla will be consul, if by means of an interrex, without any prosecution, if by that of a dictator, without danger of conviction. He is not disliked by anyone. Hortensius's warm support will stand him in good stead. Gabinius's acquittal is looked upon as a general act of indemnity. En passant: nothing has, after all, been done as yet about a dictatorship.
All these circumstances are made to occur in such rapid succession to each other that they occupied only one year, if so much; for they are all shown as taking place during the consulship of Valerius Asiaticus and Valerius Messalla. Now let the reader turn to the Life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus.
Our friend Messalla and his fellow candidate, Domitius Calvinus, have been very liberal to the people. Nothing can exceed their popularity. They are certain to be consuls. But the senate has passed a decree that a "trial with closed doors" should be held before the elections in respect to each of the candidates severally by the panels already allotted to them all.
Word Of The Day