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Updated: May 31, 2025
I HAVE received from Gabius Bassus the letter you mention, acquainting me that the number of soldiers I had ordered him was not sufficient; and for your information I have directed my answer to be hereunto annexed. It is very material to distinguish between what the exigency of affairs requires and what an ambitious desire of extending power may think necessary.
I have annexed to my letter the decree of Calvus, and the edict by which the persons above-mentioned were restored, as also the decree of Bassus.
And if there come a civil strife, with proscription, confiscation, massacre, it shall go hard with Caius Crispus, if he achieve not greatness!" "And you," said the man, turning short round, without replying to the smith, and addressing the aged Bassus, "why did you join the plotters, you who are so crafty, so sagacious, and yet so earnest in the cause?"
For while our regard for you and Bassus is such that we shall use all our resources, energy, and influence to obtain the advancement of Bassus, no matter to what consul he is assigned as quaestor as well as the advancement of any quaestor that may be allotted to you it would be immensely gratifying to us if we could at one and the same time prove our friendship and advance your interests as consul by helping the cause of our young friend, and if you of all people, whose wishes the Senate is so ready to gratify, and in whose recommendations they place such implicit trust, were to stand forth as the seconder of my desires.
But eager always to increase the riches of virtue, he longed, in imitation of the divine Moses and Elias, to fast forty days; and tried to persuade Bassus, who was then set over the priests in the villages, to leave nothing within by him, but to close up the door with clay. He spoke to him of the difficulty, and warned him not to think that a violent death was a virtue.
On this occasion he was summoned by both sides, but entered the space between the city and the camps and before making any answer auctioned off his services; and as Bassus offered more money he assisted him, and in the battle wrought great havoc with his arrows.
At any rate it did not appear until after his death, when his friend Caesius Bassus undertook to bring it out; so that we may fairly regard it as a collection of youthful reflections as to the advisability of publishing which the poet had not yet made up his mind, and perhaps had he lived would have suppressed.
So Bassus at first remained quiet, satisfied to be allowed to live: when, however, some similar persons had associated themselves with him and he had attracted to his enterprise various soldiers of Sextus who at various times came there to garrison the city, and likewise many alarming reports kept coming in from Africa about Caesar, he was no longer pleased with existing circumstances but raised a rebellion, his aim being either to help the followers of Scipio and Cato and the Pompeians or to clothe himself in some authority.
As he was coming out of the house, he received a note from Rectina, the wife of Bassus, who was in the utmost alarm at the imminent danger which threatened her; for her villa lying at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, there was no way of escape but by sea; she earnestly entreated him therefore to come to her assistance.
Within a short time of their impeaching Julius Bassus the Bithynians brought a second action, this time against Rufus Varenus, their proconsul, the very man whom, in their action against Bassus, they had received permission, at their own request, to retain as their advocate.
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