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Updated: May 19, 2025
1 January, in the consulship of M. Messalla and M. Piso. Cicero had undertaken to be the advocate and supporter of Antonius, and though as an actual patronus in court he could not take money, he may have felt justified in receiving supplies from him. The celebration referred to here took place on the night between the 3rd and 4th of December.
You bid me finish the poem in his honour which I had begun; and although I have been diverted from it by business, and still more by my feelings, yet, since Cæsar knows that I did begin something, I will return to my design, and will complete in these leisure days of the "supplications," during which I greatly rejoice that our friend Messalla and the rest are at last relieved from worry.
"Such deeds are too great for my song. I shall be satisfied if I can but praise your verses." The most significant passage is the implied comparison of Valerius Messalla with the founder of the Valerian family who had aided the first Brutus in establishing the republic as he now was aiding the last Brutus in restoring it.
Was this the master you chose? Could you bring your tongue to give him the name of Augustus? Could you stoop to beg consulships and triumphs from him? Oh, shame to virtue! Oh, degeneracy of Rome! To what infamy are her sons, her noblest sons, fallen. The thought of it pains me more than the wound that I died of; it stabs my soul. Messalla. Moderate, Cato, the vehemence of your indignation.
In reckoning on him as certain to be consul with Domitius, you are quite in agreement with my own opinion. I will guarantee Messalla to Cæsar: but Memmius cherishes a hope, founded on Cæsar's return to Italy, in which I think he is under a mistake. He is, indeed, quite out of it here. Scaurus, again, has been long ago thrown over by Pompey.
Messalla, to whom the poem was dedicated, joined his lot with that of Mark Antony and Egypt after the battle of Philippi, and for Antony Vergil had no love. The poem lay neglected till he lost interest in a style of work that was passing out of fashion. Finding a more congenial form in the pastoral he sacrificed the Ciris.
As to your question about Messalla, I don't know what to say: I have never seen candidates so closely matched. Messalla's means of support you know. Scaurus has had notice of prosecution from Triarius. If you ask me, no great feeling of sympathy for him has been roused.
In the volume of poems which includes the posthumous elegies of Tibullus, there is also contained a group of short pieces by another lady of high birth and social standing, a niece of Messalla and a daughter of Servius Sulpicius, and so belonging by both parents to the inner circle of the aristocracy. Nothing is known of her life beyond what can be gathered from the poems.
Messalla as yet is strongly for severe measures. The loyalists hold aloof owing to the entreaties of Clodius: bands of ruffians are being got together: I myself, at first a stern Lycurgus, am becoming daily less and less keen about it: Cato is hot and eager.
The tribune Fufius then gave in. Clodius delivered some wretched speeches to the people, in which he bestowed some injurious epithets on Lucullus, Hortensius, C. Piso, and the consul Messalla; me he only charged with having "discovered" everything.
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