To-morrow therefore I shall be in Sicca’s suburban villa; thence, as you advise, I think I shall stay in your house at Ficulea.3 We will talk about the subject you mention when we meet, as I am coming in person. I am extraordinarily touched by your kindness, thoroughness, and wisdom, both in carrying out my business and in forming and suggesting plans to me in your letters. However, if you come to any understanding with Silius, even on the very day on which I am to arrive at Sicca’s house, please let me know, and above all, what part of the site he wishes to withdraw from the sale. You say “the farthest”—take care that it isn’t the very spot, for the sake of which I thought about the matter at all.4

The search for a suitable plot rumbled on for some time after Silius’ land became unavailable. Cicero even sought to purchase some gardens on the Tiber owned by Clodia, whom he had painted in unflattering terms in a court case some ten years previously (see earlier story). But in the end it seems that his project never bore fruit.

1 Cicero wished to build a shrine in honour of Tullia’s memory. His first idea was to do this at Astura: but he soon changed to the plan of purchasing suburban horti.

2 If consecrated, the building would not change hands with a change of owners of the property.

3 Some villa of Atticus’s at Ficulnea, about ten miles from Rome on the Via Nomentana.

4 That is, the part of the property on which he would build the memorial fane to Tullia.

CAESAR VERSUS POMPEY

Pharsalia, Book I

Lucan

Translated by A. S. Kline, 2014

In 60 BC, Julius Caesar forged an alliance for power in Rome with Pompey the Great and a wealthy man named Marcus Licinius Crassus. The deal was sealed with the betrothal of Caesar’s daughter Julia to Pompey. The three leaders were able to dominate Roman politics for a time. But the relationship between Pompey and Caesar deteriorated rapidly after Julia died in childbirth in 54 BC and Crassus perished in a disastrous war against the Parthians in the east a year later. The short life of the poet Lucan (AD 39–65), a nephew of Seneca the Younger, ended when he was forced to commit suicide for allegedly conspiring against the emperor Nero. Happily for us, he had already written his epic Pharsalia, one of the great Roman history poems. Here he describes the moment in 49 BC when Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his forces, initiating civil war. The decisive battle was fought at Pharsalus, in central Greece, and led to Pompey being beheaded.

For a short while a discordant harmony was maintained, there was

peace despite the leaders’ wills, since Crassus stood between them,

a check to imminent war. So the slender Isthmus divides the waves,

and separates two seas, forbidding their waters to merge; and yet