Letter 11.13

I no longer give you thanks; for, since I can hardly repay in deed the man to whom I owe so much, the matter does not permit that he be satisfied with mere words. I want you to attend to what is now at hand; for, given your prudence, nothing will escape you, if you read my letter carefully. I was unable to pursue Antony at once, Cicero, for these reasons: I was without cavalry, without pack animals; I did not know that Hirtius had perished; and I did not trust Caesar [Octavian] before I had met with him and conferred with him. That day passed in this fashion. The next day, early in the morning, I was summoned by Pansa to Bononia [Bologna]; while I was on the road, it was reported to me that he had died. I hurried back to my little forces; for I can truly call them so: they are utterly depleted and, through want of everything, in very bad condition. Antony got two days' march ahead of me, fleeing by much longer marches than I made in pursuit; for he went straggling at random, while I went in good order. Wherever he went, he broke open the slave-prisons and seized the men; he halted nowhere before he came to Vada, a place which I want you to know: it lies between the Apennine and the Alps, exceedingly difficult for making the journey. When I was thirty miles distant from him and Ventidius had now joined himself to him, a speech of his was brought to me, in which he began to ask of his soldiers that they should follow him across the Alps; he said that he had an agreement with Marcus Lepidus. It was shouted back at him repeatedly by Ventidius's soldiers - for of his own he has very few indeed - that they must either perish in Italy or conquer, and they began to beg that they might march to Pollentia [Pollenzo]. When he could not hold them in check, he put off his own march to the following day. When this was reported to me, I at once sent five cohorts ahead to Pollentia and directed my own march thither: my garrison reached Pollentia an hour before Trebellius arrived with the cavalry. I was exceedingly glad; for in this I think the victory consists ****. They had come into the hope that they reckoned Plancus's four legions not a match for all their own forces, and did not believe that an army could be brought across from Italy so swiftly. The Allobroges and the whole cavalry, which had been sent ahead thither by us, were until now holding them off, who themselves up to this point were behaving arrogantly enough, and we are confident that they can be held off more easily upon our arrival. Nevertheless, if by some chance they should also cross the Isara, the utmost effort will be made by us that they inflict no harm upon the republic. We wish you to have great courage and the best of hope concerning the highest interests of the republic, since you see both us and our armies, joined together in singular concord, ready for everything on your behalf; but nevertheless you ought to relax nothing of your diligence and to take care that we may engage, as fully prepared as possible both in respect of the army and of all other things, for your safety against the most wicked conspiracy of the enemy - who indeed have suddenly turned to the peril of their fatherland those forces which they had long been assembling under the pretense of serving the republic.