Gaius Cassius Longinus

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  • c. 87–42 BC, Rome. Wrote and spoke in Latin. Senator and general, the leading organizer of the conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar; an open, self-identified Epicurean, confirmed in his own surviving letters to Cicero (Ad Familiares XV.16, 19). His life stands as the clearest ancient refutation of the caricature that Epicureans withdraw from politics and public danger: he raised and led armed r

    c. 87–42 BC, Rome. Wrote and spoke in Latin. Senator and general, the leading organizer of the conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar; an open, self-identified Epicurean, confirmed in his own surviving letters to Cicero (Ad Familiares XV.16, 19). His life stands as the clearest ancient refutation of the caricature that Epicureans withdraw from politics and public danger: he raised and led armed resistance against what he regarded as Caesar's one-man tyranny.

    1. Key Texts

    Quote from Cassius Longinus to Cicero, Ad Familiares XV.19, January 45 BC (tr. W. Glynn Williams)

    Cassius to Cicero

    Brundisium, latter half of January, 45 B.C.

    I hope that you are well. I assure you that on this tour of mine there is nothing that gives me more pleasure to do than to write to you; for I seem to be talking and joking with you face to face. And yet that does not come to pass because of those “spectres”; and, by way of retaliation for that, in my next letter I shall let loose upon you such a rabble of Stoic boors that you will proclaim Catius a true-born Athenian.

    I am glad that our friend Pansa was sped on his way by universal goodwill when he left the city in military uniform, and that not only on my own account, but also, most assuredly, on that of all our friends. For I hope that men generally will come to understand how much all the world hates cruelty, and how much it loves integrity and clemency, and that the blessings most eagerly sought and coveted by the bad ultimately find their way to the good. _For it is hard to convince men that “the good is to be chosen for its own sake”; but that pleasure and tranquillity of mind is acquired by virtue, justice, and the good is both true and demonstrable._ Why, Epicurus himself, from whom all the Catiuses and Amafiniuses in the world, incompetent translators of terms as they are, derive their origin, lays it down that “to live a life of pleasure is impossible without living a life of virtue and justice.”

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