I. ad Att. I. 2 II. ad Att. III. 5 XI. ad Att. IX. 16 XIV. ad Fam. IX. 20. PAGE 1 INTRODUCTION. I. VALUE OF THE CORRESPONDENCE. THE growing recognition of the great value of Cicero's letters for school use rests, primarily, upon the fact that through the letters we come not only to learn of great deeds not elsewhere so well recorded, but to feel, also, the man himself more personally and to know him more intimately than is possible in any other way. The importance of this fact is heightened by the circumstance that it is Cicero alone, of all the men of antiquity, whose thoughts and purposes and feelings in his daily private life we find so fully recorded and revealed. Had it been a less important personage whose letters we possessed, living at a less momentous day of Rome's history, still the unvarnished picture of a Roman's daily life, in such minute detail, at so many places and seasons, would have afforded us an excellent source of information for reconstructing our view of that ancient day. But this is Cicero! large of nature, leader of men, brilliant of mind, wide of interests; living, besides, in the mightiest day of Rome's political drama. The consequence is our possession of a work not merely of the very highest documentary importance, but of exceedingly great literary interest as well. II. FAMILIAR STYLE. For the scholar, indeed, the letters of Cicero are of unique value, in that the style of the letters is not the formal and polished style of the recognized branches of literary art, for in Cicero's day private correspondence was not yet felt to require that elaborate care in expression which real literature demanded. They show the common language of daily intercourse; bright and elegant in this case, to be sure, coming from the brain of cultivated Cicero, but familiar in tone, abounding in colloquialisms and extravagances of expression, and rich in epistolary tenses, coined words, Greek phrases, diminutives, and many other peculiarities of expression. III. EXTENT, NOW AND IN ANTIQUITY. The complete works of Cicero as published to-day include a collection of 870 letters, or, counting letters sent as inclosures, upwards of 50 more. These are arranged in five groups. First, sixteen books commonly called ad Familiares; second, three books called ad Quintum Fratrem, including 28 letters to Cicero's brother Quintus; third, sixteen books commonly called ad Atticum, including about 397 letters written to Atticus, none from Atticus to Cicero; fourth, two books ad Brutum having 23 letters to or from M. Brutus; fifth, a long letter De Petitione Consulatus, apparently written by Quintus to Cicero. Besides these the ancients ent groups of Cicero's letters. lection ad Brutum was Book knew of other and differBook I. of our present colIX. in a larger collection. To Cornelius Nepos there were known two books; to Hirtius, at least nine books; to Pompey, four books; to Caesar, three books; to Octavius, three books; and more to Pansa, Axius, Cicero's son Marcus, Calvus, and others. Of all this correspondence, however, the collections which remain are less than half. IV. ORIGIN OF THE COLLECTIONS. Since these letters were not made as a work of literary art, but were the genuine expression of Cicero's private and momentary thoughts and feelings, made at various. times and places, the question arises how and when they came to be gathered together and when they were published; to the answer of which not all scholars are agreed. It seems most likely that a collection of various letters to and from Cicero was begun, perhaps with Cicero's consent, by his friend and freedman Tiro, over a year before Cicero's death. This collection was added to, and parts of it were published in separate books by Tiro at various times after 43 B.C., perhaps some while after. These separate parts were cited separately throughout antiquity and were not gathered into the collection now known as ad Familiares until long after Tiro's day. A further collection also was made by Cicero's friend Atticus, including only letters which Cicero had written him. As late as when Cornelius Nepos wrote his life of Atticus these letters had not been published, at least not as we have them now; but they were fully edited by Atticus, and were published perhaps before his death, or more probably at some time afterwards. |