Hail, thou Father of eloquence and of Latin literature, first of all to be called Father of his Country! Well did Caesar the Dictator, though an enemy, once write of thee, thy honor is greater than all triumphs, just as to enlarge the bounds of Roman thought is nobler than to extend the limits of Roman power.

PLINY: Nat. Hist. VII. xxx. 117.

ORATIONES ET EPISTOLÆ SELECTÆ

SELECT

ORATIONS AND LETTERS

OF

CICERO

With an Entroduction, Notes, and Vocabulary

BY

FRANCIS W. KELSEY

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Boston

ALLYN AND BACON

PREFACE.

THE orations presented in this edition are arranged in the order which seems most advantageous to the student reading them for the first time; in the Introduction, however, they have been treated in their chronological sequence. In making the selection of letters the political career of Cicero was not specially kept in mind. Only a small proportion of the whole number could find place in a volume of this compass in any case; and so it was thought best to choose letters of more general human interest, which would reveal Cicero the man rather than the politician, at different periods of his life and under different circumstances. The shorter letters in particular may be found suitable for rapid reading, or for sight translation.

The speeches should be interpreted as spoken rather than as written language. In the study of them nothing can take the place of practice in oral delivery, or of the work of the classroom in the rhetorical analysis of sentences, paragraphs, and orations as wholes. At the same time, an oration becomes effective in the degree that it is adapted to the audience and the occasion,in a word, to its environment; and the interpretation