1. For Cicero’s epistolary style see p. 70; for his dictation, p. 75; for the significance of the epoch, p. 7; for Atticus and Quintus, pp. 68, 71; for the publication of the letters, p. 75.
1. In this selection, however, I have preferred to include one of his speeches against Verres, as dealing with a more fundamental problem-bad government.
1. In references to letters Fam. = to friends, Att. = to Atticus.
2. He instituted a fire-brigade at Rome, and, when there was a fire, used to buy up the threatened properties cheap.
2. Quintus Fufius Calenus, tribune 61 and consul 47 B.C., always a political enemy of Cicero.
3. An agrarian law passed by Caesar, consul in this year, to provide land in Campania for Pompey’s ex-soldiers.
4. Marcus Juventius Laterensis, always loyal to his principles, committed suicide in 43 B.C. when he considered that his friend Lepidus was betraying the Republic.
1. A legal fiction whereby a Senator could leave Rome, and travel in greater comfort
2. Publius Clodius: see below
3. Quintus Cicero, who was governor of Asia. He had freed his slave Statius, thus giving (Marcus Cicero feared) offence in that province, where Statius’s influence over Quintus was regarded with distaste.
4. Clodius had penetrated, in female disguise, into a ritual ceremony (rites of the Bona Dea) restricted to women (as a result Caesar had obtained a divorce with the laughter-provoking comment that his wife must be above suspicion), and Cicero had punctured his alibi (December 62 B.C.).
1. Publins Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, a correspondent of Cicero’s who was devoted to Pompey.
2. Cnaeus Plancius was later defended by Cicero in court (54 B.C.).
3. Lucius Calpurnius was Caesar’s father-in-law, whom Cicero later attacked in court (55 B.C.); he was consul in this year and shortly to become governor of Macedonia.
4. Gaius Calpurnius Piso Frugi was the first huband of Cocero’s dughter Tullia. He died while Cicero was still abroad.
5. Cicero had earmarked the rents from these for the education of his son Marcus. When he diveorced Terentia (p. 65) he had to hand back most, though probably not all, of her property.
1. Of Caesar or Pompey? Cicero seems to use the Greek word apotheosei, but an alternative reading is hypothesei, which would mean ‘in my treatment of the subject’.
2. One of Cicero’s houses (? at Tusculum) bad belonged to Quintus Lutatiua Catulus (p. 53).
3. Publius Furius Crassipes, second husband of Cicero’s daughter Tullia. Cicero is referring to the dowry and other expenses of the marriage.
1. Probably an ex-slave of Titus Annius Milo, whom Cicero had endeavoured to defend on the charge of murdering Publius Clodius (p. 112).
2. Cicero asks Atticus to guarantee the validity of his title to some property that he is selling. As a precedent, he seems to refer to his former sale of properties he had bought from the estate of one Mennius, who, Cicero then remembers, had previously disposed of the lands to a certain Atilius.
3. i.e., the sons of Quintus and Marcus. An alternative reading, however, it ‘men’.
1. Gaius Pomptinus, a legate of Cicero in Cilicia. He was justifiably pessimistic about Cicero’s chances of securing a hoped-for Triumph for his military operations against mountain tribesmen, the Pindenissitae. Cicero imagines Atticus asking ‘who on earth are the Pindenissitae? I have never heard of them’.
2. Aulus Manlius Torquatus, a close friend of Atticus, had been president of the court at which Cicero defended Milo (p. 112). However, in Cilicia Cicero declined to find an appointment for a friend of his.
1. Cicero fears renewed war with the Parthians, who had entered Syria in 51 B.C., after killing Crassus at Carrhae (53). The last Parthian horseman did not recross the Euphrates until July 50 B.C.
1. The festival of the Great Mother, 4–10 April – the touchstone of an aedile’s popularity.
2. M. Jérôme Carcopino has not won general support for his theory that they were published on the instigation of Augustus as a deliberate attempt to blacken their writer’s memory; see his brilliant book Cicero: the Secrets of his Correspondence.
1. Cicero’s host at patrae. Manius curius was a money-lender at patroe who was a friend of cicero and Atticus.
2. Lucius mescinius Rufus is else where described by Cicero as an in compentent afficial.
1. An officer on Cicero’s staff in Cilicia.
1. Gaius Claudius Marcellus and Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Crus.
1. A quotation from Euripides – perhaps from his lost play, the Telephus – which was adapted by Aristophanes in the Acharnians, lines 659 ff.
1. Atticus suffered from a quartan fever.
1. For the causes of the war, see below, p. 113
2. Publius Cornelius Lentulus Spinther (p. 109) had been spared by Caeser after the capture of corfinium. (p. 78).
1. We also possess among his letters a very fine consolatory epistle received by him from the jurist Servius Sulpicius Rufus, which inspired St Ambrose and Byron to imitation: see Roman Readings, pp. 56 ff.
1. We do not know what business these refer to. Perhaps it related to Cicero’s repayment of the dowry of his first wife Terentia, or to his divorce of his second wife Publilia.
2. While governor of Cilicia Cicero had protested against the ruthless methods Brutus favoured for collecting an exorbitant rate of interest from his debtors in Cyprus.
1. It is not certain that this is what Cicero says; the text is corrupt.
2. On the Flaminian Way, nine miles north of Rome.
1. There was some doubt about what Caesar had actually said; this is Cicero’s corrected version. For Caesar’s opinion of Cicero, see above, p. 83.
1. Not Cassius, Caesar’s assassin, but a friend of Caesar and Antony.
2. A quotation from the satirist Lucilius (c. 180–102 B.C.).
1. Brutus made this appeal to the people while the Senate, including Cicero, were meeting in the Temple of Tellus (p. 140). Brutus and Cassius had already addressed the people in the Forum on the evening of the murder, before returning to the Capitol in which they had taken refuge.
1. There Cassius was to cause the suicide of Dolabella before joining Brutus and suffering with him, at the hands of Antony and Octavian, the fatal defeat of Philippi (42 B.C).
2. Marcus Favonius, ‘Cato’s Sancho Panza’.
3. Early in June 44 B.C., Antony had arranged that his political enemies Brutus and Cassius should be appointed commissioners to buy corn in Asia and Sicily respectively, governorships of provinces to be assigned to them at a later date.
1. Brutus, owing to the political danger which had kept him and Cassius out of Rome until the second week of April, decided not to hold the Games of Apollo (6–13 July) incumbent on him as city-praetor, but to have them held by another praetor in his name. He asked Cicero to attend them, but Cicero said he ‘did not understand’ the request.
2. A quotation from an unknown Greek poet.
3. A quotation from the Pelops of the tragic dramatist, Accius (170–c. 85 B.C.).
1. The jurist, Servius Sulpicius Rufus, who had sent Cicero a fine consolation for the death of his daughter Tullia (p. 86), had died while on a mission to Antony.
1. By the historian Velleius Paterculus.
1. Probably cicero is reffering Principally to Lepidus.