Cicero: Letters to Atticus, Vol. 3 of 3

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                       THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY
                               EDITED BY
   E. CAPPS, PH.D., LL.D. T. E. PAGE, LITT.D. W. H. D. ROUSE, LITT.D.




                           LETTERS TO ATTICUS
                                  III




                            CICERO'S LETTERS
                              TO ATTICUS.

                               VOLUME I.
                              BOOKS I.-VI.

                               VOLUME II.
                             BOOKS VII.-XI.




                                 CICERO
                           LETTERS TO ATTICUS


                     WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY
                          E. O. WINSTEDT, M.A.
                      OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD



                            IN THREE VOLUMES
                                  III




[Illustration]




                       LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
                     NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
                                MCMXVIII




                              INTRODUCTION


The letters contained in this volume begin with one written just after
Caesar's final victory over the remains of the Pompeian party at Thapsus
in April, 46 B.C., and cover three of the last four years of Cicero's
life. When they open, Cicero was enjoying a restful interval after the
troublous times of the Civil War. He had made his peace with Caesar and
reconciled himself to a life of retirement and literary activity. In the
Senate he never spoke except to deliver a speech pleading for the return
from exile of his friend Marcellus; and his only other public appearance
was to advocate the cause of another friend, Ligarius. In both he was
successful; and, indeed, so he seems also to have been in private
appeals to Caesar on behalf of friends. But their relations were never
intimate,[1] and Cicero appears always to have felt ill at ease in
Caesar's society,[2] disliking and fearing him as a possible tyrant or
at least an anomaly in a Republican state. He evidently felt, too, some
natural qualms at being too much of a turn-coat, as he dissuaded his son
from joining Caesar's expedition to Spain at the end of the year on that
ground, and persuaded him to go to Athens to study instead.[3] No doubt
he considered that it was more consonant with the dignity which he was
always claiming for himself to take no part in public affairs at all
than to play a secondary part where he had once been first. Consequently
he spent the year 46 peacefully engaged in writing and in his

Footnote 1:

  XIV. 1 and 2.

Footnote 2:

  XIII. 52.

Footnote 3:

  XII. 7.

private affairs; and even of those we hear little, as he was at Rome the
greater part of the time. Somewhat under protest he wrote, apparently at
the suggestion of the Caesarian party,[4] with most of whom he was on
good terms, a work on Cato, which satisfied neither friend nor foe, as
Brutus thought it necessary to write another himself, and Caesar
composed an _Anti-Cato_. Of his other writings, two rhetorical works,
the _Brutus_ and the _Orator_, and one philosophical, the _Paradoxa_,
fall in this year. In the early part of it he divorced Terentia, and at
the end of it married his rich and youthful ward Publilia; but he soon
separated from her. The unhappy marriage between his daughter Tullia and
her profligate husband, Dolabella, was dissolved at much the same time,
but she only survived for a few months. Her death, which occurred in
February, 45 B.C., seems to have prostrated Cicero with grief, and a
long series of daily letters, from March to August of that year, are
largely filled with reiterations of his grief and projects for the
erection of a shrine in her honour. They are interesting for the light
they cast on Atticus' treatment of Cicero when he was unstrung and
excited. Atticus evidently disapproved entirely of the project; but from
Cicero's answers one infers that he kept on humouring him and at the
same time delaying action on his part by continual suggestions of a
fresh site for the shrine, knowing that Cicero's ardour would cool and
the scheme drop through, as it did.

Footnote 4:

  XII. 4.

Much is said, too, in these letters about the literary work to which
Cicero turned with more eagerness than ever to assuage his grief; and
the output was enormous. A book on consolation in times of sorrow, a
general introduction to the philosophical works which followed, the _De
Finibus_, the _Academica_—rewritten, three times[5]—and a small
rhetorical treatise, the _Partitiones Oratoriae_, were published during
the year, while the _Tusculanae Disputationes_, the _De Natura Deorum_
and the _De Senectute_ were projected and begun.