Description
As the Roman republic staggered to its stormy demise, collapsing repeatedly into tyranny and civil war, one of its chief defenders was Marcus Tullius Cicero, senator, consul and the greatest orator in Roman history. As Brutus waved his blood-stained dagger on the Ides of March he is said to have cried out the name of Cicero.
Cicero's letters are extremely various. Some are concerned with political affairs and the figures of legend Pompey, Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, Mark Antony ('the gladiator') step out from the page with extraordinary clarity; others deal in the small change of Roman life: an argument at dinner, trouble with the water-supply.
Through all of them appears the com-plex personality of a man who, though no hero, stuck to his principles through all the vicissitudes of politics and paid for them in the end with his life.
This translation (in two volumes) of Cicero's Letters to his Friends is a companion to Cicero's Letters to Atticus, also published in the Penguin Classics.
ISBN:0140443401
