intimate glimpses which we get of Roman life and manners, combine to make Cicero’s “Letters” perennially attractive.  The series begins in B.C. 68, when Cicero was 38 years of age, and runs on to within a short time of his death in B.C. 43.  The letters, of which there are 800, are addressed to several correspondents, of whom the most frequent and important is Titus Pomponius, surnamed Atticus, whose sister had married Cicero’s brother Quintus.  Atticus was a wealthy and cultivated man who had lived many years in Athens.  He took no side in the perilous politics of the time, but Cicero relied always on his affectionate counsel, and on his ever-ready service in domestic matters.

To Atticus

There is nothing I need so much just now as someone with whom I may discuss all my anxieties, someone with whom I may speak quite frankly and without pretences.  My brother, who is all candour and kindness, is away.  Metellus is empty as the air, barren as the desert.  And you, who have so often relieved my cares and sorrows by your conversation and counsel, and have always been my support in politics and my confidant in all private affairs, the partner of all my thoughts and plans—­where are you?

I am so utterly deserted that I have no other comfort but in my wife and daughter and dear little Cicero.  For those ambitious friendships with great people are all show and tinsel, and contain nothing that satisfies inwardly.  Every morning my house swarms with visitors; I go down to the Forum attended by troops of friends; but in the whole crowd there is no one with whom I can freely jest, or whom I can trust with an intimate word.  It is for you that I wait; I need your presence; I even implore you to come.

I have a load of anxieties and troubles, of which, if you could listen to them in one of our walks together, you would go far to relieve me.  I have to keep to myself the stings and vexations of my domestic troubles; I dare not trust them to this letter and to an unknown courier.  I don’t want you to think them greater than they are, but they haunt and worry me, and there is no friendly counsel to alleviate them.  As for the republic, though my courage and will toward it are not diminished, yet it has again and again itself evaded remedy.  If I were to tell you all that has happened since you went away, you would certainly say that the Roman state must be nearing its fall.  The Clodian scandal was, I think, the first episode after your departure.  On that occasion, thinking that I had an opportunity of cutting down and restraining the licentiousness of the young men, I exerted myself with all my might, and brought into play every power of my mind, not in hostility to an individual, but in the hope of correcting and healing the state.  But a venal and profligate verdict in the matter has brought upon the republic the gravest injury.  And see what has taken place since.