Page:Loeb Classical Library L205N (1958).djvu/15

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Introduction

This collection of Cicero's "Letters to his Friends" was preserved and edited by his secretary Tiro. The collection is inadequately entitled, as it includes several letters, some of them of profound interest, from his friends to Cicero. There are 426 letters, divided into sixteen books, not arranged in any sort of order,[1] chronological or otherwise, except that letters from or to particular correspondents are generally grouped together; the third book, for instance, consists exclusively of letters from Cicero to Appius Claudius Pulcher, and the eighth book of letters from Marcus Caelius Rufus to Cicero.

The earliest letter is one from Cicero to Pompey (x. 7) dated 62 B.C., the year after Cicero's consulship; the latest is one from him to Cassius (xii. 10) written in 43 B.C., the year after the assassination of Caesar, and a few months before his own.

These nineteen years from 62 to 43 B.C. cover a period of supreme importance in the history of the Roman Republic—a period more minutely described and vividly illustrated in these letters, giving us as they do the different points of view of various correspondents, than even in the "Letters to Atticus," written by Cicero alone.

  1. ↑ The confusion thus caused is to some extent obviated by a summary, in chronological order, prefixed to each volume, of the events in each year covered by the Letters.
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