Cicero Letters to Atticus, Vol. 2 of 3
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text · 7 illegible passages, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~120,000 words · 577 passages
Cite this work
- APACicero. (n.d.). Cicero Letters to Atticus, Vol. 2 of 3. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/cicero-letters-to-atticus-vol-2-of-3
- MLACicero. "Cicero Letters to Atticus, Vol. 2 of 3." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/cicero-letters-to-atticus-vol-2-of-3.
- ChicagoCicero. Cicero Letters to Atticus, Vol. 2 of 3. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/cicero-letters-to-atticus-vol-2-of-3.
What it is about
The second of the three volumes of Cicero's letters to Atticus: the frankest correspondence to reach us from antiquity.
Context and history
Atticus was the friend of his whole life, a rich knight who never sought public office, and precisely for that reason Cicero writes to him as he writes to no one else: without posing, changing his mind halfway through a letter, asking advice and confessing fear. It is the principal source for the last years of the republic seen from within. NOTE TO THE READER: the catalogue also holds 'The Letters of Cicero', a different edition gathering the whole correspondence in chronological order — so the letters to Atticus appear there TOO. This is not an error: they are two distinct editions of the same material, differently translated and differently arranged. It is worth knowing, because the same letter may appear twice in different words, and a citation must say which edition it comes from.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
This second volume of Cicero's _Letters to Atticus_ embraces one of the most important epochs in Roman history, the fall of the Republic in the struggle between Pompey and Caesar. The storm which had long been brewing broke just as Cicero returned from Cilicia over the question of Caesar's resignation of office. By the agreement made in 56 B.C. Caesar's governorship of Gaul was renewed for five years and he was then to be re-elected to the consulship in 48 B.C. As the renewal dated from March 1, 54 B.C., his term of office would naturally expire on March 1, 49 B.C.: but according to the rule in vogue at the time of the reappointment he would not be superseded until Jan. 1, 48 B.C., the date on which he would enter on the consulship. He would therefore hold office continually, and his enemies, the Senatorial party, would have no chance of bringing a prosecution against him, which might be fatal to his career. But in 52 B.C. they had induced Pompey to bring forward a new law by which ex-magistrates did not proceed to a province as soon as their office ended but after an interval of five years. Consequently for the next five years special appointments had to be made by the Senate--for example Cicero's appointment to Cilicia--and, as they could be made at any time, it would be