Cicero was a prodigious letter writer, and happily a splendid treasury
of his letters has come down to us: collected and in part published not
long after his death, over 800 of them were rediscovered by Petrarch and
other humanists in the fourteenth century. Among classical texts this
correspondence is unparalleled; nowhere else do we get such an intimate
look at the life of a prominent Roman and his social world, or such a
vivid sense of a momentous period in Roman history.
The 435 letters collected here represent Cicero's correspondence with
friends and acquaintances over a period of 20 years, from 62 BCE, when
Cicero's political career was at its peak, to 43 BCE, the year he was
put to death by the victorious Triumvirs. They range widely in substance
and style, from official dispatches and semi-public letters of political
importance to casual notes that chat with close friends about travels
and projects, domestic pleasures and books, and questions currently
debated. This new Loeb Classical Library edition of the Letters to
Friends, in three volumes, brings together D. R. Shackleton Bailey's
standard Latin text, now updated, and a revised version of his much
admired translation first published by Penguin. This authoritative
edition complements the new Loeb edition of Cicero's Letters to
Atticus, also translated by Shackleton Bailey.
