Cicero: Letters to Atticus, Vol. 2 of 3 — Background and Themes

A Storm in the Senate and a Garden at Lanuvium

The first excerpt shows Cicero oscillating between high politics and personal business. He reports a senatorial debate over the legality of proposing Caesar for election in absentia, noting the precedent that "it is illegal for consuls" to be proposed by inferior magistrates. Yet immediately he turns to the purchase of an estate at Lanuvium, haggling over £4,500 and worrying about "the scarcity of money." This juxtaposition is characteristic: Cicero treats political collapse and real estate with the same anxious precision. He warns Atticus of "a wicked war" while simultaneously calculating the depreciation of country seats. The letter closes with a dark aside: "all these seats seem now to be doomed to destruction."

The Confession of a Reluctant Follower

The second excerpt, dated March 18, 49 BCE, is one of the most personal in the volume. Cicero writes that "a sick heart not only robs me of sleep" and that he writes "to have a sort of talk with you, the only thing that gives me relief." He confesses he has been "mad from the very beginning" for not following Pompey unconditionally. The letter is structured as a self-indictment: he saw Pompey "full of fear" on February 17, yet still hesitated. The Greek phrase he inserts—en tois erōtikois—compares Pompey's flight to a lover's disgust at an ugly partner. This classical allusion reveals Cicero's literary habit of framing political betrayal in personal, almost erotic terms.

The Translator's Hand and the Loeb Format

E. O. Winstedt's translation, part of the Loeb Classical Library, faces the Latin text on each page. The excerpts show his method: he renders Cicero's rapid shifts in tone—from legal argument to gossip to self-pity—into idiomatic English. For example, Cicero's exclamation "then let the wide earth swallow me" captures the dramatic rhetoric of the original. The notes, such as the conversion of 500,000 sesterces to £4,500, help the modern reader grasp financial stakes. The volume covers "one of the most important epochs in Roman history," but the letters themselves are anything but a dry chronicle; they are raw, immediate, and full of the writer's personality.

Reading the Gaps: What the Excerpts Leave Unsaid

The excerpts provided are only a fraction of the 111,536-word volume. They show Cicero in the early months of the civil war, but the book continues through the Battle of Pharsalus and beyond. The reader should note that Cicero's mood shifts dramatically across the letters: from despair to hope, from self-blame to blame of others. The introduction warns that the letters are "the most important source for the history of the period," but they are also a personal record. When Cicero says "your letters have been my support," he reveals how much the correspondence with Atticus was a lifeline. The full text will test whether that support endures.

These letters reward a reader willing to follow Cicero's digressions. The political narrative is tangled, but the emotional arc is clear: a man watching his world break apart and trying to salvage something—a friendship, a country house, his own reputation. The Loeb format makes the Latin accessible for comparison, but the English alone carries the urgency. Read slowly, and note how often Cicero's thoughts turn to money, property, and the physical safety of his correspondents. That is where the real history lives.

Sitting with Cicero’s frantic letters, I keep thinking of my grandmother’s old desk drawer—the way certain anxieties feel timeless. His worry over Caesar must resemble something I felt reading The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford — Volume 3 — A Closer Reading, where politics also hums beneath domestic calm. Both men wrote to trusted friends, hoping words might steady a shaking world. Strange comfort, that.