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CICERO
style to embody philosophy. In rhetorical schools models of socially useful
letters were purveyed, and imaginary ones from mythical or historical personages
composed. Rhetoric came naturally to educated letter-writers. 1 St Paul's
impassioned appeal for charity in his First Epistle to the Corinthians (13) teems
with its figures.
Book 13 of Cicero's letters Ad familiares consists entirely of seventy-nine
letters of recommendation. Most of the people recommended are mere names:
his secretary Tiro, or whoever arranged the corpus after his death for publication,
clearly envisaged these letters as serving as models. Cicero had been at
pains to vary them to suit die recipient;thus a short one to Caesar (15) contains
six quotations from Greek poets, and concludes, 'I have used a new style of
letter to you, to convey that this is no ordinary recommendation.' Book 4
consists mainly of letters of condolence (consolationes), and includes die famous
one he received from Servius Sulpicius on die deadi of his daughter Tullia (5).
He recognized three kinds of letter, the serious, the informative, and the gossipy
(familiare et iocoswn). One of his complaints against Antony was diat he had
violated die etiquette of social intercourse by publicizing what he had said in a
private letter. 2
Some of his letters he did however expect to be read by more than die
addressee. Thus he was glad to hear diat an important one he had addressed to
Caesar had got around, having himself allowed several people to make copies of
it: he wanted his view of die political situation to go on record (An. 8.9.1). The
seventy letters or more he was hoping, three months after Caesar's murder, to
revise for publication (Att. 16.5.5) were probably selected political ones, diough
possibly die collection of recommendations (Fam. 13). How carefully he
composed his serious ones can be seen in die collection of diose to Lentulus
Spinther, which Tiro put in die forefront of Book i. 3 They abound in periods
which would not have sounded out of place in a formal speech. The very first
sentence is an elaborate antidiesis:
Ego omni officio ac potius pietate erga te
ceteris satisfacio omnibus,
mihi ipsi nunquam satisfacio;
tanta enim magnitudo est tuorum erga me meritorum ut,
quod tu nisi perfecta re de me non conquiesti,
ego quia non idem in tua causa efficio,
uitam mihi ess(e) acerbam putem.
1
For letter-writing at Rome see Peter (1901); pp. 38—100 are on Cicero. Many of his letters are
lost, including most of the collection Ad Brutum and all of those to Octavian, the future Augustus.
(Nor have we any from Atticus.) Most of those that survive date from the last nine years of his life.
2
Fam. 2.4; Flacc. 37; Phil. 2.7.
3
Significantly, his letters from exile show much less care. He admits himself that his grief has
bereft him of huius generis facultatem {An. 3.7.3).
248
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