THE CORRESPONDENCE

OF

M. TULLIUS CICERO.

~

THE CORRESPONDENCE

OF

M. TULLIUS CICERO,

ARRANGED ACCORDING TO ITS CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER;

WITH

A REVISION OF THE TEXT, A COMMENTARY,

AND

INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS.

BY

ROBERT YELVERTON TYRRELL, LITT.D.,
HON. LITT.D. (CANTAB.), D.C.L. (Oxon.), LL.D. (EDIN.);

Late Senior Fellow of Trinity College, and sometime Regius Professor of Greek in the
University of Dublin;

AND

LOUIS CLAUDE PURSER, LITT.D.,

HON. L.L.D. (GLASG.);

Senior Fellow of Trinity College, and sometime Professor of Latin in the
University of Dublin.

DUBLIN: HODGES, FIGGIS, & CO., LTD., GRAFTON STREET.
LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., PATERNOSTER ROW.

1915.

PRINTED AT THE

UNIVERSITA

'BY PONSONBY & GIBBS.

LIBRA

PREFACE.

WHEN in February of last year the publishers informed me that the fifth volume of our CORRESPONDENCE OF CICERO was out of print, and that a second edition had been asked for, and was desirable in order to render possible a continuous sale for the work as a whole, I felt considerably perplexed. For I knew that Dr. Tyrrell was in such precarious health that he could no longer act as the guiding and commanding spirit in any continuance of the work; and I was fully conscious that my own powers were not equal to the task of producing a new edition such as would meet even remotely the exacting requirements of modern scholarship, or provide the many-sided erudition now expected of a commentator. But Dr. Tyrrell was SO pressing in his desire that the new edition should be produced (and in the circumstances he could hardly be refused), and the authorities of the College so readily approved of the proposal, that, though with considerable misgiving, I undertook the task. Only three sheets of the Commentary were even glanced at by Dr. Tyrrell before his death: we did not think that he was so soon to be lost to us and to scholarship.' In those three sheets the familiar 'we' had been used, and I continued it throughout, not only for the sake of consistency, but also because I am fain to hope that there would not have been much diversity of opinion between us in most of the views advanced. But I may well be mistaken; and I must take on myself full responsibility for whatever is said. The dates of some of the letters as given in the first edition seem to be wrong; but, as in re-editions of the first three volumes, the order has been left unchanged, lest references in the succeeding volumes and in the Index should prove untrustworthy. This defect is remedied to some extent by the table given on pp. 460-465. A chapter has been added to the Introduction under the title "Antony succeeds Caesar," dealing with the history of the five and a-half months from March 15 to August 31 of the year 44 B.C.

1 It was only after Dr. Tyrrell's death (Sept. 19, 1914) that Dr. Sihler's volume, Cicero of Arpinum, dedicated to him, reached this country.