Summary
Marcus Tullius Cicero: Letters to Atticus II
In addition to everything he did, and he worked a lot both as a politician and as a writer, Cicero maintained a correspondence with his friend Atticus, and this epistolary activity, it turns out, was of existential importance for Cicero. After escaping from Rome, Cicero falls into such a crisis that he will write in one place that it was Atticus's friendship that kept him alive. This correspondence, however, demonstrates what experts in epistolary literature noticed long ago: letter writing seems to require a heightened degree of sincerity. In no other written form is the truth expressed with such nakedness as in letters to a friend. To that extent, the correspondence between Cicero and Atticus, perhaps the most famous surviving correspondence of the ancient world, represents first-class testimony not only about the intimacy of the two friends, but also provides a broader picture of a bygone era. Along with the preface and appendix by Dragana Dimitrijević, the book is equipped with a chronological overview, bibliography, index and content of letters.
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