PREFACE
The object of this book is to give the
English-speaking public a convenient form, as
faithful and readable a copy as the translator was
capable of making of a document unique in the
literature of antiquity. Whether we regard the
orrespondence of Cicero from the point of view of
the biographer and observer of character, the
historian, or the lover of belles lettres, it is equally worthy of
study. It seems needless to dwell on the immense
historical importance of letters written by
prominent actors in one of the decisive periods of
the world's history, when the great Republic, that
had spread its victorious arms, and its law and
discipline, over the greater part of the known
world, was in the throes of its change from the
old order to the new. If we would
understand—as who would not
?—the motives and aims of the men who
acted in that great drama, there is nowhere that
we can go with better hope of doing so than to
these letters. To the student of character also
the personality of Cicero must always have a great
fascination. Statesman, orator, man of letters,
father, husband, brother, and friend—in
all these capacities he comes before us with
singular vividness. In every one of them he will
doubtless rouse different feelings in different
minds. But though he will still, as he did in his
lifetime, excite vehement disapproval as well as
strong admiration, he will never, I think, appear
to anyone dull or uninteresting. In the greater
part of his letters he is not posing or assuming a
character; he lets us only too frankly into his
weaknesses and his vanities, as well as his
generous admirations and warm affections. Whether
he is weeping, or angry, or exulting, or eager for
compliments, or vain of his abilities and
achievements, he is not a phantasm or a farceur,
but a human being with fiercely-beating pulse and
hot blood.
The difficulty of the task which I have been bold
enough to undertake is well known to scholars, and
may explain, though perhaps not excuse, the
defects of my work. One who undertakes to express
the thoughts of antiquity in modern idiom goes to
his task with his eyes open, and has no right at
every stumbling-block or pitfall to bemoan his
unhappy fate. So also with the particular
difficulties presented by the great founder of
Latin style—his constant use of
superlatives, his doubling and trebling of nearly
synonymous terms, the endless shades of meaning in
such common words as
officium,
fides,
studium,
humanitas,
dignitas, and the like—all
these the translator has to take in the day's
work. Finally, there are the hard nuts to
crack—often very
hard—presented by corruption of the
text. Such problems, though, relatively with other
ancient works, not perhaps excessively numerous,
are yet sufficiently numerous and sufficiently
difficult. But besides these, which are the
natural incidents of such work, there is the
special difficulty that the letters are frequently
answers to others which we do not possess, and
which alone can fully explain the meaning of
sentences which must remain enigmatical to us; or
they refer to matters by a word or phrase of
almost telegraphic abruptness, with which the
recipient was well acquainted, but as to which we
are reduced to guessing. When, however, all such
insoluble difficulties are allowed for, which
after all in absolute bulk are very small, there
should (if the present version is at all worthy)
be enough that is perfectly plain to everyone, and
generally of the highest interest.
I had no intention of writing a commentary on the
language of Cicero or his correspondents, and my
translation must, as a rule, be taken for the only
expression of my judgment formed after reading and
weighing the arguments of commentators. I meant
only to add notes on persons and things enabling
the reader to use the letters for biographical,
social, and historical study. I should have liked
to dedicate it by the words
Boswellianus Boswellianis. But I found
that the difficulties of the text compelled me to
add a word here and there as to the solution of
them which I preferred, or had myself to suggest.
Such notes are very rare, and rather meant as
danger signals than critical discussions. I have
followed in the main the chronological arrangement
of the letters adopted by Messrs. Tyrrell and
Purser, to whose great work my obligations are
extremely numerous. If, as is the case, I have not
always been able to accept their conclusions, it
is none the less true that their brilliant labours
have infinitely lightened my task, and perhaps
made it even possible.
I ought to mention that I have adopted the
English mode of dating, writing, for instance,
July and August, though Cicero repudiated the
former and, of course, never heard of the latter.
I have also refrained generally from attempting to
represent his Greek by French, partly because I
fear I should have done it ill, and partly because
it is not in him as in an English writer who lards
his sentences with French. It is almost confined
to the letters to Atticus, to whom Greek was a
second mother-tongue, and often, I think, is a
quotation from him. It does not really represent
Cicero's ordinary style.
One excuse for my boldness in venturing upon the
work is the fact that no complete translation
exists in English. Mr. Jeans has published a
brilliant translation of a selection of some of
the best of the letters. But still it is not the
whole. The last century versions of
Melmoth and
Herbenden have many excellences; but they are not
complete either (the letters to Brutus, for
instance, having been discovered since), and need,
at any rate, a somewhat searching revision.
Besides, with many graces of style, they may
perhaps prove less attractive now than they did a
century ago. At any rate it is done, and I must
bear with what equanimity nature has given me the
strictures of critics, who doubtless will find, if
so minded, many blemishes to set off against, and
perhaps outweigh, any merit my translation may
have. I must bear that as well as I may. But no
critic can take from me the days and nights spent
in close communion with
Rome's greatest
intellect, or the endless pleasure of solving the
perpetually recurring problem of how best to
transfer a great writer's thoughts and feelings
from one language to another: “
“Caesar in hoc potuit juris habere
nihil.””
