d to his election to the praetorship in the next year (B.C.
67). He had already risen almost to the highest place in his
profession as advocate, and had partly delivered, partly published
his great indictment of Verres only a year ago. He is married to
Terentia (B.C. 80), and has one daughter, Tullia or Tulliola, born
on August 5, probably the next year (B.C. 79). His intimacy with T.
Pomponius Atticus (three years his senior), perhaps begun at
school, had lasted at least eleven years, from the time when he met
him at Athens (B.C. 79), and with him had been initiated in the
Eleusinian mysteries (_de Leg._ 2, Sec. 36). There too they had both
seen much of the writer's cousin Lucius, whose death he deplores in
this letter (_de Fin._ 5, Sec. 1). Atticus had lived abroad in Athens
and Epirus, with occasional visits home from B.C. 88 to B.C. 65, in
which latter year he seems to have returned for a more lengthened
stay (Nep. _Att._ 4). The two friends have already corresponded
frequently, but this is the first letter preserved.

TO ATTICUS (AT ATHENS)

ROME

[Sidenote: B.C. 68, AET. 38]

We are such intimate friends that more than almost anyone else you can
appreciate the grief as well as the actual public and private loss that
the death of my cousin Lucius is to me. There is absolutely no
gratification which any human being can receive from the kindly
character of another that I have not been accustomed to receive from
him. I am sure, therefore, that you will share my grief. For, in the
first place, whatever affects me affects you; and in the second place,
you have yourself lost in him a friend and connexion of the highest
character and most obliging disposition, who was attached to you from
personal inclination, as well as from my conversation.

As to what you say in your letter about your sister,[23] she will
herself bear me witness what pains I have taken that my brother Quintus
should show her proper affection. Thinking him somewhat inclined to be
angry with her, I wrote to him in such a way as I thought would not hurt
his feelings as a brother, while giving him some good advice as my
junior, and remonstrating with him as being in the wrong. The result is
that, from frequent letters since received from him, I feel confident
that everything is as it ought and as we should wish it to be.

As to the frequency of my letters you have no ground