m who wrote them.[139]

[Sidenote: B.C. 68, aetat. 39.]

We have three letters written when he was thirty-eight, in the year
after his AEdileship. In the first he tells his friend of the death of
his cousin, Lucius Cicero, who had travelled with him into Sicily, and
alludes to the disagreements which had taken place between Pomponia, the
sister of Atticus, and her husband, Quintus Cicero--our Cicero's
brother. Marcus, in all that he says of his brother, makes the best of
him. That Quintus was a scholar and a man of parts there can be no
doubt; one, too, who rose to high office in the Republic. But he was
arrogant, of harsh temper, cruel to those dependent on him, and
altogether unimbued with the humanity which was the peculiar
characteristic of his brother. "When I found him to be in the wrong,"
says Cicero, in his first letter, "I wrote to him as to a brother whom
I loved; but as to one younger than myself, and whom I was bound to tell
of his fault." As is usual with correspondents, half the letter is taken
up with excuses for not writing sooner; then he gives commissions for
the purchase of statues for his Tusculan villa, of which we now hear for
the first time, and tells his friend how his wife, Terentia, sends her
love, though she is suffering from the gout. Tullia also, the dear
little Tullia, "deliciae nostrae,"[140]sends her love. In the next, he
says how a certain house which Atticus had intended to purchase had been
secured by Fonteius for 130,000 sesterces--something over L1000, taking
the sesterce at 2 _d_. This no doubt was part of the plunder which
Fonteius had taken from the Gauls. Quintus is getting on better with his
wife. Then he tells his friend very abruptly that his father died that
year on the eighth day before the kalends of December--on the 24th of
November. Some question as to the date of the old man's death had
probably been asked. He gives further commissions as to statues, and
declares of his Tusculan villa that he is happy only when he is there.
In the third letter he promises that he will be ready to pay one Cincius
L170 on a certain day, the price probably of more statues, and gives
orders to his friend as to the buying of books. "All my prospect of
enjoying myself at my ease depends on your goodness." These were the
letters he wrote when he had just ceased to be AEdile.

From the next two years five letters remain to us, chiefly noticeable
from the continued commissions given by Cicero t