Note 137 — Chapter VII

When the question is discussed, we are forced rather to wonder how many of the great historical doings of the time are not mentioned, or are mentioned very slightly, in Cicero's letters. Of Pompey's treatment of the pirates, and of his battling in the East, little or nothing is said, nothing of Cæsar's doings in Spain. Mention is made of Cæsar's great operations in Gaul only in reference to the lieutenancy of Cicero's brother Quintus, and to the employment of his young friend Trebatius. Nothing is said of the manner of Cæsar's coming into Rome after passing the Rubicon; nothing of the manner of fighting at Dyrrachium and Pharsalia; very little of the death of Pompey; nothing of Cæsar's delay in Egypt. The letters deal with Cicero's personal doings and thoughts, and with the politics of Rome as a city. The passage to which allusion is made occurs in the life of Atticus, ca. xvi: "Quæ qui legat non multum desideret historiam contextam illorum temporum."