The letters themselves are in wild confusion. There are four collections, entitled 'To Atticus,' 'To Friends,' 'To Brother Marcus,' 'To Brutus': altogether over eight hundred epistles, of which a relatively small number are written _to_ Cicero by his correspondents. The order is not chronological, and the dates can in many cases only be conjectured. Yet these letters afford us our chief sources for the history of this great epoch,--and the best insight we can ever hope to have into the private life of Roman gentlemen. The style of the cynical, witty Caelius, or of the learned lawyer Sulpicius, differs perceptibly in detail from Cicero's own; yet it is remarkable that all seem able to write clearly if not gracefully. Cicero's own style varies very widely. The letters to Atticus are usually colloquial, full of unexplained allusions, sometimes made intentionally obscure and pieced out with a Greek phrase, for fear of the carrier's treachery! Other letters again, notably a long 'Apologia' addressed to Lentulus after Cicero's return from exile, are as plainly addressed in reality to the public or to posterity as are any of the orations. Prof. R. Y. Tyrrell has long been engaged upon an annotated edition of all the letters in chronological order. This will be of the utmost value. An excellent selection, illustrating the orator's public life chiefly, has been published by Professor Albert Watson. This volume contains also very full tables of dates, bibliography of all Cicero's works, and in general is indispensable for the advanced Latin student. The same letters annotated by Professor Watson have been delightfully translated by G. E. Jeans. To this volume, rather than to Forsyth's biography, the English reader should turn to form his impressions of Cicero at first hand. It is a model of scholarly--and also literary--translation. The "New Academy," to which Cicero inclined in philosophy, was skeptical in its tendencies, and regarded absolute truth as unattainable. This made it easier for Cicero to cast his transcriptions in the form of dialogues, revealing the beliefs of the various schools through the lips of the several interlocutors. Thus the 'De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum' sets forth in three successive conversations the ideas of Epicureans, of Stoics, and of the Academy, on the Highest Good. It is perhaps the chief of these treatises,--though we would still prefer to have even those later compendiums of the Greek schools through which Cicero probably cited the chief philosophers at second hand! J. S. Reid, an eminent English scholar, has spent many years upon this dialogue, and his work includes a masterly translation.