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.