With one or two signal exceptions, those to Atticus are better worth reading.

The character of the writer may perhaps be best gathered from divided perusal; but for a general understanding of the facts of Cicero's life, the whole correspondence should be taken as it was written.

It has been published in this shape as well as in the other, and will be used in this shape in my effort to portray the life of him 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.