I fear that the Newgate Calendar of the day would tell us more of the ways of living then prevailing than the letters of Lady Mary W.Montagu or of Horace Walpole.

From the orations against Verres we learn how the people of a province lived under the tyranny inflicted upon them; and from those spoken in defence of Sextus Amerinus and Aulus Cluentius, we gather something of the horrors of Roman life--not in Rome, indeed, but within the limits of Roman citizenship.
It is, however, as a man of letters that Cicero will be held in the highest esteem.

It has been his good-fortune to have a great part of what he wrote preserved for future ages.

His works have not perished, as have those of his contemporaries, Varro and Hortensius.

But this has been due to two causes, which were independent of Fortune.