I am not prepared, indeed, to agree with the often quoted assertion of Cornelius Nepos that he who has read his letters to Atticus will not lack much of the history of those days.[137] A man who should have read them and nothing else, even in the days of Augustus, would not have learned much of the preceding age.

But if not for the purpose of history, the letters generally have, if read aright, been all but enough for the purpose of biography.

With a view to the understanding of the man's character, they have, I think, been enough.
From them such a flood of light has been turned upon the writer that all his nobility and all his defects, all his aspirations and all his vacillations, have been made visible.

We know how human he was, and how, too, he was only human--how he sighed for great events, and allowed himself to think sometimes that they could be accomplished by small man[oe]uvres--how like a man he could be proud of his work and boast--how like a man he could despair and almost die.

But I wish it to be acknowledged, by those who read his letters in order that they may also read his character, that they were, when written, private letters, intended to tell the truth, and that if they are to be believed in reference to his weaknesses, they are also to be believed in reference to his strength.