Even with our truest love for our friends, some fear is mingled which forbids the use of open words.

Whether this be for good or for evil I will not say, but it is so.

Cicero, whether he did or did not know that his letters would live, was impeded by no such fear.

He said everything that there was within him--being in this, I should say, quite as unlike to other Romans of the day as he was to ourselves.

In the collection as it has come to us there are about fifty letters--not from Cicero--written to Cicero by his brother, by Decimus Brutus, by Plancus, and others.