Relations of Friendship and Family in Cicero’s Correspondence II

Abstract

In the first part of the study, after having presented the general features of the Ciceronian corpus of letters, their basic characteristics and formal features, the author analysed the concept of friendship in the epistles on the one hand and Cicero’s relationship with Atticus (the addressee of half of his letters and his most enduring and closest friend) on the other. In the second part of the study, he focuses on the family ties that emerge from Cicero’s letters: first, Cicero’s relationship with his wife, Terentia, and his children, Tullia and Marcus, is analysed, followed by the emergence of grief over the death of his daughter Tullia and the role of friends as consulatori in the period of mourning, which at the same time completes the Roman concept of officia amicitiae outlined in the previous part.