Life of Atticus

Nepos' life of Titus Pomponius Atticus (110 to 32 BC) is unlike his other lives: it is the portrait of a close friend, written during Atticus' lifetime and completed after his death. It comes from Nepos' book on Latin historians, and Atticus is best known today as the recipient of Cicero's sixteen books of letters to him.

Nepos describes Atticus' good family and schooling, and how he withdrew to Athens in the 80s BC to avoid Rome's civil wars, earning the name Atticus by his love of the city and his generosity to it. He inherited a fortune from a difficult uncle and refused all public office. Through the wars of Caesar, Pompey, Brutus and Antony he kept on good terms with every side and helped friends in trouble whichever side they were on, aiding Brutus' friends and Antony's wife Fulvia when their fortunes were low; as a result he was spared in the proscriptions of 43 BC. His daughter married Agrippa, and he became connected with the family of Octavian. Nepos praises his modest household of educated slaves, simple dinners, honesty and devotion to his mother and sister, and his historical works, including a year-by-year chronicle of Rome. The life ends with his decision, when gravely ill, to starve himself to death, and his burial.

The life offers an inside view of how a wealthy Roman survived the fall of the Republic. The Latin is straightforward and the portrait warm.