The Complete Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero: Including his treatises On Friendship and On Old Age

Cicero had a lot to say. I am becoming more acquainted with what is called "classical literature". I'm trying to figure out if all of the Roman empire was evil and man based or just certain parts were. Book was in good condition and a lot to digest in this little book. Came quickly with no damages

I gave this book only 1 star because of its poor publishing. Cicero's writings are brilliant and still relevant more than 2 millennia since his death, and no one has published any better translation of Cicero than Melmonth's.I am very disappointed in the poor publishing and formatting of what are considered the masterpieces of prose writing . They used a common enough Times Roman type font, but it is such a small point size, it is very tiring and frustrating to read. My first assumption was they were using such a tiny font in an attempt to reduce the number of pages to reduce printing costs. I then realized the margins were actually much wider than most trade paperback books, and give it the look of a student trying to make a 7 page essay look like a 10 page essay, which obviously isn't needed for a 400 page book. For the treatises on "Friendship" and "Old Age", which are the main reasons many people are likely to buy the book, the left margins are a full 2 inches wide! I could not fathom any reason other than ignorance of publishing that someone would format something so badly for printing. When I looked to see what company published the book, it does not say anywhere on nor in the book the name of the publisher. When I was looking at the back cover to see if the publisher's name was there, I realized that they had copied and pasted the Wikipedia entry of Cicero for the cover info, without even citing where they had stolen the words. I then saw that it was printed in Lexington KY on the day I ordered it from Amazon, and everything made sense, since I also knew Amazon had a fulfillment center in Lexington. Melmoth's translation is now in the public domain after 100 years, so Amazon is simply printing these and similar works automatically when you order them. The reason the formatting looked like something an elementary school student might have produced on the home computers, is because it's all done by computers without anyone even looking at the book to see how crappy it looks after printing.While I am a senior citizen, I have excellent eyesight for reading. With most similar trade paperback books, the font sizes are comparable to hardbacks and a bit larger than is used in mass market paperbacks. The font size used in the book is smaller than any book I compared to it, and I have (literally) tons of books. The only book I have with a smaller typeface, is a very old "Compact Oxford English Dictionary", and it included a magnifying glass with the two volume set.I had bought this copy because I wanted to read Cicero again and could not find my old copy because I moved and have not finished unpacking my many books nor reassembling the 12 bookcases they filled. Since I wanted to read Cicero to re-experience the joy of reading his prose, I'm going to wait until I find my old copy. Reading shouldn't ever be as unpleasant as trying to read this printing. Normally when things are printed with this small a font, they are written by people who don't want you to read what it says, i.e. the fine print in a contract.I will always look to make sure books are not "independently published" by Amazon before ordering in the future.

The title of this book is misleading: it only has a very small number of Cicero's letters. I purchased this in order to have an English translation to compare with my homeschooled daughter's work, but it does not include many of the letters she will be translating.