Quintus Tullius Cicero

Reading notes

• Ad Atticum 1.4 §1 my brother Quintus's election

  Quintus Cicero was canvassing for the aedileship (held 65 BC); Cicero urges Atticus to come in time for the vote (comitia). Aediles were elected magistrates in charge of public works, games, and the grain supply.

• Ad Atticum 3.9 §1 having left Asia

  Quintus had been propraetorian governor of Asia (61--58 BC) and was now returning to Italy. He passed near his exiled brother, who could not bear to meet him.

• Ad Atticum 3.9 §1 the not seeing of my brother

  Cicero's deliberate refusal to meet Quintus on his return, out of shame at his own fall; the dominant grief of the Thessalonican letters.

• Ad Atticum 3.10 §2 his mourning and his squalor

  Quintus would have put on the squalor --- unkempt dress and beard --- of a mourner or suppliant on his brother's behalf; Cicero could not bear to see it.

• Ad Atticum 3.11 §2 Hold up Quintus my brother

  Cicero begs Atticus to support Quintus, who was facing the dangers of his return from Asia at the height of the exile crisis.

• Ad Atticum 4.15 §10 I suspect he is now in Britain

  Cicero's brother Quintus was serving as a legate under Caesar and took part in the second British expedition of 54 BC.

• Ad Atticum 7.1 §1 why I had not put my brother in charge of the province

  A departing governor had to leave a deputy holding imperium until a successor arrived; Cicero declined to leave his brother Quintus, his legate, in that exposed position and chose his young quaestor Coelius instead.

• Ad Atticum 11.5 §4 Quintus was in a thoroughly hostile frame of mind toward me at Patrae

  Cicero's brother Quintus, blaming him for the family's ruin, broke with him at Patrae in Achaia and set off to make his own peace with Caesar. The rupture between the brothers (and with the nephew, "his son") runs through book 11.

• Ad Atticum 11.11 §2 The other man, in Achaea, does not let up in running me down

  "The other man" is Cicero's brother Quintus, who had crossed to Achaea (the Greek mainland) and was openly disparaging Cicero to win Caesar's favour. Atticus's efforts to reconcile them had failed.

• Ad Atticum 13.9 §1 It came round, however, to Quintus

  Quintus Cicero, the orator's younger brother; the talk turned to the bitter family rift of these years between the brothers and the younger Quintus. The "unspeakable" matter is the substance of that quarrel.

• Ad Atticum 13.39 §1 To his father

  Cicero's brother Quintus, whose son tells contradictory stories to each estranged parent; "his father" is Quintus, "his mother" is Pomponia, Atticus's sister.

• Ad Atticum 13.41 §1 forwarded to Quintus

  Cicero's brother Quintus, the estranged father; "his sister" and "his mother" both denote Pomponia, Atticus's sister and Quintus's wife, while "his son" is the young Quintus, the nephew at the centre of the family quarrel.

• Ad Atticum 15.21 §1 Quintus the father is beside himself with joy

  Quintus Tullius Cicero, the orator's younger brother. The joy is over a reconciliation with his son (Quintus the younger), whose erratic, self-serving conduct in 44 BC had repeatedly estranged the two; Cicero relays the news with heavy sarcasm.

• Ad Atticum 16.1 §6 Both father and son begged me

  The "father" is Cicero's brother Quintus; he and his son (young Quintus) jointly ask Cicero to vouch for the young man's reform to Atticus.

• Ad Familiares 10.25 §3 my brother Quintus

  Quintus Tullius Cicero, the orator's younger brother, praetor 62 BC and a former legate of Caesar in Gaul; both brothers would be proscribed and killed by the triumvirs later in 43 BC.

• Ad Familiares 16.3 §1 ET Q. PATER ET FILIVS

  The senders joining Cicero in the greeting are his brother Quintus ("Q. pater," Quintus the father) and Quintus's son, Cicero's nephew ("filius"); young Marcus, Cicero's own son, is the "Cicero" already named.

• Ad Familiares 16.3 §1 because Quintus had not caught up with us

  Quintus is Cicero's younger brother, who had served as his legate in Cilicia and was travelling home in the same party.

• Ad Quintum Fratrem 1.1 §1 third year has been added

  Quintus Cicero had governed the rich province of Asia since 61 BC; his command, meant to be brief, was prorogued a third year to 59 BC, the occasion of this letter of advice. Cicero blames himself for failing to secure a successor.