Cicero's 'Letters to Friends' has three volumes in the Loeb Classical Library. In vol.II there are three main subjects: the civil war, the illness of his secretary Tiro and the divorce from his wife Terentia. There are also other topics like travels, books and domestic pleasures.
I find the letters to his secretary the most interesting because Cicero shows himself here as a caring human being ( in contrast to his cold and formal attitude towards his wife ).
In general though The Letters have a tendency to rhetorics and are therefore often long-winded and sometimes a little boring.

I thought this book was very intersting, especially the new, unknown letters from Cicero to local prostitute. It puts a human face on what of the greatest speakers of human history. And, it opens up whole new debates on what he was good at.

When he wrote "De Inventione," Cicero was about 19 years old, fresh out of what passed for law school in those days, and at the beginning of his career. He intended to write five books on the five departments of rhetoric (Invention, Arrangement, Style, Memory, and Delivery), but he never got past the first volume on invention. He wrote well, and his prose entertains, but he depended heavily on the works of others. "De Inventione" bears such resemblance to the anonymous work, "Rhetorica ad Herennium" that later generations attributed that work to Cicero as well. Both works were indebted to the Greek textbooks on rhetoric and particularly to the teaching of Hermagoras.

By the time he wrote "De Oratore" near the end of his career, Cicero was a mature veteran of many courtroom encounters, and he had become somewhat ashamed of "De Inventione." He shouldn't have been. Although "De Oratore" reveals him to be a master trial lawyer whose deep understanding of human persuasion was augmented by years of experience, his earlier work reveals him to be a talented rookie who had a good academic knowledge of rhetoric.

The basic theory expounded in "De Inventione" remains in "De Oratore," but the seasoning he acquired from decades as an advocate makes "De Oratore" a much more polished exposition of the praxis of rhetoric. If you only have time to read one book, read "De Oratore," but if you want to plumb the depths of Cicero's mind on the subject of rhetoric, read both. If you read both, you can follow Cicero as he matures from callow but talented tyro to the greatest advocate of his age.

Anthony Trollope is an English writer of the Victorian period most well-known for his unbelievably prolific fiction. So both the reader of Victorian literature and also the classicist may be somewhat surprised to find here a passionate defense of the 1st-century BC orator and statesman Cicero. This is all the more surprising because Trollope wrote at a time when Cicero was under attack, especially from German classicists. In these two volumes, however, Trollope discusses Cicero's speeches, compares Cicero's life to that of contemporary Romans, and decides that Cicero was a great man and a patriot whose reputation should be defended. Although Trollope may be a little over-lenient regarding the orator's famous pride and bombast, his glowing assessment is (ironically) closer to some modern views than that of his contemporaries who lambasted Cicero from their positions as professional classicists. I heartily recommend the set to Trollope enthusiasts and to Cicero partisans, but the average reader of Victorian literature may find the classical dicussions uninteresting, while the average classicist may not be satisfied with Trollope's non-scholarly approach.

How this transalation appears to you really depends upon the purposes for which you are reading it. Lacey is quite free and easy with the prose, something which personally I find an advantage as it makes Cicero very 'readable' as it were. For the scholar studying Latin, rather than history, another edition would probably be a better idea.

To the Phillipic itself, it is a must-read for anybody studying the late Roman republic. Cicero's vile attack upon Antony is world famous and has been passed down through history. Seperating fact from fiction, with all the exaggerations in between, is quite a task, but despite the fact that a good half of what Cicero claims simply was not true, it is an invaluable source for this period in history.

The Classics student may find, despite the traditionally brilliant 'Loeb' style format, that the English translation version of this book is too free and not accurate enough. However, as Lacey admits himself, this was never his purpose. Lacey produced this book for literary interest and not strict accuracy to the latin and, in this, he is extremely effective and makes Cicero come alive for classicists and ordinary people alike.

In this work, Neal Wood presents a compelling overview of the writings of Roman lawyer, statesman and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero. Supporting his analysis with concise quotations from Cicero, Wood undertakes the daunting task of summarizing Tullian thought on law, justice, human nature, equality, private property, the state, the mixed constitution and politics. Despite the challenge to this endeavor posed by the many inconsistencies and ambiguitites in Cicero's philosophy, Wood succeeds admirably. He makes it easy for any reader to understand why Locke, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Adams, Madison and so many other proponents of liberty hold such high esteem for Cicero as the "first master of the world."

This translation is horrible. In fact, every translation of an older text that I've read from this publisher has been terrible. It's incredibly wooden and hard to follow.

The book itself (The Nature of the Gods), on the other hand, is great. It was written (of course) by Cicero, who was one of the greatest writers, statesmen, and philophers of his time and is the one actually brought many of the philosophical term from Greek into Latin, which made it possible for many Romans to discuss philosophy, whereas they could not before. It gives a glimpse of the leading philosophies of his day: Epicureanism, Stoicism, etc. It's definitely worth reading (a different translation). I would suggest the Penguin edition.

To the publisher's credit, there's excellent biographical sketch of Cicero in the front of the book, which is helpful and concise.