The author has selected a cross-section of Cornelius Nepos' work, which shows the literary, social, political and intellectual history of the period 90 to 30 B.C. There are also fragments of Cato, Atticus and Nepos' other works. He also translates and comments on Nepos' preface to his lives of the Foreign Generals and on the "Letter of Cornelia", preserved by Nepos. This collection is aimed not only to illuminate the study of Cicero and the late Roman Republic, but to help awaken interest in neglected areas of Roman historical writing and intellectual life, which only in the last decade have attracted serious study.
