A sequence of personal letters presents a private view of the correspondent navigating the aftermath of civil war: he alternates between withdrawn literary labor and cautious public action, seeks favors for friends, mourns family losses with intense grief, and pours energy into philosophical and rhetorical works. The correspondence records his uneasy accommodation with dominant powers, his hopes and disappointments after a political assassination, and his growing antagonism toward rivals, culminating in forceful political interventions and eventual exile and proscription. Throughout, intimate detail and political observation combine to reveal character, intellectual priorities, and the anxieties of a crumbling republic.