Titus Pomponius Atticus

A close friend since childhood, Cicero dedicated his treatise, Laelius de Amicitia (Latin for 'Laelius on Friendship'), to Atticus.

Their correspondence, often written in subtle code to disguise their political observations, is preserved in Epistulae ad Atticum (Letters to Atticus) compiled by Tiro, Cicero's slave (later his freedman) and personal secretary.

[5] Cicero was educated by tutors chosen by the famous orator Lucius Licinius Crassus; Atticus may have been part of this grouping as well.

According to his biographer Nepos, Atticus was a distant relation of the plebeian tribune Publius Sulpicius Rufus – it is more likely that they were friends – which put him in danger when Sulla took the city.

[9] His love of Athens inspired his self-appointed nickname "Atticus", or "Man of Attica", which is mentioned in the fifth book of Cicero's De Finibus.

Using his income to support his love of letters, he had trained Roman slaves as scribes and taught them to make papyrus scrolls, allowing Atticus to publish, amongst other things, the works of his friend Cicero.

Lucius Licinius Lucullus, despite being his personal friend, resented Atticus's receiving an inheritance he felt he was entitled to for his association with the campaign against Mithridates and as Governor of Syria.

Deciding to accelerate the inevitable, he abstained from ingesting any nourishment, starving himself to death, and dying on the fifth day of such fasting, "which was the 31st March, in the consulship of Cn.