Romans of that time. The Roman (and stoic) ideal was to control one's emotions even in battle. Quintus Cicero also liked old-fashioned and harsh punishments, like putting a person convicted of patricide into a sack and throwing him into the sea. Such convicts were traditionally "stripped, scourged, sewn up in a sack together with [a] dog, a cock, a viper, and a monkey, and thrown into a river or the sea to drown". This punishment he meted out during his propraetorship of Asia. His brother confessed in one of his letters to his friend Titus Pomponius Atticus (written in 51 BC while he was Proconsul of Cilicia and had taken Quintus as legatus with him) that he dares not leave Quintus alone as he is afraid of what kind of sudden ideas he might have. On the positive side, Quintus was utterly honest, even as a governor of a province, in which situation many Romans shamelessly amassed private property for themselves. He was also a well-educated man who enjoyed reading Greek tragedies, and even wrote some tragedies himself. The relationship between the brothers was mostly affectionate, except for a period of serious disagreement during Caesar's dictatorship 49-44 BC. The many letters from Marcus ad Quintum fratrem show how deep and affectionate the brothers' relationship was, though Marcus Cicero often played the role of the "older and more experienced" sibling, lecturing to his brother on what the right thing to do was. Quintus might also have felt at times that the self-centred Marcus thought only about how his brother might hinder or help Marcus' own career on the cursus honorum. Authorship As an author, during the Gallic wars, he wrote four tragedies in the Greek style. Three of them were titled Troas, Erigones, and Electra, but all are lost. He also wrote several poems on the second expedition of Caesar to Britannia, three epistles to Tiro (extant) and a fourth one to his brother. The long letter Commentariolum Petitionis (Handbook on electioneering) has also survived. Although its authenticity has been much questioned, recently the scholar Andrew Lintott has argued that Quintus was the true author. It is in any case a guide to political behavior in Cicero's time. References Citations Modern sources Ancient sources External links 102 BC births 43 BC deaths 1st-century BC executions 1st-century BC Romans 1st-century BC writers Ancient Roman generals Ancient Romans in Britain Ancient Romans involved