Cicero

Mi frater, mi frater, mi frater: novum epistolae principium: imo antiquum, et ante mille fere quadringentos annos a Marco Tullio usurpatum. Heu mihi! frater amantissime, quid dicam? Unde ordiar? Quonam vertar? Undique dolor, terror undique. In me uno videas quod de tanta urbe apud Virgilium legisti: nam crudelis ubique Luctus, ubique pavor, et plurima mortis imago.

My brother, my brother, my brother! A new way to begin a letter, you will say. No, it is an old one: Marcus Tullius used it almost fourteen hundred years ago. Alas, my dearest brother, what can I say? Where shall I begin? Where shall I turn? Everywhere there is grief, everywhere terror. In me alone you can see what you read in Virgil about a great city: “Everywhere cruel grief, everywhere fear, and everywhere the many faces of death.”