Positive reconstruction · reader-scoped, not an inferred-absence lacuna
This reconstruction covers the readable fraction of Thomas Jefferson's formation -- attested reading and writing only, not the whole of a life.
Thomas Jefferson and Letters of Cicero
Thomas Jefferson's attested relationship to Letters of Cicero.
Thomas Jefferson is attested as having read this work by Marcus Tullius Cicero.
Evidence ledger
- First-person reading testimony (Explicit first-person current reading: 'I have been amusing myself latterly with reading the voluminous letters of Cicero.' The work (Cicero's letters) is titled in-passage; the reader's catalogue carries Cicero's De Officiis and De Divinatione but not the Epistolae, so proposed as a new Work.). Self-report reliability discount 0.9: Current and engaged ('I have been amusing myself latterly with reading the voluminous letters of Cicero') with an independent critical judgement ('they certainly breathe the purest effusions of an exalted patriot' - and, continuing, sharp remarks on the Romans); no flattery context.