Cicero | Page 2

coming into
fashion) as heartily as his English representative, fifty years ago, might
have hated a Frenchman. "The more Greek a man knew", he protested,

"the greater rascal he turned out". The father was a man of quiet habits,
taking no part even in local politics, given to books, and to the
enlargement and improvement of the old family house, which, up to his
time, seems not to have been more than a modest grange. The situation
(on a small island formed by the little river Fibrenus[2]) was beautiful
and romantic; and the love for it, which grew up with the young Cicero
as a child, he never lost in the busy days of his manhood. It was in his
eyes, he said, what Ithaca was to Ulysses,
"A rough, wild nurse-land, but whose crops are men".
[Footnote 1: The Equites were originally those who served in the
Roman cavalry; but latterly all citizens came to be reckoned in the class
who had a certain property qualification, and who could prove free
descent up to their grandfather.]
[Footnote 2: Now known as Il Fiume della Posta. Fragments of Cicero's
villa are thought to have been discovered built into the walls of the
deserted convent of San Dominico. The ruin known as 'Cicero's Tower'
has probably no connection with him.]
There was an aptness in the quotation; for at Arpinum, a few years
before, was born that Caius Marius, seven times consul of Rome, who
had at least the virtue of manhood in him, if he had few besides.
But the quiet country gentleman was ambitious for his son. Cicero's
father, like Horace's, determined to give him the best education in his
power; and of course the best education was to be found in Rome, and
the best teachers there were Greeks. So to Rome young Marcus was
taken in due time, with his younger brother Quintus. They lodged with
their uncle-in-law, Aculeo, a lawyer of some distinction, who had a
house in rather a fashionable quarter of the city, and moved in good
society; and the two boys attended the Greek lectures with their town
cousins. Greek was as necessary a part of a Roman gentleman's
education in those days as Latin and French are with us now; like Latin,
it was the key to literature (for the Romans had as yet, it must be
remembered, nothing worth calling literature of their own); and, like
French, it was the language of refinement and the play of polished

society. Let us hope that by this time the good old grandfather was
gathered peacefully into his urn; it might have broken his heart to have
seen how enthusiastically his grandson Marcus threw himself into this
newfangled study; and one of those letters of his riper years, stuffed full
of Greek terms and phrases even to affectation, would have drawn
anything but blessings from the old gentleman if he had lived to hear
them read.
Young Cicero went through the regular curriculum--grammar, rhetoric,
and the Greek poets and historians. Like many other youthful geniuses,
he wrote a good deal of poetry of his own, which his friends, as was
natural, thought very highly of at the time, and of which he himself
retained the same good opinion to the end of his life, as would have
been natural to few men except Cicero. But his more important studies
began after he had assumed the 'white gown' which marked the
emergence of the young Roman from boyhood into more responsible
life--at sixteen years of age. He then entered on a special education for
the bar. It could scarcely be called a profession, for an advocate's
practice at Rome was gratuitous; but it was the best training for public
life;--it was the ready means, to an able and eloquent man, of gaining
that popular influence which would secure his election in due course to
the great magistracies which formed the successive steps to political
power. The mode of studying law at Rome bore a very considerable
resemblance to the preparation for the English bar. Our modern
law-student purchases his admission to the chambers of some special
pleader or conveyancer, where he is supposed to learn his future
business by copying precedents and answering cases, and he also
attends the public lectures at the Inns of Court. So at Rome the young
aspirant was to be found (but at a much earlier hour than would suit the
Temple or Lincoln's Inn) in the open hall of some great jurist's House,
listening to his opinions given to the throng of clients who crowded
there every morning; while his more zealous pupils would accompany
him in his stroll in the Forum, and attend his pleadings in the courts or
his speeches on the Rostra, either taking down upon their tablets,