Roman life in the days of Cicero | Page 8

I
made myself your adopted child. You took at once into the bosom of
another Socrates my tender years; your rule, applied with skillful
disguise, straightens each perverse habit; nature is molded by reason,
and struggles to be subdued, and assumes under your hands its plastic
lineaments. Ay, well I mind how I would wear away long summer suns
with you, and pluck with you the bloom of night's first hours. One work
we had, one certain time for rest, and at one modest table unbent from
sterner thoughts."
It accords with this charming picture to be told that the pupil, dying in
youth, left his property to his old tutor, and that the latter handed it over
to the kinsfolk of the deceased, keeping for himself the books only.

CHAPTER II.
A ROMAN UNDERGRADUATE.
In the last chapter we had no particular "Roman Boy" in view; but our
"Roman Undergraduate" will be a real person, Cicero's son. It will be
interesting to trace the notices which we find of him in his father's
letters and books. "You will be glad to hear," he writes in one of his
earliest letters to Atticus, "that a little son has been born to me, and that
Terentia is doing well." From time to time we hear of him, and always
spoken of in terms of the tenderest affection. He is his "honey-sweet
Cicero," his "little philosopher." When the father is in exile the son's
name is put on the address of his letters along with those of his mother
and sister. His prospects are the subject of most anxious thought.
Terentia, who had a considerable fortune of her own, proposes to sell

an estate. "Pray think," he writes, "what will happen to us. If the same
ill fortune shall continue to pursue us, what will happen to our unhappy
boy? I cannot write any more. My tears fairly overpower me; I should
be sorry to make you as sad as myself. I will say so much. If my friends
do their duty by me, I shall not want for money; if they do not, your
means will not save me. I do implore you, by all our troubles, do not
ruin the poor lad. Indeed he is ruined enough already. If he has only
something to keep him from want, then modest merit and moderate
good fortune will give him all he wants."
Appointed to the government of Cilicia, Cicero takes his son with him
into the province. When he starts on his campaign against the mountain
tribes, the boy and his cousin, young Quintus, are sent to the court of
Deiotarus, one of the native princes of Galatia. "The young Ciceros,"
he writes to Atticus, "are with Deiotarus. If need be, they will be taken
to Rhodes." Atticus, it may be mentioned, was uncle to Quintus, and
might be anxious about him. The need was probably the case of the old
prince himself marching to Cicero's help. This he had promised to do,
but the campaign was finished without him. This was in the year 51
B.C., and Marcus was nearly fourteen years old, his cousin being his
senior by about two years. "They are very fond of each other," writes
Cicero; "they learn, they amuse themselves together, but one wants the
rein, the other the spur." (Doubtless the latter is the writer's son.) "I am
very fond of Dionysius their teacher: the lads say that he is apt to get
furiously angry. But a more learned and more blameless man there does
not live." A year or so afterwards he seems to have thought less
favorably of him. "I let him go reluctantly when I thought of him as the
tutor of the two lads, but quite willingly as an ungrateful fellow." In
B.C. 49, when the lad was about half through his sixteenth year, Cicero
"gave him his toga." To take the toga, that is to exchange the gown of
the boy with its stripe of purple for the plain white gown of the citizen,
marked the beginning of independence (though indeed a Roman's son
was even in mature manhood under his father's control). The ceremony
took place at Arpinum, much to the delight of the inhabitants, who felt
of course the greatest pride and interest in their famous
fellow-townsman. But it was a sad time. "There and every where as I
journeyed I saw sorrow and dismay. The prospect of this vast trouble is

sad indeed." The "vast trouble" was the civil war between Caesar and
Pompey. This indeed had already broken out. While Cicero was
entertaining his kinsfolk and friends at Arpinum, Pompey was
preparing to fly from Italy. The war was probably not an unmixed evil
to a lad who was just beginning to think himself a