Roman life in the days of Cicero | Page 9

man. He hastened
across the Adriatic to join his father's friend, and was appointed to the
command of a squadron of auxiliary cavalry. His maneuvers were
probably assisted by some veteran subordinate; but his I seat on
horseback, his skill with the javelin, and his general soldierly qualities
were highly praised both by his chief and by his comrades. After the
defeat at Pharsalia he waited with his father at Brundisium till a kind
letter from Caesar assured him of pardon. In B.C. 46 he was made
aedile at Arpinum, his cousin being appointed at the same time. The
next year he would have gladly resumed his military career. Fighting
was going on in Spain, where the sons of Pompey were holding out
against the forces of Caesar; and the young Cicero, who was probably
not very particular on which side he drew his sword, was ready to take
service against the son of his old general. Neither the cause nor the
career pleased the father, and the son's wish was overruled, just as an
English lad has sometimes to give up the unremunerative profession of
arms, when there is a living in the family, or an opening in a bank, or a
promising connection with a firm of solicitors. It was settled that he
should take up his residence at Athens, which was then the university
of Rome, not indeed exactly in the sense in which Oxford and
Cambridge are the universities of England, but still a place of liberal
culture, where the sons of wealthy Roman families were accustomed to
complete their education. Four-and-twenty years before the father had
paid a long visit to the city, partly for study's sake. "In those days," he
writes, "I was emaciated and feeble to a degree; my neck was long and
thin; a habit of body and a figure that are thought to indicate much
danger to life, if aggravated by a laborious profession and constant
straining of the voice. My friends thought the more of this, because in
those days I was accustomed to deliver all my speeches without any
relaxation of effort, without any variety, at the very top of my voice,
and with most abundant gesticulation. At first, when friends and
physicians advised me to abandon advocacy for a while, I felt that I
would sooner run any risk than relinquish the hope of oratorical

distinction. Afterwards I reflected that by learning to moderate and
regulate my voice, and changing my style of speaking, I might both
avert the danger that threatened my health and also acquire a more
self-controlled manner. It was a resolve to break through the habits I
had formed that induced me to travel to the East. I had practiced for
two years, and my name had become well known when I left Rome.
Coming to Athens I spent six months with Antiochus, the most
distinguished and learned philosopher of the Old Academy, than whom
there was no wiser or more famous teacher. At the same time I
practiced myself diligently under the care of Demetrius Syrus, an old
and not undistinguished master of eloquence." To Athens, then, Cicero
always looked back with affection. He hears, for instance, that Appius
is going to build a portico at Eleusis. "Will you think me a fool," he
writes to Atticus, "if I do the same at the Academy? 'I think so,' you
will say. But I love Athens, the very place, much; and I shall be glad to
have some memorial of me there."
The new undergraduate, as we should call him, was to have a liberal
allowance. "He shall have as much as Publilius, as much as Lentulus
the Flamen, allow their sons." It would be interesting to know the
amount, but unhappily this cannot be recovered. All that we know is
that the richest young men in Rome were not to have more. "I will
guarantee," writes this liberal father, "that none of the three young men
[whom he names] who, I hear, will be at Athens at the same time shall
live at more expense than he will be able to do on those rents." These
"rents" were the incomings from certain properties at Rome. "Only," he
adds, "I do not think he will want a horse."
We know something of the university buildings, so to speak, which the
young Cicero found at Athens. "To seek for truth among the groves of
Academus" is the phrase by which a more famous contemporary, the
poet Horace, describes his studies at Athens. He probably uses it
generally to express philosophical pursuits; taken strictly it would mean
that he attached himself to the sage whose pride it was to be the
successor of Plato. Academus was a local hero, connected with the
legend of Theseus and Helen.