The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 | Page 5

father had weak health and resided almost entirely in his villa at Arpinum, which he had considerably enlarged, much devoted to study and literature (de Leg. ii. 1). But though he apparently possessed considerable property, giving him equestrian rank, and though Cicero says that his family was very ancient, yet neither he nor any of his ancestors had held Roman magistracies. Marcus and his brother Quintus were the first of their family to do so, and both had to depend on character and ability to secure their elections. But though the father did nothing for his sons by holding curule office himself, he did the best for their education that was possible. Cicero calls him optimus et prudentissimus, and speaks with gratitude of what he had done for his sons in this respect. They were sent early to Rome to the house of C. Aculeo, a learned jurisconsult, married to a sister of Helvia; and attended--with their cousins, the sons of Aculeo--the best schools in the city.[2] The young Marcus shewed extraordinary ability from the first, and that avidity for reading and study which never forsook him. As a young man he diligently attended the chambers of renowned jurisconsults, especially those of the elder and younger Sc?vola, Crassus, and Antonius, and soon found that his calling in life was oratory. It was not till he was twenty-eight years old, however--when he had already written much and pleaded many cases--that he went on a visit of between two and three years to Greece, Asia, and Rhodes, to study in the various schools of rhetoric and philosophy, and to view their famous cities (B.C. 79-77). It was after his return from this tour that his age (he was now thirty-one) made the seeking of office at Rome possible. From that time his election to the several offices--qu?storship, ?dileship, pr?torship, consulship--followed without any repulse, each in the first year of his age at which he was legally capable of being elected.
He had doubtless made the acquaintance of Titus Pomponius, afterwards called Atticus, early in life. But it seems that it was their intimacy at Athens (B.C. 79), where Atticus, who was three years his senior, had been residing for several years, that began the very close and warm friendship which lasted with nothing but the slightest and most passing of clouds till his death. His brother Quintus was married to Pomponia, a sister of Atticus; but the marriage turned out unfortunately, and was a strain upon the friendship of Cicero and Atticus rather than an additional bond. This source of uneasiness meets us in the very first letter of the correspondence, and crops up again and again till the final rupture of the ill-assorted union by divorce in B.C. 44. Nothing, however, had apparently interrupted the correspondence of the two friends, which had been going on for a long time before the first letter which has been preserved.
[Sidenote: Cicero the successful Advocate.]
[Sidenote: Death of Cicero's Father.]
The eleven letters, then, which date before the consulship, shew us Cicero in full career of success as an advocate and rising official, not as yet apparently much interested in party politics, but with his mind, in the intervals of forensic business, engaged on the adornment of the new villa at Tusculum, the first of the numerous country residences which his growing wealth or his heightened ideas of the dignity of his position prompted him to purchase. Atticus is commissioned to search in Athens and elsewhere for objects of art suitable for the residence of a wealthy Roman, who at the same time was a scholar and man of letters. He is beginning to feel the charm of at any rate a temporary retreat from the constant bustle and occupations of the city. Though Cicero loved Rome, and could hardly conceive of life unconnected with its business and excitements,[3] and eagerly looked for news of the city in his absence, yet there was another side to his character. His interest in literature and philosophy was quite as genuine as his interest in the forum and senate-house. When the season came for temporarily withdrawing from the latter, he returned to the former with eager passion. But Tusculum was too near Rome to secure him the quiet and solitude necessary for study and composition. Thus, though he says (vol. i., p. 4), "I am so delighted with my Tusculan villa that I never feel really happy till I get there," he often found it necessary, when engaged in any serious literary work, to seek the more complete retirement of Formi?, Cum?, or Pompeii, near all of which he acquired properties, besides an inheritance at Arpinum.[4] But the important achievements in literature were still in the future. The few letters of B.C. 68-67 are full of directions to Atticus for the