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INTRODUCTION

I. LIFE OF CICERO.

MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, partly on account of his natural abilities and partly on account of the times in which he lived, has left a name associated with some of the most important events in the history of the world, as well as with some of the most potent forces in our civilization. Few men have made so distinct an impression on modern literature and thought. He touched many things which he did not adorn, but there is hardly any kind of intellectual activity that is not conspicuously indebted to his precepts or his example.

I. CICERO'S LIFE FROM HIS BIRTH TO THE OPENING OF HIS POLITICAL CAREER (B.C. 106-76).

Cicero was born at Arpinum, a city with the Roman franchise (which was also the birthplace of Marius), Jan. 3, B.C. 106, of an equestrian family. His grandfather, who had a small estate in that region, was of Volscian stock, and thus belonged to the old virile country people of the republic. His grandmother was a Gratidia, closely connected by adoption with the great Marius and with prominent Roman politicians. His father, who was the eldest son, had increased the family estate by agriculture and by the profits of a fulling-mill, so that he was among the richest of his townsmen, and possessed the census of a Roman knight. By his marriage with Helvia, a woman of the nobility, he became connected with many sena

torial families. She was a woman of great econ domestic virtues, and a strong support to her husb was of a somewhat weak constitution. The father w of cultivated mind and devoted himself to the educati two sons, Marcus, afterwards the orator, and the brother Quintus. For this purpose he removed to His ambition, like that of every Roman of fortune have his sons enter politics and so to establish a s family. He lived to see both of them succeed in thi and the elder become one of the most distinguished Rome.

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Cicero himself was early stimulated by the success o and the general atmosphere of Roman ambition to prominent place in the state. His father's connecti men and women of rank brought the boy into contact great orators M. Antonius and L. Crassus, who in themselves in his education. Among his companions sons of Aculeo, Lucius Cicero, his cousin, his intimat Atticus, L. Torquatus, C. Marius the younger, and I Tubero. His instructors were Greeks; but, as he had formed the purpose of attaining office through the p oratory, he did not confine himself to theoretical or t learning. He frequented the Forum to hear the great of his day, especially Antonius and Crassus, who dis with him on literary subjects, so that they became in a his teachers. He received instruction from Archia sought the society of L. Accius, the poet, and he stud art of delivery in the theatre, becoming intimately acq with the great actors Roscius and Æsopus.

He p

1 πολλὸν ἀριστεύειν καὶ ὑπείροχος ἔμμεναι ἄλλων. Ad Quintum

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3 This debt he amply repays by his tribute to them in the De O 4 See Defence of Archias, ch. i.

many kinds of composition, but his most important means of education, as he tells us, was translation from the Greek.

At the age of sixteen (B.C. 90), Cicero received the toga virilis (the "coming out" of a Roman boy), and from that time he devoted himself to law and statesmanship as well as oratory. For this purpose he was put under the charge of Mucius Scævola, the augur, and later he attached himself to the no less celebrated Pontifex of the same name. In B.C. 89 he served one campaign in the army under Cn. Pompeius Strabo. After this short military experience, he returned with still greater vigor to his literary and political studies. He studied philosophy under Phædrus and Philo, oratory under Molo of Rhodes, and all the branches of a liberal education under Diodotus the Stoic.

career.

When about twenty-five years of age, Cicero began his active It was customary to win one's spurs by attacking some political opponent; but this was contrary to Cicero's pacific nature, and throughout his life he prided himself on always taking the side of the defence. His first oratorical efforts have not been preserved to us. The earliest of his orations which we possess is his defence of P. Quinctius in a civil action (B.C. 81). This suit involved no political question; but no case at that time could be entirely free from politics in one form or another, and nothing is more significant of Cicero's character than the skill with which he constantly used political bias for his client's advantage without seeming to take sides. To defend Quinctius was a bold undertaking for a young advocate; for the opposing counsel was the great orator Hortensius,' backed by powerful influence on behalf of the plaintiff. The case, too, was a somewhat dry one; but Cicero's skill as an advocate is shown by the fact that he raises it above the ordinary business and technical level into a question of universal justice and the rights of common humanity.

.1 See p. xxxix.

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