On the banks of the noiseless and gently-flowing[781] Liris (Garigliano,) near Arpinum, the birthplace of Marius,[782] lived a Roman knight named M. Tullius Cicero. A competent hereditary estate enabled him to devote his time to literary pursuits. He had two sons: the elder, who bore his father’s name, was born January 3rd, B. C. 106. The other, Quintus, was about four years younger. As both, and Marcus especially, displayed quick talents and a lively disposition, and gave promise of inheriting their father’s taste for learning, he migrated to Rome when Marcus was about fourteen years of age. The boys were educated with their cousins, the young Aculei.[783] Q. Ælius[784] taught them grammar; learned Greeks instructed them in philosophy; and the poet Archias exercised them in the technical rules of verse, although he did not succeed in giving them the inspiration of poetry. Quintus prided himself on his poetic skill; and a poem by him, on the twelve zodiacal signs, is still extant.[785] Cicero also had in his boyhood some poetical taste; and there is great elegance in the translations from the Greek which we meet with in his works. He wrote a poem in hexameters, entitled “Pontius Glaucus,” as a sort of juvenile exercise, which was extant in the time of Plutarch; and also when he was a young man in praise of Marius. After assuming the toga virilis at sixteen years of age, M. T. Cicero attended the forum diligently; and, by carefully exercising himself in composition, made the eloquence of the celebrated orators whom he heard his own, whilst from the lectures and advice of Q. Mucius Scævola, he acquired the principles of Roman jurisprudence. He served but little in the armies of his country: his only campaign[786] was made under the father of Pompey the Great in the social war. During the remainder of this period, Molo, the Rhodian rhetorician, instructed him in oratory, whilst Diodotus the Stoic, Phædrus the Epicurean, and Philo, who had presided over the New Academy at Athens, were his masters in philosophy. The various schools, the principles of which he thus imbibed, led to the eclecticism which characterizes his philosophical creed. The bloody era of the Marian and Sullan war was passed by him in study: he did not interfere in politics, and the fruits of his retirement are extant in the treatise _de Inventione Rhetorica_.