The care of that disordered province Cilicia enough to employ Cicero's thoughts till the end of 50. Yet he yearned for Athens and philosophy. He wished to leave some memorial of himself at the beautiful city, and anxiously asked Atticus whether it would look foolish to build a προπυλον at the Academia, as Appius, his predecessor, had done at Eleusis[53]. It seems the Athenians of the time were in the habit of adapting their ancient statues to suit the noble Romans of the day, and of placing on them fulsome inscriptions. Of this practice Cicero speaks with loathing. In one letter of this date he carefully discusses the errors Atticus had pointed out in the books _De Republica_[54]. His wishes with regard to Athens still kept their hold upon his mind, and on his way home from Cilicia he spoke of conferring on the city some signal favour[55]. Cicero was anxious to show Rhodes, with its school of eloquence, to the two boys Marcus and Quintus, who accompanied him, and they probably touched there for a few days[56]. From thence they went to Athens, where Cicero again stayed with Aristus[57], and renewed his friendship with other philosophers, among them Xeno the friend of Atticus[58]. On Cicero's return to Italy public affairs were in a very critical condition, and left little room for thoughts about literature. The letters which belong to this time are very pathetic. Cicero several times contrasts the statesmen of the time with the Scipio he had himself drawn in the _De Republica_[59]; when he thinks of Caesar, Plato's description of the tyrant is present to his mind[60]; when, he deliberates about the course he is himself to take, he naturally recals the example of Socrates, who refused to leave Athens amid the misrule of the thirty tyrants[61]. It is curious to find Cicero, in the very midst of civil war, poring over the book of Demetrius the Magnesian concerning concord[62]; or employing his days in arguing with himself a string of abstract philosophical propositions about tyranny[63]. Nothing could more clearly show that he was really a man of books; by nothing but accident a politician. In these evil days, however, nothing was long to his taste; books, letters, study, all in their turn became unpleasant[64].