“Is aught of pleasure, aught of solace sweet Permitted, Calvus, to the silent grave, What time the tale of sorrow we repeat, Yearning o’er memories we fain would save? Know this. From Love and Friendship if a tear Can make its way into that silentness, Quintilia feels untimely Death less drear, For hearing of the love that still can bless.” Catullus, xcvi. (by S. T. I). Lastly, we come to the man of letters who has given his name to this period of literature, which indeed draws more than half its interest from him and from his works. Marcus Tullius Cicero was an Italian, and had little of the Roman character in his make; he came from the town of Arpinum, among the foothills of the Apennines some sixty miles south-east of Rome. He made his way into Roman society by his social and conversational powers, and by his capacity for friendship, and into the field of politics by his great gift of oratory, which was now indispensable for public men. As a “new man” he never was really at home with the high aristocracy, but he was a man of many friends for all that, and reckoned among them all the great men of his time, including both Cæsar and Pompey. His best and truest friend, who worked for him all his life with unsparing care, was a man of business who stood outside of politics, Pomponius Atticus; and of Cicero’s letters to this faithful friend and adviser nearly four hundred survive to prove the reality of that lifelong devotion. Some five hundred letters to and from other correspondents are also extant, and the whole collection forms the most fascinating record of a great man’s life and thoughts that has come down to us from classical antiquity.