Authors, Latin -- Biography; Cicero, Marcus Tullius; Statesmen -- Rome -- Biography
with Atticus, showing a demonstrative tenderness foreign to the
sternness of our northern nature. "That you should have wept when you
had parted from me, has grieved me greatly. Had you done it in my
presence, I should not have gone at all."[191] "Nonis Juliis!"[192] he
exclaims. The name of July had already come into use--the name which has
been in use ever since--the name of the man who had now been destroyed!
The idea distresses him. "Shall Brutus talk of July?" It seems that some
advertisement had been published as to his games in which the month was
so called.
Writing from one of his villas in the south, he tells Atticus that his
nephew has again been with him, and has repented him of all his sins. I
think that Cicero never wrote anything vainer than this: "He has been so
changed," he says, "by reading some of my writings which I happened to
have by me, and by my words and precepts, that he is just such a citizen
as I would have him."[193] Could it be that he should suppose that one
whom he had a few days since described as the biggest knave he knew
should be so changed by a few words well written and well pronounced?
Young Quintus must in truth have been a clever knave. In the same letter
Cicero tells us that Tiro had collected about seventy of his letters
with a view to publication. We have at present over seven hundred
written before that day.
Just as he is starting he gives his friend a very wide commission: "By
your love for me, do manage my matters for me. I have left enough to pay
everything that I owe. But it will happen, as it often does, that they
who owe me will not be punctual. If anything of that kind should happen,
only think of my character. Put me right before the world by borrowing,
or even by selling, if it be necessary."[194] This is not the language
of a man in distress, but of one anxious that none should lose a
shilling by him. He again thinks of starting from Brundisium, and
promises, when he has arrived there, instantly to begin a new work. He
has sent his De Gloria to Atticus; a treatise which we have lost. We
should be glad to know how he treated this most difficult subject. We
are astonished at his fecundity and readiness. He was now nearly
sixty-three, and, as he travels about the country, he takes with him all
the adjuncts necessary for the writing of treatises such as he composed
at this period of his life! His Topica, containing Aristotelian
instructions as to a lawyer's work, he put together on board ship,
immediately after this, for the benefit of Trebatius, to whom it had
been promised.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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