but a good deal addicted to joking."
He half-apologised for writing in this strain, and asked :
"Are you surprised that we enliven our loss of liberty by merriment ? But
what must I do ? I ask you, who have a philosopher for your teacher, should I
afflict and torment myself? To what purpose ? ' Devote yourself,' you say, ' to
literature.' But what else do you think I do ? Do you imagine I could exist if
it were not for literature ? But there are limits to study, although I will not say I
feel satiety in it."
And he was well entitled to some relaxation. His intel-
lectual activity this year had been immense, and he had
written a great variety of works. Amongst these were his
" History of Roman Eloquence," under the form of a dia-
logue, De claris Oratoribus ; his "Inquiry into the Highest
Good and Evil," or De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum ; his
" Analyses of Oratory," or Partitioned Oratories ; his Cato ;
and his Orator, dedicated to Brutus. In addition also to his
literary labours may be mentioned the great number of letters
of introduction and recommendation he wrote at the request
of friends to provincial governors and others. There are
nearly forty of these, and although of no interest now, they
are worth reading as specimens of exquisite Latinity. They
show also his good nature, and his readiness to help those
who sought his assistance.
The most important event in his life this year was his
divorce from his wife Terentia. It appears to have taken
place in the autumn, or perhaps later, but the exact time is
not known. Plutarch's account of the matter is as follows :
After mentioning that Cicero intended to write a history
of his country, but his purpose was interfered with by various
public and private misfortunes, he goes on to say " For
first of all he put away his wife Terentia, by whom he had
been neglected at the time of the war, and sent away desti-
tute of necessaries for his journey ; neither did he find her
kind when he returned to Italy, for she did not join him at
Brundusimn, where he stayed a long time, nor would allow
her young daughter, who undertook so long a journey, decent
attendance or the requisite expenses ; besides, she left him a
naked and empty house, and yet had involved him in many
398 DIVORCE FROM TERENTIA. CHAP, xix
and great debts. These were alleged as the fairest reasons
for the divorce." Now we may confidently affirm that some
of these reasons are untrue. I have shown that Terentia
did offer to join her husband at Brundusium, but he would
not allow her, and there is not the slightest hint in his cor-
respondence that she had neglected him during the wars or
" sent him away destitute of necessaries," nor is there any
trace of a complaint as to her neglect of Tullia. It is clear
that Cicero brought no such charges against her in any of
his letters. Middleton, whose only authority is Plutarch,
has assigned reasons which are at least apocryphal. He
says that Cicero " at last parted with his wife Terentia, whose
honour and conduct had long been uneasy to him ; this drew
upon him some censure for putting away a wife who had
lived with him above thirty years, the faithful partner of his
bed and fortunes, and the mother of two children extremely
dear to him. But she was a woman of an inferior and tur-
bulent spirit, expensive and negligent in her private affairs,
busy and intriguing in the public, and in the height of her
husband's power seems to have had the chief hand in the
distribution of all his favours. He had easily borne her per-
verseness in the vigour of health and the flourishing state of
his fortunes ; but in a declining life, soured by a continual
succession of misfortunes from abroad, the want of ease and
quiet at home was no longer tolerable to him." To justify
this portrait of Terentia, except in one particular, there is
no evidence at all in the only place where we should expect
to find it I mean in the letters of Cicero. The exception
is her negligence, or perhaps misconduct, in money matters.
We naturally turn to see what account Cicero himself gives
of a matter so deeply affecting his happiness, but unfortu-
nately we find in his correspondence no explicit information
on the subject. In a letter to his friend Plancius he alludes
to it, but hints at the cause rather than explains it.
" I would not," he says, " have resolved on a divorce, if I had not, on my
return from abroad, found my domestic affairs in as bad a plight as the republic
itself. For when I saw that, owing to the wicked conduct of those to whom, in
consideration of my never-to-be-forgotten benefits, my safety and interests ought
to have been dear, there was nothing safe nor free from treachery within my own
walls, I thought that I ought to be protected by the fidelity of new connections
against the perfidy of the old."
JET. 59-62. DIVORCE FROM TERENTIA. 399
Now what was the wickedness and what the treachery of
which he here complains ? There can, I think, be no doubt
that the charges had some reference to Terentia's conduct in
money matters ; for he had previously, as we have seen,
accused her of abstracting part of the money which ought
to have been remitted to him, and of falsifying the account.
This is really all we know of the matter, and the rest is
utterly obscure. It must not be lost sight of that, in the
passage I have just quoted, Cicero complains of more persons
than one. It is not " her," but " those" of whom he speaks.
I cannot help thinking that he had his brother and his
nephew also in his eye when he alluded to domestic treachery,
for that was the specific kind of injury of which they had
been guilty in calumniating him to Caesar. We know from
Plutarch that Terentia steadily denied that her husband had
any good grounds for the divorce. And as I have under-
taken to defend her, I will quote one or two passages from
Cicero's correspondence, which are, I think, conclusive to
show that she was an amiable woman, and that Cicero loved
her with passionate fondness. One of his letters is thus
addressed : " Tully to Terentia, and the Father to Tulliola,
his two souls ; and Cicero (the son) to the best of mothers
and his darling sister." In another he calls her " Light
of my eyes my longed-for darling ! from whom all used to
seek for help. To think that you should be so harassed
so steeped in tears and misery, and that this should be
caused by my fault !" In another he says, " Attend to
your health, and be assured that no one is nor ever was
dearer to me than you." Again " Of this be sure, that if I
have you I shall not think myself wholly ruined." She was
ready to sell her property to assist him in his difficulties,
but he dissuaded her for fear of leaving their son penniless.
Surely all the evidence we have is in her favour ; and for
my own part I disbelieve the malevolent gossip of Plutarch
about her. She lived to an extreme old age, dying in her
hundred and fourth year ; and, if we may believe Dio Cas-
sius, was thrice married after her divorce from Cicero. But
as she was fifty years old when Cicero divorced her, this is
most probably an untrue story.
He lost no time in looking out for another wife, and his
400 DEATH OF TULLIA. CHAP. xix.
friends appear to have suggested a daughter of Pompey
as a suitable partie, but he did not like the idea. As to
another lady whom Atticus had mentioned to him, he gave,
as a reason for not proposing to her that he had never seen
an uglier person. His choice at last fell upon a young lady
named Publilia, who had a considerable fortune, and of
whom, according to Plutarch, he was guardian at the time.
She was almost a girl, and he was now sixty-one. It was
the union of January and May, 1 and, like most such mar-
riages, it turned out unhappily.
At the beginning of the new year, B.C. 45, Caesar was
absent from Italy engaged in carrying on the war in Spain
against the sons of Pompey.
Cicero was at Rome during January, where he tells us he
was detained by the confinement of Tullia, who gave birth
to a son after her divorce from Dolabella. 2 She seems to
have been at that time still living in her late husband's house,
and at first she was thought to be in a fair way of recovery,
but soon afterwards she sank under the effects of her confine-
ment and died. This sad event happened in February, at
her father's Tusculan villa, where she was probably removed
before alarming symptoms showed themselves. But there is
a good deal of obscurity attending her last illness, and we
have no account of the particulars from Cicero himself. The
first intimation we have from him of the calamity which over-
whelmed him is in a letter written to Atticus in March from
Astura. So far as we can gather from incidental expressions
in his correspondence, he seems to have left his Tusculan villa
after his daughter's death, and gone to the house of Atticus
at Rome, He tells us that he spent thirty days in some
gardens, which probably belonged to a suburban villa of
Atticus, and we next find him at his country residence near
1 The late Sir Cresswell Cresswell 2 The child seems to have lived, and
told me, that having once in court to have been called Lentulus, if we are
alluded to a case before him as one of right in supposing that the passage in
the numerous instances of unfortunate the letter ad Att. xii. 28, " velim
marriages "between January and May," aliquando . . . Lentulum puerum
a Scotch gentleman wrote to him, and visas," refers to him. But we know
asked him, as he was collecting statisti- nothing of his subsequent history. Veiy
cal information, whether he could ex- probably he died young, and thus the
plain why marriages that took place in line of Cicero in that generation became
the period between January and May extinct,
turned out so badly !
B.C. 48-45- DEATH OF TULLIA. 401
Astura, writing to his friend on the subject of a monument
or shrine which he was anxious to erect to the memory of
Tullia. His wish was to place it in some gardens at Rome,
where it would be more conspicuous than in the little island
near Arpinum, his own birthplace, which at first suggested
itself to his mind. His words are " The Arpinian island
is suitable for a genuine apotheosis, but I am afraid it might
seem to confer less honour, as it lies out of the way. My
inclination, therefore, is for the gardens, which I will look at
when I come." 1
He was terribly stunned by the blow. In Tullia he had
garnered up his heart, and her death left a dreary blank in
his existence. His affection for her shines like a gleam of
light through his letters, and he had clung to her as the prop
and stay of his declining years. He tried to occupy himself
with study to distract his thoughts, and read such books as
heathen philosophy could supply to soothe a mourner's sor-
row, but in vain. He composed a work on Consolation, in
hopes that in the attempt to minister to the afflictions of
others he might assuage his own, but it only increased his
pang. His grief, he said, admitted of no consolation. In
the morning he wandered into the woods, and buried himself
in their solitude all the day long, striving to occupy himself
with literature, but overcome with floods of tears. He took
a melancholy pleasure in the idea of dedicating a monument
to his daughter, and again and again consulted Atticus on
its form and the locality where it should be placed. 2 It is
not known whether the design was ever carried into execu-
tion most probably not ; but if it was, the day may yet
come when some fragment of it may be discovered a pre-
cious relic of the memorial which a father's love consecrated
to his child. 3
Although overwhelmed with grief, Cicero battled manfully
against it, and adopted the wisest course that could be taken
1 There is an Essay in the Memoires of tombs, and a fine was imposed equal
de P Academic des Inscriptions, vol. i. p. to the excess beyond the legal limit.
370, by the Abbe Montgault, " sur le z His idea also was to purchase
Fanum de Tullia,' 1 in which he investi- enough ground to enable him to have
gates the subject, and learnedly illus- a residence there himself as a retreat
trates the practice of ApotJieosis amongst for his old age, or fyyr]pafj,a as he called
the ancients. There was a kind of it.
sumptuary law regulating the expense 3 There is a wild story told by Bap-
2 D
402 DIVORCE FROM PUBLILIA. CHAP. xix.
by one to whom the consolation that revealed religion can
supply was unknown. He occupied himself in the quiet of
the country and with his books, and wrote incessantly.
When he heard that he was blamed at Rome for giving way
too much to sorrow and secluding himself in private, he de-
fended himself by showing that in the midst of all his suf-
fering he had been busily employed, and added, with some
bitterness, that he had written more than those who censured
him were ever likely to read. He told Atticus that he
would find when they met that his firmness had not de-
serted him, but his old cheerfulness and gaiety were wholly
gone.
It will naturally be asked where during all this time was
his lately-married wife ? Was Publilia by his side, the
sharer and soother of his affliction ? That she was absent is
certain, but this was by Cicero's express desire. The union
was not a happy one ; and if we may believe Plutarch, he
was so disgusted by her want of feeling at the death of
Tullia, that he very soon afterwards divorced her. If the
real motive for the marriage was her money, his aversion to
her, from whatever cause, must have been indeed unconquer-
able, for, of course, he would have to refund the whole of
her dowry. We find him writing to Atticus in March in a
fright lest his wife, with her mother and brother, should come
to Astura to pay him an unwelcome visit. He says that he
had received a letter purporting to come from her, in which
she prayed to be allowed to accompany her relatives. He
suspected, however, that her mother had really written in
her daughter's name, and at all events he peremptorily for-
bade any of them to come, as he wished to be alone. He
begged Atticus to give him timely notice if they left Rome,
that he might be out of the way when they arrived and
avoid them. Such were the terms on which he stood with
his new relations !
It was during his stay at Astura that the celebrated and
tista Pius in a note to one of Cicero's urns of the Tullian gens. In his Malta
letters, ad Ait. xi. 17, that in making Illustrata Abela mentions an inscrip-
an excavation amongst the Alban hills tion found at Malta in the following
an embalmed body was discovered, form
which was believed to be that of Tullia, TULLIOLA. M. TULLII. F.
as it was found amongst the sepulchral
JET. 59-62. LETTERS OF SULPICIUS & LUCCEIUS. 403
beautiful letter was. addressed to him from Athens by Ser-
vius Sulpicius
" The Roman friend of Rome's least mortal mind,"
in which he strove to comfort the mourner by arguments
drawn from the vicissitudes and decay of all earthly things.
It has been so often quoted that the reader is doubtless
familiar with it. Lucceius the historian also wrote him a
letter of consolation, which he acknowledged with grateful
thanks. Lucceius tried to make him take a more hopeful
view of public affairs, but Cicero confessed that he thought
them desperate. He was pleased by the allusion in the
letter to his own services, and said that he had given to his
country not more than his duty required, but certainly more
than others had a right to demand from him. " You will
pardon me," he added, "for being in some degree my own
trumpeter." In another letter to Lucceius he said he was
ashamed of life, and the books he studied seemed to upbraid
him for enduring it, for it was nothing but a prolongation
of misery.
In one of his letters to Atticus written in March Cicero
alludes to his will, and says that Terentia ought, like him-
self, to make some provision by hers for her little grandson,
to whom Tullia had given birth. His words are, " Let her
do like me. I will allow my will to be perused by any one she
pleases to name ; she will find that I could not have acted
more liberally towards my grandson than I have done."
There can be no doubt that he greatly distrusted Terentia's
good faith in money matters, and he speaks of her as wanting
in sincerity and steadiness of purpose.
His son Marcus wished to go to Spain and serve under
Caesar in the campaign against Pompey's sons. Cicero tried
to dissuade him, pointing out how inconsistent it would be
for him to bear arms against a cause for which he had lately
fought, and also how annoyed he would feel on finding his
cousin a greater favourite with Caesar than himself. The
young man gave up the idea of Spain and went to Athens.
His father consulted Atticus upon the sum he should allow
him for his expenses, and proposed to set apart for the pur-
pose the rents of some property he had on the Aventine
404 MURDER OF MARCELLUS. CHAP. xix.
Mount and in the district of Rome called Argiletum. He
mentioned the names of several young men of good family
who were going to Athens, and said he was sure they would
not spend more. He added that it was not at all necessary
to keep a horse at Athens, and for the journey there were
more than enough horses at home.
He composed a letter to Caesar in the form of a political
essay, taking as his model Aristotle's work vegl BaovXg/a$, which
was addressed to Alexander, but he was far from feeling
satisfied with his own performance, and he begged Atticus
to submit it to Caesar's friends at Rome before it was sent
to him. They suggested so many alterations that if they
were adopted the letter must be re-written, and rather than
do this Cicero abandoned the idea of sending it at all.
His friend Sulpicius wrote to him from Athens to give an
account of a tragic event which had just happened there.
Marcellus had, as we have seen, been recalled by a vote of
the Senate with the assent of Caesar, and on his way to
Rome from Mitylene put in at Piraeus, where he was assassi-
nated in the evening after supper by one of his acquaint-
ances named Magius Chilo, who suddenly stabbed him, and
then killed himself. When the news reached Sulpicius, who
had met him at Piraeus and spent a day with him, and who
was at the moment in Athens, he hurried down, and found
the body lying in the place where the murder had been
committed, with two or three slaves and freedmen of Mar-
cellus in attendance, the rest of the suite having fled in
terror. He had the corpse placed in his litter and conveyed
to the city, where he wished to have it buried within the
walls, but the authorities at Athens would not assent, as they
had religious scruples against intramural burials, which had
never been allowed there. They, however, offered him the
choice of any of the gymnasiums outside the city as a place
of interment, and Sulpicius says he chose a spot in the
noblest gymnasium in the world that of the Academy
where the body was reduced to ashes, and a monument erected
to the memory of Marcellus. A most unjust suspicion at first
attached itself to Caesar, as though he had been privy to
this murder. The real motive seems to have been private
revenge on the part of Magius, because Marcellus refused to
B.C. 48-45. THE PSEUD O MARIUS. 405
lend him money to pay his debts. But in the excited state of
the public mind just then we can well understand the alarm
which such an event occasioned, and how difficult it must
have been to satisfy the former adherents of Pompey that
politics had nothing to do with the murder of such a man as
Marcellus.
A curious case of imposture occurred about this time. A
man whose real name was Herophilus or Amasius, and who
was by trade a farrier or veterinary surgeon, gave himself
out as the grandson of the great Marius, and applied to
Cicero to undertake his case and assist him in establishing
his relationship. He appealed to him as a connection, and
as one whose poem on Marius showed the interest he took
in that illustrious name. Cicero, however, declined the task,
and, with a touch of sarcasm in his answer, told him that
he did not want an advocate, as all power was now in the
hands of Caesar, " a most excellent and generous man," and
his own relation besides ! For as Marius had married Julia,
who was Caesar's aunt, if the story of the claimant was true,
he and Csesar were of course relatives. The result was, that
the impostor was banished from Italy, and afterwards, on
his return to Rome, was killed in a city tumult.
Cicero spent the summer and autumn in the country at
one or other of his villas at Antium, Arpinum, or Tusculum.
He shunned society, and occupied himself incessantly in
writing and study. He cared for literature now much more
than for politics, and we find him keenly arguing a point of
criticism with Atticus as to the right use of the word inhi-
bere, and declaring that this interested him far more than
public affairs. In the same letter he half-apologises for
occupying himself with apparent trifles, but adds that such
things were of chief importance to him. He felt indeed that
his occupation as a statesman was gone, and endeavoured to
forget the ruin of all his hopes for his country in literary
pursuits. He made Atticus, as usual, his confidant, and
used to send his compositions to him to be copied by some
of his clever clerks, with strict injunctions, however, not to
allow them to be published or get abroad without his own
permission.
He recast the form of his Academic Dialogues, which
46 LITERAR Y LABO URS. CHAP. xix.
originally consisted of two books, called Catulus and Lucul-
lus, and turned them into four. He changed also the
speakers, who had been Catulus, Lucullus, and Hortensius,
and introduced instead Cato, Brutus, and Varro, as persons
the character of whose minds would better suit the argu-
ments assigned to them. He dedicated the whole work to
Varro, one of the most learned of the Romans, and for those
times really a monster of erudition.
He also completed his work De Finibus, an inquiry into
the chief objects or ends at which men ought to aim to
secure happiness : making Torquatus represent the Epicurean
school, Cato the Stoic, and Piso the Peripatetic. Another
composition that belongs to the same period is his Horten-
sius, a dialogue in which he upheld the claims of philosophy
and literature as contrasted with the study of eloquence. It
was the book, now unhappily lost, which attracted the atten-
tion of St. Augustine in his early years, and made him
devote himself to philosophy. In the month of August we
find him at his Tusculan villa, busy before daybreak with
the second part of his Tusculan Essays, in which he combats
the doctrine of the Epicureans that pain is the chief evil.
In the course of the summer he had divorced himself
from Publilia, and employed the good offices of Atticus to
arrange with her brother Publilius about the repayment of
her dowry. Not a syllable occurs in his letters to throw
light on the cause of the separation, and it is remarkable
with what absolute reserve on all domestic topics his letters
at this period are written. Although allusion is frequently
made to the loss of Tullia, and he constantly expresses his
earnest desire to erect a shrine to her memory, her name is
never once mentioned ; and with regard to Terentia and
Publilia, the tone of his correspondence is almost as enig-
matical as if he had writen in cipher. Atticus, of course,
understood it all, and Cicero was writing to him with no idea
that a distant posterity would be anxious to discover the
minute details of his domestic life. Very probably the cir-
cumstances were so painful that he could not bear to dwell
upon them. But whatever may have been the reason, the
fact is certain, that we can only guess at many things which
we might have expected to find fully explained in his confi-
JET. 59-62. SCANDAL ABOUT CAERELLIA. 407
dential correspondence with his most intimate friend. Even
the style of his letters at this period is more difficult and
abrupt than usual, and it may be safely said that the least
interesting portion of them is that which embraces the year
of his life on which we are now engaged.
In one or two of them a lady called Caerellia is mentioned,
about whom it is right to say a few words, on account of an
absurd scandal against Cicero connected with her name.
She seems to have been a blue-stocking dame, who admired
his writings, and took the trouble to copy or get copied
some of his philosophical works. In the first letter where
her name occurs he says to Atticus :