about me, and I might cast my eyes without rebuke over the whole busy street under the shelter of the yet unsullied gown; in the days when the path is doubtful, and the wanderer knowing naught of life comes with bewildered soul to the many-branching roads—then I made myself your adopted child. You took at once into the bosom of another Socrates my tender years; your rule, applied with skillful disguise, straightens each perverse habit; nature is molded by reason, and struggles to be subdued, and assumes under your hands its plastic lineaments. Ay, well I mind how I would wear away long summer suns with you, and pluck with you the bloom of night's first hours. One work we had, one certain time for rest, and at one modest table unbent from sterner thoughts."

It accords with this charming picture to be told that the pupil, dying in youth, left his property to his old tutor, and that the latter handed it over to the kinsfolk of the deceased, keeping for himself the books only.

CHAPTER II.

A ROMAN UNDERGRADUATE.

In the last chapter we had no particular "Roman Boy" in view; but our "Roman Undergraduate" will be a real person, Cicero's son. It will be interesting to trace the notices which we find of him in his father's letters and books. "You will be glad to hear," he writes in one of his earliest letters to Atticus, "that a little son has been born to me, and that Terentia is doing well." From time to time we hear of him, and always spoken of in terms of the tenderest affection. He is his "honey-sweet Cicero," his "little philosopher." When the father is in exile the son's name is put on the address of his letters along with those of his mother and sister. His prospects are the subject of most anxious thought. Terentia, who had a considerable fortune of her own, proposes to sell an estate. "Pray think," he writes, "what will happen to us. If the same ill fortune shall continue to pursue us, what will happen to our unhappy boy? I cannot write any more. My tears fairly overpower me; I should be sorry to make you as sad as myself. I will say so much. If my friends do their duty by me, I shall not want for money; if they do not, your means will not save me. I do implore you, by all our troubles, do not ruin the poor lad. Indeed he is ruined enough already. If he has only something to keep him from want, then modest merit and moderate good fortune will give him all he wants."

Appointed to the government of Cilicia, Cicero takes his son with him into the province. When he starts on his campaign against the mountain tribes, the boy and his cousin, young Quintus, are sent to the court of Deiotarus, one of the native princes of Galatia. "The young Ciceros," he writes to Atticus, "are with Deiotarus. If need be, they will be taken to Rhodes." Atticus, it may be mentioned, was uncle to Quintus, and might be anxious about him. The need was probably the case of the old prince himself marching to Cicero's help. This he had promised to do, but the campaign was finished without him. This was in the year 51 B.C., and Marcus was nearly fourteen years old, his cousin being his senior by about two years. "They are very fond of each other," writes Cicero; "they learn, they amuse themselves together, but one wants the rein, the other the spur." (Doubtless the latter is the writer's son.) "I am very fond of Dionysius their teacher: the lads say that he is apt to get furiously angry. But a more learned and more blameless man there does not live." A year or so afterwards he seems to have thought less favorably of him. "I let him go reluctantly when I thought of him as the tutor of the two lads, but quite willingly as an ungrateful fellow." In B.C. 49, when the lad was about half through his sixteenth year, Cicero "gave him his toga." To take the toga, that is to exchange the gown of the boy with its stripe of purple for the plain white gown of the citizen, marked the beginning of independence (though indeed a Roman's son was even in mature manhood under his father's control). The ceremony took place at Arpinum, much to the delight of the inhabitants, who felt of course the greatest pride and interest in their famous fellow-townsman. But it was a sad time. "There and every where as I journeyed I saw sorrow and dismay. The prospect of this vast trouble is sad indeed." The "vast trouble" was the civil war between Caesar and Pompey. This indeed had already broken out. While Cicero was entertaining his kinsfolk and friends at Arpinum, Pompey was preparing to fly from Italy. The war was probably not an unmixed evil to a lad who was just beginning to think himself a man. He hastened across the Adriatic to join his father's friend, and was appointed to the command of a squadron of auxiliary cavalry. His maneuvers were probably assisted by some veteran subordinate; but his I seat on horseback, his skill with the javelin, and his general soldierly qualities were highly praised both by his chief and by his comrades. After the defeat at Pharsalia he waited with his father at Brundisium till a kind letter from Caesar assured him of pardon. In B.C. 46 he was made aedile at Arpinum, his cousin being appointed at the same time. The next year he would have gladly resumed his military career. Fighting was going on in Spain, where the sons of Pompey were holding out against the forces of Caesar; and the young Cicero, who was probably not very particular on which side he drew his sword, was ready to take service against the son of his old general. Neither the cause nor the career pleased the father, and the son's wish was overruled, just as an English lad has sometimes to give up the unremunerative profession of arms, when there is a living in the family, or an opening in a bank, or a promising connection with a firm of solicitors. It was settled that he should take up his residence at Athens, which was then the university of Rome, not indeed exactly in the sense in which Oxford and Cambridge are the universities of England, but still a place of liberal culture, where the sons of wealthy Roman families were accustomed to complete their education. Four-and-twenty years before the father had paid a long visit to the city, partly for study's sake. "In those days," he writes, "I was emaciated and feeble to a degree; my neck was long and thin; a habit of body and a figure that are thought to indicate much danger to life, if aggravated by a laborious profession and constant straining of the voice. My friends thought the more of this, because in those days I was accustomed to deliver all my speeches without any relaxation of effort, without any variety, at the very top of my voice, and with most abundant gesticulation. At first, when friends and physicians advised me to abandon advocacy for a while, I felt that I would sooner run any risk than relinquish the hope of oratorical distinction. Afterwards I reflected that by learning to moderate and regulate my voice, and changing my style of speaking, I might both avert the danger that threatened my health and also acquire a more self-controlled manner. It was a resolve to break through the habits I had formed that induced me to travel to the East. I had practiced for two years, and my name had become well known when I left Rome. Coming to Athens I spent six months with Antiochus, the most distinguished and learned philosopher of the Old Academy, than whom there was no wiser or more famous teacher. At the same time I practiced myself diligently under the care of Demetrius Syrus, an old and not undistinguished master of eloquence." To Athens, then, Cicero always looked back with affection. He hears, for instance, that Appius is going to build a portico at Eleusis. "Will you think me a fool," he writes to Atticus, "if I do the same at the Academy? 'I think so,' you will say. But I love Athens, the very place, much; and I shall be glad to have some memorial of me there."

The new undergraduate, as we should call him, was to have a liberal allowance. "He shall