have as much as Publilius, as much as Lentulus the Flamen, allow their sons." It would be interesting to know the amount, but unhappily this cannot be recovered. All that we know is that the richest young men in Rome were not to have more. "I will guarantee," writes this liberal father, "that none of the three young men [whom he names] who, I hear, will be at Athens at the same time shall live at more expense than he will be able to do on those rents." These "rents" were the incomings from certain properties at Rome. "Only," he adds, "I do not think he will want a horse."

We know something of the university buildings, so to speak, which the young Cicero found at Athens. "To seek for truth among the groves of Academus" is the phrase by which a more famous contemporary, the poet Horace, describes his studies at Athens. He probably uses it generally to express philosophical pursuits; taken strictly it would mean that he attached himself to the sage whose pride it was to be the successor of Plato. Academus was a local hero, connected with the legend of Theseus and Helen. Near his grove, or sacred inclosure, which adjoined the road to Eleusis, Plato had bought a garden. It was but a small spot, purchased for a sum which maybe represented by about three or four hundred pounds of our money, but it had been enlarged by the liberality of successive benefactors. This then was one famous lecture-room. Another was the Lyceum. Here Aristotle had taught, and after Aristotle, Theophrastus, and after him, a long succession of thinkers of the same school. A third institution of the same kind was the garden in which Epicurus had assembled his disciples, and which he bequeathed to trustees for their benefit and the benefit of their successors for all time.

To a Roman of the nobler sort these gardens and buildings must have been as holy places. It was with these rather than with the temples of gods that he connected what there was of goodness and purity in his life. To worship Jupiter or Romulus did not make him a better man, though it might be his necessary duty as a citizen; his real religion, as we understand it, was his reverence for Plato or Zeno. Athens to him was not only what Athens, but what the Holy Land is to us. Cicero describes something of this feeling in the following passage: "We had been listening to Antiochus (a teacher of the Academics) in the school called the Ptolemaeus, where he was wont to lecture. Marcus Piso was with me, and my brother Quintus, and Atticus, and Lucius Cicero, by relationship a cousin, in affection a brother. We agreed among ourselves to finish our afternoon walk in the Academy, chiefly because that place was sure not to be crowded at that hour. At the proper time we met at Piso's house; thence, occupied with varied talk, we traversed the six furlongs that lie between the Double Gate and the Academy; and entering the walls which can give such good reason for their fame, found there the solitude which we sought. 'Is it,' said Piso, 'by some natural instinct or through some delusion that when we see the very spots where famous men have lived we are far more touched than when we hear of the things that they have done, or read something that they have written? It is thus that I am affected at this moment. I think of Plato, who was, we are told, the first who lectured in this place; his little garden which lies there close at hand seems not only to remind me of him, but actually to bring him up before my eyes. Here spake Speusippus, here Xenocrates, here his disciple Polemo—to Polemo indeed belonged this seat which we have before us.'" This was the Polemo who had been converted, as we should say, when, bursting in after a night of revel upon a lecture in which Xenocrates was discoursing of temperance, he listened to such purpose that from that moment he became a changed man. Then Atticus describes how he found the same charms of association in the garden which had belonged to his own master, Epicurus; while Quintus Cicero supplies what we should call the classical element by speaking of Sophocles and the grove of Colonus, still musical, it seems, with the same song of the nightingale which had charmed the ear of the poet more than three centuries before.

One or other, perhaps more than one, of these famous places the young Cicero frequented. He probably witnessed, he possibly took part (for strangers were admitted to membership) in, the celebrations with which the college of Athenian youths (Ephebi) commemorated the glories of their city, the procession to the tombs of those who died at Marathon, and the boat-races in the Bay of Salamis. That he gave his father some trouble is only too certain. His private tutor in rhetoric, as we should call him, was a certain Gorgias, a man of ability, and a writer of some note, but a worthless and profligate fellow. Cicero peremptorily ordered his son to dismiss him; and the young man seems to have obeyed and reformed. We may hope at least that the repentance which he expresses for his misdoings in a letter to Tiro, his father's freedman, was genuine. This is his picture of his life in the days of repentance and soberness: "I am on terms of the closest intimacy with Cratippus, living with him more as a son than as a pupil. Not only do I hear his lectures with delight, but I am greatly taken with the geniality which is peculiar to the man. I spend whole days with him, and often no small part of the night; for I beg him to dine with me as often as he can. This has become so habitual with him that he often looks in upon us at dinner when we are not expecting him; he lays aside the sternness of the philosopher and jokes with us in the pleasantest fashion. As for Bruttius, he never leaves me; frugal and strict as is his life, he is yet a most delightful companion. For we do not entirely banish mirth from our daily studies in philology. I have hired a lodging for him close by; and do my best to help his poverty out of my own narrow means. I have begun to practice Greek declamation with Cassius, and wish to have a Latin course with Bruttius. My friends and daily companions are the pupils whom Cratippus brought with him from Mitylene, well-read men, of whom he highly approves. I also see much of Epicrates, who is the first man at Athens." After some pleasant words to Tiro, who had bought a farm, and whom he expects to find turned into a farmer, bringing stores, holding consultations with his bailiff, and putting by fruit-seeds in his pocket from dessert, he says, "I should be glad if you would send me as quickly as possible a copyist, a Greek by preference. I have to spend much pains on writing out my notes."

A short time before one of Cicero's friends had sent a satisfactory report of the young man's behavior to his father. "I found your son devoted to the most laudable studies and enjoying an excellent reputation for steadiness. Don't fancy, my dear Cicero, that I say this to please you; there is not in Athens a more lovable young man than your son, nor one more devoted to those high pursuits in which you would have him interested."

Among the contemporaries of the young Cicero was, as has been said, the poet Horace. His had been a more studious boyhood. He had not been taken away from his books to serve as a cavalry officer under Pompey. In him accordingly we see the regular course of the studies of a Roman lad. "It was my lot," he says, "to be bred up at Rome, and to be taught how much the wrath of Achilles harmed the Greeks. In other words, he had read his Homer, just as an English boy reads him at Eton or Harrow. "Kind Athens," he goes on, "added a little more learning, to the end that I might be able to distinguish right from wrong, and to seek for truth amongst the groves of Academus." And just in the same way the English youth goes on to read philosophy at Oxford.

The studies of the two young men were interrupted by the same cause, the civil war which followed the death of Caesar. They took service with Brutus, both having the same rank, that of military