United States or Jersey ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
From the next two years five letters remain to us, chiefly noticeable from the continued commissions given by Cicero to Atticus for statues. Statues and more statues are wanted as ornaments for his Tusculanum. Should there be more than are needed for that villa, he will begin to decorate another that he has, the Formianum, near Caieta.
"And what is that?" said I. "What you gave me a hasty sketch of," replied he, "when I saw you last at Tusculanum, the History of Famous Orators; when they made their appearance, and who and what they were; which, furnished such an agreeable train of conversation, that when I related the substance of it to your, or I ought rather to have said our common friend, Brutus, he expressed a violent desire to hear the whole of it from your own mouth.
No legal business could be done, as the law courts were closed during an interregnum. Cicero did not like the statues in his Tusculanum.
And he says in another place: Catonis modo, Galle, Tusculanum Tota creditor urbe venditahat. Mirati sumus unicum magistrum, Summum grammaticum, optimum poetam, Omnes solvere posse quaestiones, Unum difficile expedire nomen. En cor Zenodoti, en jecur Cratetis!
But the aristocracy of Rome, whether old or young, cared for nothing but its fish-ponds and its amusements. Cicero spent the earlier part of the year out of Rome, among his various villas at Tusculanum, at Antium, and at Formiæ. The purport of all his letters at this period is the same to complain of the condition of the Republic, and especially of the treachery of his friend Pompey.
We must make an allowance for the increase in wealth and luxury which a century and a half had brought. Still we may get some idea from it of Cicero's country-house, one point of resemblance certainly being that there was but one floor. What Cicero says about his "Tusculanum" chiefly refers to its furnishing and decoration, and is to be found for the most part in his letters to Atticus.
On this account it was that Eutychus could not obtain a bearing, but was kept still in prison. However, some time afterward, Tiberius came from Capreae to Tusculanum, which is about a hundred furlongs from Rome. Agrippa then desired of Antonia that she would procure a hearing for Eutychus, let the matter whereof he accused him prove what it would.
Your favourite Demosthenes, whose brazen statue I lately beheld among your own, and your family images, when I had the pleasure to visit you at Tusculanum, Demosthenes, I say, was nothing inferior to Lysias in simplicity; to Hyperides in smartness and poignancy, or to Aeschines in the smoothness and splendor of his language.
Word Of The Day