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Updated: May 4, 2025
Herodes Atticus had gone this year, and upon his return brought with him for a visit a group of very distinguished men, including Lucian and Apuleius and the Alexandrian astronomer, Ptolemy. Paulus was astonished and proud to receive, with Gellius, an invitation to a dinner in their honour given at Cephisia. The weather was still extremely hot and the dinner hour was set late.
Cæsar had become Cæsar since he had learned to form his opinion on politics, and on Cæsar's side all things seemed to be bright and prosperous. The lad was anxious to get away from his new step-mother, and asked his father for the means to go with the army to Spain. It appears by Cicero's letter to Atticus on the subject that, in discussing the matter with his son, he did yield.
I may perhaps express the relation between the two by saying that Atticus was Cicero's banker, though the phrase must not be taken too literally.
He wandered from place to place sheltered by friends whose unselfish loyalty marks their names with honour in that false and evil generation Sica, and Flaccus, and Plancius bemoaning himself like a woman, "too blinded with tears to write", "loathing the light of day". Atticus thought he was going mad.
Thus the dissertation "concerning Peace" was at the same time a memorial of Metellus Pius, the last in the brilliant series of successful generals of the senate; that "concerning the Worship of the Gods" was at the same time destined to preserve the memory of the highly-respected Optimate and Pontifex Gaius Curio; the essay "on Fate" was connected with Marius, that "on the Writing of History" with Sisenna the first historian of this epoch, that "on the Beginnings of the Roman Stage" with the princely giver of scenic spectacles Scaurus, that "on Numbers" with the highly-cultured Roman banker Atticus.
He tells Atticus that he can hardly expect any slaves skilled either in music or letters, and he suggests to Trebatius that, as he will certainly find neither gold nor slaves, he had better put himself into a British chariot and come back in it as soon as possible. In this year Cæsar reduced the remaining tribes of Gaul, and crossed the Rhine a second time.
Varro and the more sagacious men in general evidently gave up the task of annals as hopeless; at the most they arranged, as did Titus Pomponius Atticus, the official and gentile lists in unpretending tabular shape a work by which the synchronistic Graeco-Roman chronology was finally brought into the shape in which it was conventionally fixed for posterity.
After the usual salutations, "Well, gentlemen," said I, "how go the times? What news have you brought?" "None," replied Brutus, "that you would wish to hear, or that I can venture to tell you for truth." "No," said Atticus; "we are come with an intention that all matters of state should be dropped; and rather to hear something from you, than to say any thing which might serve to distress you."
Then there is another cause for staying in Italy as to which he cannot write. This was Terentia's conduct. At the end of one of his letters he tells Atticus that with the same lamp by which he had written would he burn that which Atticus had sent to him. In another he speaks of a Greek tutor who has deserted him, a certain Dionysius, and he boils over with anger.
But Cicero declares in his dialogue with Atticus, De Legibus, written when he was fifty-five years old, in the prime of his intellect, that "of all the glories and divine gifts which your Athens has produced for the improvement of men nothing surpasses these mysteries, by which the harshness of our uncivilized life has been softened, and we have been lifted up to humanity; and as they are called 'initia," by which aspirants were initiated, "so we have in truth found in them the seeds of a new life.
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