United States or Malawi ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


I take it, a man may dip into the mystical writings of Paracelsus without prejudice to his Latinity; and into the cabalistic lore of the school of Cordova without losing his taste for the pure oratory of the immortal Cicero. Virgil himself, if we may believe Helinandus, gave the weight of his great name to such sports. And Cornelius Agrippa, my learned forerunner in Geneva "

It was written by the young Cicero, after he had repented and undertaken to reform, not to his father himself, but to the faithful friend and freedman of his father, Tiro, who afterwards edited the collection of letters in which he inserted it. It is on the whole a pleasing letter, and seems to show real affection for Tiro, who had known the writer from his infancy.

When many persons were going, as was usual, to salute the new consul and to form part of his train Cicero said, "We must make haste, or the man will have gone out of office."

Caesar was slain because he had shown that he was going to assume the title of king. Cicero speaks the literal truth, when he says: that the real murderer was Antony, and the fatal day the day of the Lupercalia, when Antony offered and Caesar faintly put aside the crown.

Nevertheless, we are told that Cicero, in this case, abused his proconsular authority in favor of Brutus. Cicero effected nothing for Brutus; but, when there was a certain amount of plunder to be divided among the Romans, refused any share for himself. Pompey got it all, but not by Cicero's aid.

The friends had now turned into the Forum, which was thronged with the gay and elegant youth of Rome. "I can tell you more," continued Flaminius; "somebody was remarking to the Consul yesterday how loosely a certain acquaintance of ours tied his girdle. 'Let him look to himself; said Cicero, 'or the state may find a tighter girdle for his neck." "Good Gods! who is it? You cannot surely mean"

It was no Christian gospel, but the Hortensius of Cicero which won him from this perilous society. "It altered my affection, and made me address my prayers to Thee, O Lord, and gave me other desires and purposes than I had before. All vain hopes did instantly grow base in myne eyes, and I did, with an incredible heat of hart, aspire towards the Immortality of Wisdom."

We cannot but marvel that he should have been able at such a time to devote his mind to such subjects, and carefully to study all the details of legal cases. It was only on October 21st that Murena had been elected Consul; and yet on the 20th of November Cicero defended him with great skill on a charge of bribery.

These paradoxes become with them serious grounds of action, upon which they proceed in regulating the most important concerns of the state. Cicero ludicrously describes Cato as endeavouring to act, in the commonwealth, upon the school paradoxes, which exercised the wits of the junior students in the Stoic philosophy.

QUIBUS ME IPSUM: strictly speaking the construction is inaccurate, since suspicor commoveri must be supplied, and Cicero does not really mean to say that he merely conjectures himself to be seriously affected by the state of public affairs; ego ipse commoveor would have accurately expressed his meaning. The accusative is due to the attraction of te above. MAIOR: = difficilior as often; e.g.