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There were not three men of the order present who were not now convinced as fully in their own minds of the truth of Cicero’s accusation, as they would, had it come forth in thunder from the cold lips of the marble God, who overlooked their proud assembly.

"He was the Consul’s slave," answered Arvina, almost mechanicallyfor he was utterly bewildered by all that had passed—"Medon, my freedman Thrasea’s cousin." "The Consul’s, ha!—which Consul’s? speak! fool! speak, ere I tear it from your throat; Cicero’s, ha?" "Cicero’s, Catiline!" "Here is a coil; and knows he of this matter? I mean Cicero." "He knows it." "That is to say, you told him.

What say you to Cicero’s, in the Carinæ? or the grand portico of Quintus Catulus, rich with the Cimbric spoils? or, better yet, that of Crassus, with its Hymettian columns, on the Palatine? Aye! aye! the speech of Marcus Brutus was prophetic; who termed it, the other day, the house of Venus on the Palatine! And you, my love, shall be the goddess of that shrine!

The result of these united conditions was a style less simple, less natural and fresh, than Cicero’s; more studied, more ambitious, more sparkling; heaping together in a page the flowers which Cicero scatters over a treatise; but still on that very account more fitted for the purpose of inflicting upon the inquiring student what Latinity was.

T. Well, I didn’t say it did: but still you can tell me who Atticus was. C. A great friend of Cicero’s. T. Did he take much part in politics? C. No. T. What were his opinions? C. He was an Epicurean. T. What was an Epicurean? C. is silent, then, Epicureans lived for themselves. T. You are answering very well, sir; proceed.

For my part, I see in nature, as in the arts, only final causes; and I believe that an apple tree is made to bear apples, as I believe that a watch is made to tell the hour.” Voltaire charges Warburton with calumniating Cicero, by saying that Cicero said, “It is unworthy of the majesty of the empire to adore one only God.” Voltaire’s words are these: “Warburton, like his contemporaries, has calumniated Cicero and ancient Rome.” He then gives the above quotation, along with a short comment in Cicero’s defense, and closes with the following words: “It is then quite false that Cicero, or any other Roman, ever said that it did not become the majesty of the empire to acknowledge a Supreme God.

And, if he half repented, as he went by the chamber wherein several youths of patrician birth, one or two of whom nodded to him as he passed, were assembled, conversing merrily and jesting around a well spread board, he ceased immediately to regret the choice he had made, when the door was thrown open, and he was ushered into the shrine of Cicero’s literary leisure.

It would seem as if Polybius at a certain period of his life came under the influence of Stoicism and in consequence greatly modified his earlier views. That these were of an atheistic character seems, however, beyond doubt, and that is the decisive point in this connexion. Cicero’s philosophical standpoint was that of an Academic, i.e. a Sceptic.

On they went, frightening the echoes of the quiet night with their wild lamentations and the clapping of their hands, sending the glare of their funereal torches far and wide through the cultured fields and sacred groves and rich gardens, until they reached at length the pile, hard by the columbarium, or slave-burying-place of Cicero’s household.

Its peculiarities were much easier to understand, and to copy, than Cicero’s: ‘decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile;’ and thus, without any advance whatever in understanding the genius of the language, or the construction of a Latin sentence, I added to my fine words and cut-and-dried idioms, phrases smacking of Tacitus.