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Updated: June 10, 2025
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."
Curiously green and snug was the scene under these conditions, rather like a forest glade; but if the space available be considered and allowance be made for the shadow of all those trees, any tiro can calculate the room left for grass and flowers and the miserable appearance of both. Beyond that dense little shrubbery the soil was occupied with potatoes mostly, and a big enclosure for hens.
To the depth of a mile the whole Aegean slope of the neck of the Peninsula was scarred with spade work and it is clear to a tiro that to take these trenches would take from us a bigger toll of ammunition and life than we can afford: especially so seeing that we can only see one half of the theatre; the other half would have to be worked out of sight and support of our own ships and in view of the Turkish Fleet.
Add, besides the wrecks of Caesar's party, the Barbae Cassii, the Barbatii, the Pollios; add the companions and fellow-gamblers of Antonius, Eutrapelus, and Mela, and Coelius, and Pontius, and Crassicius, and Tiro, and Mustela, and Petissius; I say nothing of the main body, I am only naming the leaders.
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.
To his wife, until the unhappy period of his divorce, to his brother, to his unworthy son, but above all to his daughter, his beloved Tulliola, he pours forth, all the warmth of a deep affection; and even his freedman Tiro comes in for a share of kindly banter which shows the friendly footing on which the great man and his dependant stood. Cicero was of all men the most humane.
He writes to Tiro quite as he might have written to a younger Atticus, and speaks to him of Atticus with all the familiarity of confirmed friendship. There must have been something very sweet in the nature of the intercourse which bound such a man as Cicero to such another as Tiro.
Many men of note, who had an influence on Roman culture, were libertini, such as Livius Andronicus and Caecilius the poets; Terence, Publilius Syrus, whose acquaintance we made in the last chapter; Tiro and Alexis, and rather later Verrius Flaccus, one of the most learned men who ever wrote in Latin.
Cæsar meanwhile addressed the people and excited their anger; but after the death of Vettius the matter was hushed up. The following letters to Tiro, with one from Quintus in regard to his manumission, are given here because of the difficulty of dating them. The indications of time are as follows.
When, Cicero sent his son to the University of Athens, he wished to give him a generous allowance, too generous, as we should think, for it amounted to about £640 a year, and he asked Atticus whether it could be managed for him by permutatio, i.e. exchange, and received an affirmative answer . So too when his beloved freedman secretary Tiro fell ill of fever at Patrae, Cicero finds it easy to get a local banker there to advance him all the money he needed, and to pay the doctor, engaging himself to repay the money to any agent whom the banker might name .
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