very dearest of his friends. There is nothing stranger in all
that we know of "Roman Life" than the presence in it of such men as
Tiro. Nor is there any thing, we might even venture to say, quite like
it elsewhere in the whole history of the world. Now and then, in the
days when slavery still existed in the Southern States of America,
mulatto and quadroon slaves might have been found who in point of
appearance and accomplishments were scarcely different from their
owners. But there was always a taint, or what was reckoned as a taint,
of negro blood in the men and women so situated. In Rome it must have
been common to see men, possibly better born (for Greek might even be
counted better than Roman descent), and probably better educated than
their masters, who had absolutely no rights as human beings, and could
be tortured or killed just as cruelty or caprice might suggest. To Tiro,
man of culture and acute intellect as he was, there must have been an
unspeakable bitterness in the thought of servitude, even under a master
so kindly and affectionate as Cicero. One shudders to think what the
feelings of such a man must have been when he was the chattel of a
Verres, a Clodius, or a Catiline. It is pleasant to turn away from the
thought, which is the very darkest perhaps in the repulsive subject of
Roman slavery, to observe the sympathy and tenderness which Cicero shows
to the sick man from whom he has been reluctantly compelled to part. The
letters to Tiro fill one of the sixteen books of "Letters to Friends."
They are twenty-seven in number, or rather twenty-six, as the sixteenth
of the series contains the congratulations and thanks which Quintus
Cicero addresses to his brother on receiving the news that Tiro has
received his freedom. "As to Tiro," he writes, "I protest, as I wish to
see you, my dear Marcus, and my own son, and yours, and my dear Tullia,
that you have done a thing that pleased me exceedingly in making a man
who certainly was far above his mean condition a friend rather than a
servant. Believe me, when I read your letters and his, I fairly leaped
for joy; I both thank and congratulate you. If the fidelity of my
Statius gives me so much pleasure[9], how valuable in Tiro must be this
same good quality with the additional and even superior advantages of
culture, wit, and politeness? I have many very good reasons for loving
you; and now there is this that you have told me, as indeed you were
bound to tell me, this