, who as tribune was daily making harangues. It was then that
Philo, the Chief of the Academy, with other leading philosophers of
Athens, had been put to flight by the war with Mithridates, and had come
to Rome. To him I devoted myself entirety, stirred up by a wonderful
appetite for acquiring the Greek philosophy. But in that, though the
variety of the pursuit and its greatness charmed me altogether, yet it
seemed to me that the very essence of judicial conclusion was altogether
suppressed. In that year Sulpicius perished, and in the next, three of
our greatest orators, Quintus Catulus, Marcus Antonius, and Caius
Julius, were cruelly killed." This was the time of the civil war between
Marius and Sulla. "In the same year I took lessons from Molo the
Rhodian, a great pleader and master of the art." In the next chapter he
tells us that he passed his time also with Diodatus the Stoic, who
afterward lived with him, and died in his house. Here we have an
authentic description of the manner in which Cicero passed his time as a
youth at Rome, and one we can reduce probably to absolute truth by
lessening the superlatives. Nothing in it, however, is more remarkable
than the confession that, while his young intellect rejoiced in the
subtle argumentation of the Greek philosophers, his clear common sense
quarrelled with their inability to reach any positive conclusion.

But before these days of real study had come upon him he had given
himself up to juvenile poetry. He is said to have written a poem called
Pontius Glaucus when he was fourteen years old. This was no doubt a
translation from the Greek, as were most of the poems that he wrote, and
many portions of his prose treatises.[35] Plutarch tells us that the
poem was extant in his time, and declares that, "in process of time,
when he had studied this art with greater application, he was looked
upon as the best poet, as well as the greatest orator in Rome." The
English translators of Plutarch tell us that their author was an
indifferent judge of Latin poetry, and allege as proof of this that he
praised Cicero as a poet, a praise which he gave "contrary to the
opinion of Juvenal." But Juvenal has given no opinion of Cicero's
poetry, having simply quoted one unfortunate line noted for its egotism,
and declared that Cicero would never have had his head cut off had his
philippics been of the same nature.[36] The evidence of Quintus Mucius
Scaevola as to Cicero's poetry was perhaps be