lest and highest in rank,
he again began to possess great influence in the city. The work which he
set himself to do was to compose and translate philosophical dialogues
and to render logical and physical terms into the Roman idiom. For he
it was, as it is said, who first or principally gave Latin names to
technical Greek terms, which, either by metaphors or other means of
accommodation, he succeeded in making intelligible to the Romans. For
his recreation, he exercised his dexterity in poetry, and when he was
set to it, would make five hundred verses in a night. He spent the
greatest part of his time at his country-house near Tusculum.

He had a design, it is said, of writing the history of his country,
combining with it much of that of Greece, and incorporating in it all
the stories and legends of the past that he had collected. But his
purposes were interfered with by various public and various private
unhappy occurrences and misfortunes; for most of which he was himself in
fault. For first of all, he put away his wife, Terentia, by whom he
had been neglected in the time of the war, and sent away destitute
of necessaries for his journey; neither did he find her kind when he
returned into Italy, for she did not join him at Brundusium, where he
staid a long time, and would not allow her young daughter, who undertook
so long a journey, decent attendance, or the requisite expenses;
besides, she left him a naked and empty house, and yet had involved him
in many and great debts. These were alleged as the fairest reasons
for the divorce. But Terentia, who denied them all, had the most
unmistakable defence furnished her by her husband himself, who not long
after married a young maiden for the love of her beauty, as Terentia
upbraided him; or as Tiro, his emancipated slave, has written, for her
riches, to discharge his debts. For the young woman was very rich, and
Cicero had the custody of her estate, being left guardian in trust; and
being in debt many myriads of money, he was persuaded by his friends and
relations to marry her, notwithstanding their disparity of age, and
to use her money to satisfy his creditors. Antony, who mentions this
marriage in his answer to the Phillippics, reproaches him for putting
away a wife with whom he had lived to old age; adding some happy strokes
of sarcasm on Cicero's domestic, inactive, unsoldier-like habits. Not
long after this marriage, his daughter died at Lentulus's house, to whom
she