presentative, fifty years ago, might have hated a Frenchman.
"The more Greek a man knew", he protested, "the greater rascal he turned
out". The father was a man of quiet habits, taking no part even in local
politics, given to books, and to the enlargement and improvement of the
old family house, which, up to his time, seems not to have been more than
a modest grange. The situation (on a small island formed by the little
river Fibrenus[2]) was beautiful and romantic; and the love for it, which
grew up with the young Cicero as a child, he never lost in the busy days
of his manhood. It was in his eyes, he said, what Ithaca was to Ulysses,

"A rough, wild nurse-land, but whose crops are men".

[Footnote 1: The _Equites_ were originally those who served in the
Roman cavalry; but latterly all citizens came to be reckoned in the class
who had a certain property qualification, and who could prove free
descent up to their grandfather.]

[Footnote 2: Now known as Il Fiume della Posta. Fragments of Cicero's
villa are thought to have been discovered built into the walls of the
deserted convent of San Dominico. The ruin known as 'Cicero's Tower' has
probably no connection with him.]

There was an aptness in the quotation; for at Arpinum, a few years before,
was born that Caius Marius, seven times consul of Rome, who had at least
the virtue of manhood in him, if he had few besides.

But the quiet country gentleman was ambitious for his son. Cicero's
father, like Horace's, determined to give him the best education in his
power; and of course the best education was to be found in Rome, and the
best teachers there were Greeks. So to Rome young Marcus was taken in
due time, with his younger brother Quintus. They lodged with their
uncle-in-law, Aculeo, a lawyer of some distinction, who had a house in
rather a fashionable quarter of the city, and moved in good society; and
the two boys attended the Greek lectures with their town cousins. Greek
was as necessary a part of a Roman gentleman's education in those days as
Latin and French are with us now; like Latin, it was the key to literature
(for the Romans had as yet, it must be remembered, nothing worth calling
literature of their own); and, like French, it was the language of
refinement and the play of polished society. Let us hope that by this time
the good old grandfather was gathered peacefully into his urn; it might
have broken his heart to have seen how enthusiastically his gran