even so much as
this was become a notable exception in these later days. It is paying a
high honour to the character of Cicero and his household--and from all
evidence that has come down to us it may be paid with truth--that even in
those evil times it might have presented the original of what Virgil
drew as almost a fancy picture, or one to be realised only in some happy
retirement into which the civilised vices of the capital had never
penetrated--

"Where loving children climb to reach a kiss--
A home of chaste delights and wedded bliss.[1]"

His little daughter, Tullia, or Tulliola, which was her pet name (the
Roman diminutives being formed somewhat more elegantly than ours, by
adding a syllable instead of cutting short), was the delight of his
heart in his earlier letters to Atticus he is constantly making some
affectionate mention of her--sending her love, or some playful message
which his friend would understand. She had been happily married (though
she was then but thirteen at the most) the year before his consulship;
but the affectionate intercourse between father and daughter was never
interrupted until her early death. His only son, Marcus, born after a
considerable interval, who succeeded to Tullia's place as a household pet,
is made also occasionally to send some childish word of remembrance to his
father's old friend:

"Cicero the Little sends his compliments to Titus the Athenian"--"Cicero
the Philosopher salutes Titus the Politician.[2]" These messages are
written in Greek at the end of the letters. Abeken thinks that in the
originals they might have been added in the little Cicero's own hand, "to
show that he had begun Greek;" "a conjecture", says Mr. Merivale, "too
pleasant not to be readily admitted". The boy gave his father some trouble
in after life. He served with some credit as an officer of cavalry under
Pompey in Greece, or at least got into no trouble there. Some years after,
he wished to take service in Spain, under Caesar, against the sons
of Pompey; but the father did not approve of this change of side. He
persuaded him to go to Athens to study instead, allowing him what both
Atticus and himself thought a very liberal income--not sufficient,
however, for him to keep a horse, which Cicero held to be an unnecessary
luxury. Probably the young cavalry officer might not have been of the same
opinion; at any rate, he got into more trouble among the philosophers than
he did in the army. He