Roman Life in the
Days of Cicero
By the
REV. ALFRED J. CHURCH, M.A.
Author of "Stories from Homer"
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
New York
TO OCTAVIUS OGLE, IN REMEMBRANCE OF A LONG FRIENDSHIP THIS BOOK IS
DEDICATED.
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I. A ROMAN BOY
II. A ROMAN UNDERGRADUATE
III. IN THE DAYS OF THE DICTATOR
IV. A ROMAN MAGISTRATE
V. A GREAT ROMAN CAUSE
VI. COUNTRY LIFE
VII. A GREAT CONSPIRACY
VIII. CAESAR
IX. POMPEY
X. EXILE
XI. A BRAWL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
XII. CATO, BRUTUS, AND PORCIA
XIII. A GOVERNOR IN HIS PROVINCE
XIV. ATTICUS
XV. ANTONY AND AUGUSTUS
PREFACE.
This book does not claim to be a life of Cicero or a history of the last
days of the Roman Republic. Still less does it pretend to come into
comparison with such a work as Bekker's _Gallus_, in which on a slender
thread of narrative is hung a vast amount of facts relating to the
social life of the Romans. I have tried to group round the central
figure of Cicero various sketches of men and manners, and so to give my
readers some idea of what life actually was in Rome, and the provinces
of Rome, during the first six decades--to speak roughly--of the first
century B.C. I speak of Cicero as the "central figure," not as judging
him to be the most important man of the time, but because it is from
him, from his speeches and letters, that we chiefly derive the
information of which I have here made use. Hence it follows that I give,
not indeed a life of the great orator, but a sketch of his personality
and career. I have been obliged also to trespass on the domain of
history: speaking of Cicero, I was obliged to speak also of Caesar and
of Pompey, of Cato and of Antony, and to give a narrative, which I have
striven to make as brief as possible, of their military achievements and
political action. I must apologize for seeming to speak dogmatically on
some questions which have been much disputed. It would have been
obviously inconsistent with the character of the book to give the
opposing arguments; and my only course was to state simply conclusions
which I had done my best to make correct.
I have to acknowledge my obligations to Marquardt's _Privat-Leben der
Romer_, Mr. Capes' _University Life in Ancient Athens_, and Mr. Watson's
_Select Letters of Cicero_, I have also made frequent use of Mr. Anthony
Trollope's _Life of Cicero_, a work full of sound sense, though
curiously deficient in scholarship.
The publishers and myself hope that the illustrations, giving as there
is good reason to believe they do the veritable likenesses of some of
the chief actors in the scenes described, will have a special interest.
It is not till we come down to comparatively recent times that we find
art again lending the same aid to the understanding of history.
Some apology should perhaps be made for retaining the popular title of
one of the illustrations. The learned are, we believe, agreed that the
statue known as the "Dying Gladiator" does not represent a gladiator at
all. Yet it seemed pedantic, in view of Byron's famous description, to
let it appear under any other name.
ALFRED CHURCH.
HADLEY GREEN _October_ 8, 1883.
ROMAN LIFE
IN THE DAYS OF CICERO.
CHAPTER I.
A ROMAN BOY.
A Roman father's first duty to his boy, after lifting him up in his arms
in token that he was a true son of the house, was to furnish him with a
first name out of the scanty list (just seventeen) to which his choice
was limited. This naming was done on the eighth day after birth, and was
accompanied with some religious ceremonies, and with a feast to which
kinsfolk were invited. Thus named he was enrolled in some family or
state register. The next care was to protect him from the malignant
influence of the evil eye by hanging round his neck a gilded _bulla_, a
round plate of metal. (The _bulla_ was of leather if he was not of
gentle birth.) This he wore till he assumed the dress of manhood. Then
he laid it aside, possibly to assume it once more, if he attained the
crowning honor to which a Roman could aspire, and was drawn in triumph
up the slope of the Capitol. He was nursed by his mother, or, in any
case, by a free-born woman. It was his mother that had exclusive charge
of him for the first seven years of his life, and had much to say to the
ordering of his life afterwards. For Roman mothers were not shut up like
their sisters in Greece, but played no small part in affairs--witness
the histories or legends (for it matters not for this purpose whether
they are fact or fiction) of the Sabine wives, of Tullia, who stirred up
her husband to seize a throne, or Veturia, who turned her son Coriolanus
from his purpose of besieging Rome. At seven began the education which
was to make him a citizen and a soldier. Swimming, riding, throwing the
javelin developed his strength of body. He learned at the same time to
be frugal, temperate in eating and drinking, modest and seemly in
behavior, reverent to his elders, obedient to authority at home and
abroad, and above all, pious towards the gods. If it was the duty of
the father to act as priest in some temple of the State (for the
priests were not a class apart from their fellow-citizens), or to
conduct the worship in some chapel of the family, the lad would act as
_camillus_ or acolyte. When the clients, the dependents of the house,
trooped into the hall in the early morning hours to pay their respects
to their patron, or to ask his advice and assistance in their affairs,
the lad would stand by his father's chair and make acquaintance with his
humble friends. When the hall was thrown open, and high festival was
held, he would be present and hear the talk on public affairs or on past
times. He would listen to and sometimes take part in the songs which
celebrated great heroes. When the body of some famous soldier or
statesman was carried outside the walls to be buried or burned, he would
be taken to hear the oration pronounced over the bier.
At one time it was the custom, if we may believe a quaint story which
one of the Roman writers tells us, for the senators to introduce their
young sons to the sittings of their assembly, very much in the same way
as the boys of Westminster School are admitted to hear the debates in
the Houses of Parliament. The story professes to show how it was that
one of the families of the race of Papirius came to bear the name of
_Praetextatus_, i.e., clad in the _praetexta_ (the garb of boyhood), and
it runs thus:--"It was the custom in the early days of the Roman State
that the senators should bring their young sons into the Senate to the
end that they might learn in their early days how great affairs of the
commonwealth were managed. And that no harm should ensue to the city, it
was strictly enjoined upon the lads that they should not say aught of
the things which they had heard within the House. It happened on a day
that the Senate, after long debate upon a certain matter, adjourned the
thing to the morrow. Hereupon the son of a certain senator, named
Papirius, was much importuned by his mother to tell the matter which had
been thus painfully debated. And when the lad, remembering the command
which had been laid upon him that he should be silent about such
matters, refused to tell it, the woman besought him to speak more
urgently, till at the last, being worn out by her importunities, he
contrived this thing. 'The Senate,' he said, 'debated whether something
might not be done whereby there should be more harmony in families than
is now seen to be; and whether, should it be judged expedient to make
any change, this should be to order that a husband should have many
wives, or a wife should have more husbands than one.' Then the woman,
being much disturbed by the thing which she had heard, hastened to all
the matrons of her acquaintance, and stirred them up not to suffer any
such thing. Thus it came to pass that the Senate, meeting the next day,
were astonished beyond measure to see a great multitude of women
gathered together at the doors, who besought them not to make any
change; or, if any, certainly not to permit that a man should have more
wives than one. Then the young Papirius told the story how his mother
had questioned him, and how he had devised this story to escape from her
importunity. Thereupon the Senate, judging that all boys might not have
the same constancy and wit, and that the State might suffer damage from
the revealing of things that had best be kept secret, made this law,
that no sons of a senator should thereafter come into the House, save
only this young Papirius, but that he should have the right to come so
long as he should wear the _praetexta_."
While this general education was going on, the lad was receiving some
definite teaching. He learned of course to read, to write, and to
cypher. The elder Cato used to write in large characters for the benefit
of his sons portions of history, probably composed by himself or by his
contemporary Fabius, surnamed the "Painter" (the author of a chronicle
of Italy from the landing of Aeneas down to the end of the Second Punic
War). He was tempted to learn by playthings, which ingeniously combined
instruction and amusement. Ivory letters--probably in earlier times a
less costly material was used--were put into his hands, just as they are
put into the hands of children now-a-days, that he might learn how to
form words. As soon as reading was acquired, he began to learn by heart.
"When we were boys," Cicero represents himself as saying to his brother
Quintus, in one of his Dialogues, "we used to learn the 'Twelve
Tables.'" The "Twelve Tables" were the laws which Appius of evil fame
and his colleagues the decemvirs had arranged in a code. "No one," he
goes on to say, "learns them now." Books had become far more common in
the forty years which had passed between Cicero's boyhood and the time
at which he is supposed to be speaking; and the tedious lesson of his
early days had given place to something more varied and interesting.
Writing the boy learned by following with the pen (a sharp-pointed
_stylus_ of metal), forms of letters which had been engraved on tablets
of wood. At first his hand was held and guided by the teacher. This was
judged by the experienced to be a better plan than allowing him to shape
letters for himself on the wax-covered tablet. Of course parchment and
paper were far too expensive materials to be used for exercises and
copies. As books were rare and costly, dictation became a matter of much
importance. The boy wrote, in part at least, his own schoolbooks. Horace
remembers with a shudder what he had himself written at the dictation of
his schoolmaster, who was accustomed to enforce good writing and
spelling with many blows. He never could reconcile himself to the early
poets whose verse had furnished the matter of these lessons.
Our Roman boy must have found arithmetic a more troublesome thing than
the figures now in use (for which we cannot be too thankful to the Arabs
their inventors) have made it. It is difficult to imagine how any thing
like a long sum in multiplication or division could have been done with
the Roman numerals, so cumbrous were they. The number, for instance,
which we represent by the figures 89 would require for its expression no
less than _nine_ figures, LXXXVIIII. The boy was helped by using the
fingers, the left hand being used to signify numbers below a hundred,
and the right numbers above it. Sometimes his teacher would have a
counting-board, on which units, tens, and hundreds would be represented
by variously colored balls. The sums which he did were mostly of a
practical kind. Here is the sample that Horace gives of an arithmetic
lesson. "The Roman boys are taught to divide the penny by long
calculations. 'If from five ounces be subtracted one, what is the
remainder?' At once you can answer, 'A third of a penny.' 'Good, you
will be able to take care of your money. If an ounce be added what does
it make?' 'The half of a penny.'"
While he was acquiring this knowledge he was also learning a language,
the one language besides his own which to a Roman was worth
knowing--Greek. Very possibly he had begun to pick it up in the nursery,
where a Greek slave girl was to be found, just as the French _bonne_ or
the German nursery-governess is among our own wealthier families. He
certainly began to acquire it when he reached the age at which his
regular education was commenced. Cato the Elder, though he made it a
practice to teach his own sons, had nevertheless a Greek slave who was
capable of undertaking the work, and who actually did teach, to the
profit of his very frugal master, the sons of other nobles. Aemilius,
the conqueror of Macedonia, who was a few years younger than Cato, had
as a tutor a Greek of some distinction. While preparing the procession
of his triumph he had sent to Athens for a scene-painter, as we should
call him, who might make pictures of conquered towns wherewith to
illustrate his victories. He added to the commission a stipulation that
the artist should also be qualified to take the place of tutor. By good
fortune the Athenians happened to have in stock, so to speak, exactly
the man he wanted, one Metrodorus. Cicero had a Greek teacher in his own
family, not for his son indeed, who was not born till later, but for his
own benefit. This was one Diodotus, a Stoic philosopher. Cicero had been
his pupil in his boyhood, and gave him a home till the day of his death,
"I learned many things from him, logic especially." In old age he lost
his sight. "Yet," says his pupil, "he devoted himself to study even more
diligently than before; he had books read to him night and day. These
were studies which he could pursue without his eyes; but he also, and
this seems almost incredible, taught geometry without them, instructing
his learners whence and whither the line was to be drawn, and of what
kind it was to be." It is interesting to know that when the old man died
he left his benefactor about nine thousand pounds.
Of course only wealthy Romans could command for their sons the services
of such teachers as Diodotus; but any well-to-do-household contained a
slave who had more or less acquaintance with Greek. In Cicero's time a
century and more of conquests on the part of Rome over Greek and
Greek-speaking communities had brought into Italian families a vast
number of slaves who knew the Greek language, and something, often a
good deal, of Greek literature. One of these would probably be set apart
as the boy's attendant; from him he would learn to speak and read a
language, a knowledge of which was at least as common at Rome as is a
knowledge of French among English gentlemen.
If the Roman boy of whom we are speaking belonged to a very wealthy and
distinguished family, he would probably receive his education at home.
Commonly he would go to school. There were schools, girls' schools as
well as boys' schools, at Rome in the days of the wicked Appius
Claudius. The schoolmaster appears among the Etruscans in the story of
Camillus, when the traitor, who offers to hand over to the Roman general
the sons of the chief citizen of Falerii, is at his command scourged
back into the town by his scholars. We find him again in the same story
in the Latin town of Tusculum, where it is mentioned as one of the signs
of a time of profound peace (Camillus had hurriedly marched against the
town on a false report of its having revolted), that the hum of scholars
at their lessons was heard in the market-place. At Rome, as time went
on, and the Forum became more and more busy and noisy, the schools were
removed to more suitable localities. Their appliances for teaching were
improved and increased. Possibly maps were added, certainly reading
books. Homer was read, and, as we have seen, the old Latin play-writers,
and, afterwards, Virgil. Horace threatens the book which willfully
insists on going out into the world with this fate, that old age will
find it in a far-off suburb teaching boys their letters. Some hundred
years afterwards the prophecy was fulfilled. Juvenal tells us how the
schoolboys stood each with a lamp in one hand and a well-thumbed Horace
or sooty Virgil in the other. Quintilian, writing about the same time,
goes into detail, as becomes an old schoolmaster. "It is an admirable
practice that the boy's reading should begin with Homer and Virgil. The
tragic writers also are useful; and there is much benefit to be got from
the lyric poets also. But here you must make a selection not of authors
only, but a part of authors." It is curious to find him banishing
altogether a book that is, or certainly was, more extensively used in
our schools than any other classic, the Heroides of Ovid.
These, and such as these, then, are the books which our Roman boy would
have to read. Composition would not be forgotten. "Let him take," says
the author just quoted, "the fables of Aesop and tell them in simple
language, never rising above the ordinary level. Then let him pass on to
a style less plain; then, again, to bolder paraphrases, sometimes
shortening, sometimes amplifying the original, but always following his
sense." He also suggests the writing of themes and characters. One
example he gives is this, "Was Crates the philosopher right when, having
met an ignorant boy, he administered a beating to his teacher?" Many
subjects of these themes have been preserved. Hannibal was naturally
one often chosen. His passage of the Alps, and the question whether he
should have advanced on the city immediately after the battle of Cannae,
were frequently discussed. Cicero mentions a subject of the speculative
kind. "It is forbidden to a stranger to mount the wall. A. mounts the
wall, but only to help the citizens in repelling their enemies. Has A.
broken the law?"
To make these studies more interesting to the Roman boy, his
schoolmaster called in the aid of emulation. "I feel sure," says
Quintilian, "that the practice which I remember to have been employed by
my own teachers was any thing but useless. They were accustomed to
divide the boys into classes, and they set us to speak in the order of
our powers; every one taking his turn according to his proficiency. Our
performances were duly estimated; and prodigious were the struggles
which we had for victory. To be the head of one's class was considered
the most glorious thing conceivable. But the decision was not made once
for all. The next month brought the vanquished an opportunity of
renewing the contest. He who had been victorious in the first encounter
was not led by success to relax his efforts, and a feeling of vexation
impelled the vanquished to do away with the disgrace of defeat. This
practice, I am sure, supplied a keener stimulus to learning than did all
the exhortations of our teachers, the care of our tutors, and the wishes
of our parents." Nor did the schoolmaster trust to emulation alone. The
third choice of the famous Winchester line, "Either learn, or go: there
is yet another choice--to be flogged," was liberally employed. Horace
celebrates his old schoolmaster as a "man of many blows," and another
distinguished pupil of this teacher, the Busby or Keate of antiquity,
has specified the weapons which he employed, the ferule and the thong.
The thong is the familiar "tawse" of schools north of the Border. The
ferule was a name given both to the bamboo and to the yellow cane, which
grew plentifully both in the islands of the Greek Archipelago and in
Southern Italy, as notably at Cannae in Apulia, where it gave a name to
the scene of the great battle. The _virga_ was also used, a rod
commonly of birch, a tree the educational use of which had been already
discovered. The walls of Pompeii indeed show that the practice of Eton
is truly classical down to its details.
As to the advantage of the practice opinions were divided. One
enthusiastic advocate goes so far as to say that the Greek word for a
cane signifies by derivation, "the sharpener of the young" (_narthex,
nearous thegein_), but the best authorities were against it. Seneca is
indignant with the savage who will "butcher" a young learner because he
hesitates at a word--a venial fault indeed, one would think, when we
remember what must have been the aspect of a Roman book, written as it
was in capitals, almost without stops, and with little or no distinction
between the words. And Quintilian is equally decided, though he allows
that flogging was an "institution."
As to holidays the practice of the Roman schools probably resembled that
which prevails in the Scotch Universities, though with a less
magnificent length of vacation. Every one had a holiday on the "days of
Saturn" (a festival beginning on the seventeenth of December), and the
schoolboys had one of their own on the "days of Minerva," which fell in
the latter half of March; but the "long vacation" was in the summer.
Horace speaks of lads carrying their fees to school on the fifteenth of
the month for eight months in the year (if this interpretation of a
doubtful passage is correct). Perhaps as this was a country school the
holidays were made longer than usual, to let the scholars take their
part in the harvest, which as including the vintage would not be over
till somewhat late in the autumn. We find Martial, however, imploring a
schoolmaster to remember that the heat of July was not favorable to
learning, and suggesting that he should abdicate his seat till the
fifteenth of October brought a season more convenient for study. Rome
indeed was probably deserted in the later summer and autumn by the
wealthier class, who were doubtless disposed to agree in the poet's
remark, a remark to which the idlest schoolboy will forgive its Latin
for the sake of its admirable sentiment:
"Aestate pueri si valent satis discunt." "In summer boys learn
enough, if they keep their health."
Something, perhaps, may be said of the teachers, into whose hands the
boys of Rome were committed. We have a little book, of not more than
twoscore pages in all, which gives us "lives of illustrious
schoolmasters;" and from which we may glean a few facts. The first
business of a schoolmaster was to teach grammar, and grammar Rome owed,
as she owed most of her knowledge, to a Greek, a certain Crates, who
coming as ambassador from one of the kings of Asia Minor, broke his leg
while walking in the ill-paved streets of Rome, and occupied his leisure
by giving lectures at his house. Most of the early teachers were Greeks.
Catulus bought a Greek slave for somewhat more than fifteen hundred
pounds, and giving him his freedom set him up as a schoolmaster; another
of the same nation received a salary of between three and four hundred
pounds, his patron taking and probably making a considerable profit out
of the pupils' fees. Orbilius, the man of blows, was probably of Greek
descent. He had been first a beadle, then a trumpeter, then a trooper in
his youth, and came to Rome in the year in which Cicero was consul. He
seems to have been as severe on the parents of his pupils as he was in
another way on the lads themselves, for he wrote a book in which he
exposed their meanness and ingratitude. His troubles, however, did not
prevent him living to the great age of one hundred and three. The author
of the little book about schoolmasters had seen his statue in his native
town. It was a marble figure, in a sitting posture, with two writing
desks beside it. The favorite authors of Orbilius, who was of the
old-fashioned school, were, as has been said, the early dramatists.
Caecilius, a younger man, to whom Atticus the friend and correspondent
of Cicero gave his freedom, lectured on Virgil, with whom, as he was
intimate with one of Virgil's associates, he probably had some
acquaintance. A certain Flaccus had the credit of having first invented
prizes. He used to pit lads of equal age against each other, supplying
not only a subject on which to write, but a prize for the victor. This
was commonly some handsome or rare old book. Augustus made him tutor to
his grandsons, giving him a salary of eight hundred pounds per annum.
Twenty years later, a fashionable schoolmaster is said to have made
between three and four thousands.
These schoolmasters were also sometimes teachers of eloquence, lecturing
to men. One Gnipho, for instance, is mentioned among them, as having
held his classes in the house of Julius Caesar (Caesar was left an
orphan at fifteen); and afterwards, when his distinguished pupil was
grown up, in his own. But Cicero, when he was praetor, and at the very
height of his fame, is said to have attended his lectures. This was the
year in which he delivered the very finest of his non-political
speeches, his defence of Cluentius. He must have been a very clever
teacher from whom so great an orator hoped to learn something.
These teachers of eloquence were what we may call the "Professors" of
Rome. A lad had commonly "finished his education" when he put on the
"man's gown;" but if he thought of political life, of becoming a
statesman, and taking office in the commonwealth, he had much yet to
learn. He had to make himself a lawyer and an orator. Law he learned by
attaching himself, by becoming the pupil, as we should say, of some
great man that was famed for his knowledge. Cicero relates to us his own
experience: "My father introduced me to the Augur Scaevola; and the
result was that, as far as possible and permissible, I never left the
old man's side. Thus I committed to memory many a learned argument of
his, many a terse and clever maxim, while I sought to add to my own
knowledge from his stores of special learning. When the Augur died I
betook myself to the Pontiff of the same name and family." Elsewhere we
have a picture of this second Scaevola and his pupils. "Though he did
not undertake to give instruction to any one, yet he practically taught
those who were anxious to listen to him by allowing them to hear his
answers to those who consulted him." These consultations took place
either in the Forum or at his own house. In the Forum the great lawyer
indicated that clients were at liberty to approach by walking across the
open space from corner to corner. The train of young Romans would then
follow his steps, just as the students follow the physician or the
surgeon through the wards of a hospital. When he gave audience at home
they would stand by his chair. It must be remembered that the great man
took no payment either from client or from pupil.
But the young Roman had not only to learn law, he must also learn how to
speak-learn, as far as such a thing can be learned, how to be eloquent.
What we in this country call the career of the public man was there
called the career of the orator. With us it is much a matter of chance
whether a man can speak or not. We have had statesmen who wielded all
the power that one man ever can wield in this country who had no sort of
eloquence. We have had others who had this gift in the highest degree,
but never reached even one of the lower offices in the government.
Sometimes a young politician will go to a professional teacher to get
cured of some defect or trick of speech; but that such teaching is part
of the necessary training of a statesman is an idea quite strange to us.
A Roman received it as a matter of course. Of course, like other things
at Rome, it made its way but slowly. Just before the middle of the
second century b.c. the Senate resolved: "Seeing that mention has been
made of certain philosophers and rhetoricians, let Pomponius the praetor
see to it, as he shall hold it to be for the public good, and for his
own honor, that none such be found at Rome." Early in the first century
the censors issued an edict forbidding certain Latin rhetoricians to
teach. One of these censors was the great orator Crassus, greatest of
all the predecessors of Cicero. Cicero puts into his mouth an apology
for this proceeding: "I was not actuated by any hostility to learning or
culture. These Latin rhetoricians were mere ignorant pretenders,
inefficient imitators of their Greek rivals, from whom the Roman youth
were not likely to learn any thing but impudence." In spite of the
censors, however, and in spite of the fashionable belief in Rome that
what was Greek must be far better than what was of native growth, the
Latin teachers rose into favor. "I remember," says Cicero, "when we were
boys, one Lucius Plotinus, who was the first to teach eloquence in
Latin; how, when the studious youth of the capital crowded to hear him
it vexed me much, that I was not permitted to attend him. I was checked,
however, by the opinion of learned men, who held that in this matter the
abilities of the young were more profitably nourished by exercises in
Greek." We are reminded of our own Doctor Johnson, who declared that
he would not disgrace the walls of Westminster Abbey by an epitaph in
English.
The chief part of the instruction which these teachers gave was to
propose imaginary cases involving some legal difficulty for their pupils
to discuss. One or two of these cases may be given.
One day in summer a party of young men from Rome made an excursion to
Ostia, and coming down to the seashore found there some fishermen who
were about to draw in a net. With these they made a bargain that they
should have the draught for a certain sum. The money was paid. When the
net was drawn up no fish were found in it, but a hamper sewn with thread
of gold. The buyers allege this to be theirs as the draught of the net.
The fishermen claim it as not being fish. To whom did it belong?
Certain slave-dealers, landing a cargo of slaves at Brundisium, and
having with them a very beautiful boy of great value, fearing lest the
custom-house officers should lay hands upon him, put upon him the
_bulla_ and the purple-edged robe that free-born lads were wont to wear.
The deceit was not discovered. But when they came to Rome, and the
matter was talked of, it was maintained that the boy was really free,
seeing that it was his master who of his own free will had given him the
token of freedom.
I shall conclude this chapter with a very pretty picture, which a Roman
poet draws of the life which he led with his teacher in the days when he
was first entering upon manhood. "When first my timid steps lost the
guardianship of the purple stripe, and the _bulla_ of the boy was hung
up for offering to the quaint household gods; when flattering comrades
came about me, and I might cast my eyes without rebuke over the whole
busy street under the shelter of the yet unsullied gown; in the days
when the path is doubtful, and the wanderer knowing naught of life comes
with bewildered soul to the many-branching roads--then I made myself
your adopted child. You took at once into the bosom of another Socrates
my tender years; your rule, applied with skillful disguise, straightens
each perverse habit; nature is molded by reason, and struggles to be
subdued, and assumes under your hands its plastic lineaments. Ay, well I
mind how I would wear away long summer suns with you, and pluck with you
the bloom of night's first hours. One work we had, one certain time for
rest, and at one modest table unbent from sterner thoughts."
It accords with this charming picture to be told that the pupil, dying
in youth, left his property to his old tutor, and that the latter handed
it over to the kinsfolk of the deceased, keeping for himself the books
only.