(Ebook History) Church, Alfred J Roman Life In The Days Of Cicero

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Terentius Varro[7] whose rashness brought upon his country the terrible disaster of the defeat of Cannae. She
had a half-sister, probably older than herself, of the name of Fabia, who was a vestal virgin. She brought her
husband, to whom she was married about 78 B.C., a fair dowry, about three thousand five hundred pounds.
We have seen how affectionately Cicero writes to her during his exile. She is his darling, his only hope; the
mere thought of her makes his eyes overflow with tears. And she seems to have deserved all his praise and
affection, exerting herself to the utmost to help him, and ready to impoverish herself to find him the means
that he needed. Four letters of this period have been preserved. There are twenty others belonging to the years
50-47 B.C. The earlier of these are sufficiently affectionate. When he is about to return to Rome from his
province (Cilicia), she is still the most amiable, the dearest of women. Then we begin to see signs of coolness,
yet nothing that would strike us did we not know what was afterwards to happen. He excuses the rarity of his
letters. There is no one by whom to send them. If there were, he was willing to write. The greetings became
formal, the superlatives "dearest," "fondest," "best," are dropped. "You are glad," he writes after the battle of
Pharsalia had dashed his hopes, "that I have got back safe to Italy; I hope that you may continue to be glad."
"Don't think of coming," he goes on, "it is a long journey and not very safe; and I don't see what good you
would do if you should come." In another letter he gives directions about getting ready his house at Tusculum
for the reception of guests. The letter is dated on the first of October, and he and his friends would come
probably to stay several days, on the seventh. If there was not a tub in the bath-room, one must be provided.
The greeting is of the briefest and most formal. Meanwhile we know from what he writes to Atticus that he
was greatly dissatisfied with the lady's conduct. Money matters were at the bottom of their quarrel. She was
careless, he thinks, and extravagant. Though he was a rich man, yet he was often in need of ready money, and
Terentia could not be relied upon to help him. His vexation takes form in a letter to Atticus. "As to
Terentia--there are other things without number of which I don't speak--what can be worse than this? You
wrote to her to send me bills for one hundred and eight pounds; for there was so much money left in hand. She
sent me just ninety pounds, and added a note that this was all. If she was capable of abstracting such a trifle
from so small a sum, don't you see what she would have done in matters of real importance?" The quarrel
ended in a divorce, a thing far more common than, happily, it is among ourselves, but still a painful and
discreditable end to an union which had lasted for more than five-and-twenty years. Terentia long survived
her husband, dying in extreme old age (as much, it was said, as a hundred and three years), far on in the reign
of Augustus; and after a considerable experience of matrimony, if it be true that she married three or even,
according to some accounts, four other husbands.
[Footnote 7: Another of the same name was an eminent man of letters of Cicero's own time.]
Terentia's daughter, Tullia, had a short and unhappy life. She was born, it would seem, about 79 B.C., and
married when fifteen or sixteen to a young Roman noble, Piso Frugi by name. "The best, the most loyal of
men," Cicero calls him. He died in 57 B.C., and Rome lost, if his father-in-law's praises of him may be
trusted, an orator of the very highest promise. "I never knew any one who surpassed my son-in-law, Piso, in
zeal, in industry, and, I may fairly say, in ability." The next year she married a certain Crassipes, a very
shadowy person indeed. We know nothing of what manner of man he was, or what became of him. But in 50
B.C. Tullia was free to marry again. Her third venture was of her own or her mother's contriving. Her father
was at his government in Cilicia, and he hears of the affair with surprise. "Believe me," he writes to Atticus,
"nothing could have been less expected by me. Tiberius Nero had made proposals to me, and I had sent
friends to discuss the matter with the ladies. But when they got to Rome the betrothal had taken place. This, I
hope, will be a better match. I fancy the ladies were very much pleased with the young gentleman's
complaisance and courtesy, but do not look for the thorns." The "thorns," however, were there. A friend who
kept Cicero acquainted with the news of Rome, told him as much, though he wraps up his meaning in the
usual polite phrases. "I congratulate you," he writes, "on your alliance with one who is, I really believe, a
worthy fellow. I do indeed think this of him. If there have been some things in which he has not done justice
to himself, these are now past and gone; any traces that may be left will soon, I am sure, disappear, thanks to
CHAPTER X. EXILE. 48
Roman life in the days of Cicero
your good influence and to his respect for Tullia. He is not offensive in his errors, and does not seem slow to
appreciate better things." Tullia, however, was not more successful than other wives in reforming her
husband. Her marriage seems to have been unhappy almost from the beginning. It was brought to an end by a
divorce after about three years. Shortly afterward Tullia, who could have been little more than thirty, died, to
the inconsolable grief of her father. "My grief," he writes to Atticus, "passes all consolation. Yet I have done
what certainly no one ever did before, written a treatise for my own consolation. (I will send you the book if
the copyists have finished it.) And indeed there is nothing like it. I write day after day, and all day long; not
that I can get any good from it, but it occupies me a little, not much indeed; the violence of my grief is too
much for me. Still I am soothed, and do my best to compose, not my feelings, indeed, but, if I can, my face."
And again: "Next to your company nothing is more agreeable to me than solitude. Then all my converse is
with books; yet this is interrupted by tears; these I resist as well as I can; but at present I fail." At one time he
thought of finding comfort in unusual honors to the dead. He would build a shrine of which Tullia should be
the deity. "I am determined," he writes, "on building the shrine. From this purpose I cannot be turned ...
Unless the building be finished this summer, I shall hold myself guilty." He fixes upon a design. He begs
Atticus, in one of his letters, to buy some columns of marble of Chios for the building. He discusses the
question of the site. Some gardens near Rome strike him as a convenient place. It must be conveniently near if
it is to attract worshipers. "I would sooner sell or mortgage, or live on little, than be disappointed." Then he
thought that he would build it on the grounds of his villa. In the end he did not build it at all. Perhaps the best
memorial of Tullia is the beautiful letter in which one of Cicero's friends seeks to console him for his loss.
"She had lived," he says, "as long as life was worth living, as long as the republic stood." One passage, though
it has often been quoted before, I must give. "I wish to tell you of something which brought me no small
consolation, hoping that it may also somewhat diminish your sorrow. On my way back from Asia, as I was
sailing from Aeigina to Megara, I began to contemplate the places that lay around me. Behind me was Aegina,
before me Megara; on my right hand the Piraeus, on my left hand Corinth; towns all of them that were once at
the very height of prosperity, but now lie ruined and desolate before our eyes. I began thus to reflect: 'Strange! [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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