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The Spike: or, Victoria College Review October 1907

A Letter from the University of Athens

page 9

A Letter from the University of Athens.

65 B.C is best known as the birth year of Horace. In the same year, however, there was born a youth whose life, though different in almost every possible way, happened to cross the poet's at an interesting period in his career, and who, as the writer of the most ancient student's letter in existence, seems worthy of some slight memorial in a College Magazine like The Spike. The child was the only son of rather orator Cicero. Twenty years afterwards young Horace and young Cicero went to the University of Athens. Thither in the September of 44 B.C came M. Brutus, who had thought it advisable to leave Rome after the murder of Caesar, and who also began to study philosophy, which was apparently the proper thing to do a Athens. In his leisure moments, or, perhaps, during the course of the lectures when the Professor's eye was turned away, Brutus did some recruiting for the army of the republic, and both the son of the freedman and the son of the Roman Consul joined his standard. Both accompanied Brutus in his preliminary campaign in Asia Minor, and both were present at Philippi, Horace as a military tribune, young Cicero as the commander of a squadron of cavalry. At this decisive battle, as we know, Horace flung away his "poor little shield" and it is bit unlikely that young Cicero did the same, for "when velour was shattered and those who threatened high kissed mother Earth," what else could young students do ? After Philippi their paths diverge. Horace returned to Italy at once, and after "flying low for a while with clipped wings "soared at last to a secure perch on the upper slopes of Parnassus. Fortunately for himself, young Cicero remained abroad for a few years, for had he returned to Italy with Horace, there is little doubt he would have shared his father's fate and perished by the swords of Antony's assassins. He returned in 39, when a general amnesty was proclaimed, and received some favors from Augustus, hy way of amende doubtless for the latter's unpardonable treachery toward the earlier pertain of his scheming career. The remaining portion of young Cicero's life is not entirely devoid of merit, but he is a proof that there are exceptions to Horace's well-known axiom "Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis," for it saddens one to think that the only son of "Rome's least mortal mind "was best known to the next generation as a sot who was accustomed to drink nearly a gallon and a half of wine at a sitting.

page 10

The letter to which I have referred was addressed, not to Cicero himself, but to Tiro, his confidential freedman and mind of business. None of young Cicero's letters to his father have survived, and if they contained many such solecisms as "direxi duas litteras," with Marcus Cicero is credited by a commentator on Vergil, that is not surprising, as one can easily picture a keen literary critic like his father consigning them of the flames, lest posterity might come to know him as the begetter of such a barbarian. Cicero senior seems to have had good cause to complain of his son's progress, in which matter he was himself not entirely free from blame. Young Cicero, who was much more of a fighter than a student, did not want to go to Athens at all. He had different ideas about himself, and really desired to go to Spain with Caesar, but failing that he suggested to his father that he should be allowed to set up an independent establishment of his own at Rome and "bach, "as we say nowadays. However, his father considered that he would be safer at Athens in those troubled times, and with that childish and peacock vanity, which is not the least interesting feature in his character, resolved that his only son should have an income large enough to ruffle it with the best. In spite of the remonstrance of his cautious friend Atticus, who probably guessed that he would have to pay some portion of the money out of his own well-filled money bags, Cicero insisted that his son should have an allowance that would seem a fortune to a New Zealand professor, and at which an Oxford or Cambridge undergraduate could hardly afford to sneer. The total sum allowed him was £800, but as money went much further then than it does now, that amount represents a much larger sum.

With his purse thus well lined, it is not surprising that the foolish and good-natured Marcus proceeded to sow a large crop of wild oats. Professors, apparently, were different in those days. One of young Cicero's teachers was a certain Gorgias, a Graeculus esuriens, not without distinction as a writer but a veritable Dr.Pangloss, who introduced this Roman Dick Dowlas to a good deal of very undesirable company. We learn from the letter Tiro that young Marcus was instructed by his father to dismiss this tutor, which he says he will do "of course," but it is evident from his tone that he did not appreciate this interference with his pleasures. One of the other professors was Cratippus, a very distinguished philosopher and a great favorite with his students, and that with good reason, for Cicero informs Tiro that he not only attended his lectures with pleasure, but that the learned professor "would drop in of an evening after supper, so that they had pleasant page 11 jokes and chats together." Bruttius, another professor, a plain liver and high thinker, was, according to Marcus, his constant companion. He was evidently only a poor man—perhaps he was only a lecturer-for Cicero says, in a sentence that makes one smile, "I have taken a house for him in the neighborhood, and, as far as I con out my scanty means, I alleviate his narrow circumstances." The student world seems to have been topsy-turvy at Athens, where grateful students apparently paid the rent of their professors' houses, instead of merely giving them an opportunity of contributing to their own gymnasium.

Why young Cicero wrote this particular letter to Tiro one cannot say, but perhaps the last sentence contains the clue. It is a careful composed good boy's letter, which Tiro was doubtless intended to show to his father in the hope that this glowing account to himself and his relations with his professors and the "best people in Athens," might induce his credulous parent to accede to the request with which the letter winds up, to the effect that Tiro should send him a private secretary, if possible, one who knew Greek, "who would be of great service to him and save him the trouble of copying out his lecture notes." It is not without reason that Professor Tyrrell remarks, in his charming notes on young Cicero's career, "This was indeed the Gloden Age of University Life."

J. R. B.