CHAPTER II.

HIS EDUCATION.

At Arpinum, on the river Liris, a little stream which has been made to sound sweetly in our ears by Horace, in a villa residence near the town, Marcus Tullius Cicero was born, 106 years before Christ, on the 3d of January, according to the calendar then in use. Pompey the Great was born in the same year. Arpinum was a State which had been admitted into Roman citizenship, lying between Rome and Capua, just within that portion of Italy which was till the other day called the Kingdom of Naples. The district from which he came is noted, also, as having given birth to Marius. Cicero was of an equestrian family, which means as much as though we were to say among ourselves that a man had been born a gentleman and nothing more. An"eques" or knight in Cicero's time became so, or might become so, by being in possession of a certain income. The title conferred no nobility. The plebeian, it will be understood, could not become patrician, though he might become noble—as Cicero did. The patrician must have been born so—must have sprung from the purple of certain fixed families. Cicero was born a plebeian, of equestrian rank and became ennobled when he was ranked among the senators because of his service among the high magistrates of the Republic. As none of his family had served before him, he was"novus homo," a new man, and therefore not noble till he had achieved nobility himself. A man was noble who could reckon a Consul, a Prætor, or an Ædile among his ancestors. Such was not the case with Cicero. As he filled all these offices, his son was noble—as were his son's sons and grandsons, if such there were.

It was common to Romans to have three names, and our Cicero had three. Marcus, which was similar in its use to the Christian name of one of us, had been that of his grandfather and father, and was handed on to his son. This, called the prænomen, was conferred on the child when a babe with a ceremony not unlike that of our baptism. There was but a limited choice of such names among the Romans, so that an initial letter will generally declare to those accustomed to the literature that intended. A. stands for Aulus, P. for Publius, M. generally for Marcus, C. for Caius, though there was a Cneus also. The nomen, Tullius, was that of the family. Of this family of Tullius to which Cicero belonged we know no details. Plutarch tells us that of his father nothing was said but in extremes, some declaring that he had been a fuller, and others that he had been descended from a prince who had governed the Volsci. We do not see why he may not have sprung from the prince, and also have been a fuller. There can, however, be no doubt that he was a gentleman, not uneducated himself, with means and the desire to give his children the best education which Rome or Greece afforded. The third name or cognomen, that of Cicero, belonged to