of convenient rooms for study or entertainment.  Sometimes the garden might be extended into a park, with fishponds and great abundance of game; Hortensius had such a park near Laurentum, fifty jugera enclosed in a ring-fence, and full of wild beasts of all sorts and kinds.  Varro tells us that the great orator would take his guests to a seat on an eminence in this park, and summon his “Orpheus” thither to sing and play:  at the sound of the music a multitude of stags, boars, and other animals would make their appearance—­having doubtless been trained to do so by expectation of food prepared for them.[393] Such was the taste of the great master of “Asiatic” eloquence.  We are reminded of the fairy tale of the Emperor of China and the mechanical nightingale.

His great rival in oratory had simpler tastes, in his country life as in his rhetoric.  Cicero had no villa of the vulgar kind of luxury; he preferred to own several of moderate comfort rather than one or two of such magnificence.  He had in all six, besides one or two properties which were bought for some special temporary object; and it is interesting to see what relation these houses had to his life and habits.  At no point could he afford to be very far from Rome, or from a main road which would take him there easily.  The accompanying little map will show that all his villas lay on or near to one or other of the two great roads that led southwards from the capital.  The via Latina would take him in an hour or two to Tusculum, where, since the death of Catulus in 68, he owned the villa of that excellent aristocrat.[394] The site of the villa cannot be determined with certainty, but Schmidt gives good reasons for believing that it was where we used formerly to place it, on the slope of the hill above Frascati.  That it really stood there, and not in the hollow by Grottaferrata,[395] we would willingly believe, for no one who has ever been there can possibly forget the glorious view or the refreshing air of those flowery slopes.  No wonder the owner was fond of it.  He tells Atticus, when he first came into possession of it, that he found rest there from all troubles and toils (ad Att. i. 5. 7.), and again that he is so delighted with it that when he gets there he is delighted with himself too (ad Att. i. 6).  Much of his literary work was done here, and he had the great advantage of being close to the splendid library of Lucullus’ neighbouring villa, which was always open to him.[396] At Tusculum he spent many a happy day, until his beloved daughter died there in 45, after which he would not go there for some time; but he got the better of this sorrow, and loved the place to the end of his life.

[Illustration:  MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE POSITION OF CICERO’S VILLAS.]