“Cicero the Little sends his compliments to Titus the Athenian”—­“Cicero the Philosopher salutes Titus the Politician.[2]” These messages are written in Greek at the end of the letters.  Abeken thinks that in the originals they might have been added in the little Cicero’s own hand, “to show that he had begun Greek;” “a conjecture”, says Mr. Merivale, “too pleasant not to be readily admitted”.  The boy gave his father some trouble in after life.  He served with some credit as an officer of cavalry under Pompey in Greece, or at least got into no trouble there.  Some years after, he wished to take service in Spain, under Caesar, against the sons of Pompey; but the father did not approve of this change of side.  He persuaded him to go to Athens to study instead, allowing him what both Atticus and himself thought a very liberal income—­not sufficient, however, for him to keep a horse, which Cicero held to be an unnecessary luxury.  Probably the young cavalry officer might not have been of the same opinion; at any rate, he got into more trouble among the philosophers than he did in the army.  He spent a great deal more than his allowance, and one of the professors, whose lectures he attended, had the credit of helping him to spend it.  The young man must have shared the kindly disposition of his father.  He wrote a confidential letter to Tiro, the old family servant, showing very good feeling, and promising reformation.  It is doubtful how far the promise was kept.  He rose, however, subsequently to place and power under Augustus, but died without issue; and, so far at least as history knows them, the line of the Ciceros was extinct.  It had flashed into fame with the great orator, and died out with him.

[Footnote 1:  “Interia dulces pendent circum oscula nati; Casta pudicitiam servat domus".—­Georg. ii. 524.]

[Footnote 2:  See ‘Letters to Atticus’, ii. 9, 12; Merivale’s translation of Abeken’s ‘Cicero in Seinen Briefen’, p. 114.]

All Cicero’s biographers have found considerable difficulty in tracing, at all satisfactorily, the sources of the magnificent fortune which must have been required to keep up, and to embellish in accordance with so luxurious a taste, so many residences in all parts of the country.  True, these expenses often led Cicero into debt and difficulties; but what he borrowed from his friends he seems always to have repaid, so that the money must have come in from some quarter or other.  His patrimony at Arpinum would not appear to have been large; he got only some L3000 or L4000 dowry with Terentia; and we find no hint of his making money by any commercial speculations, as some Roman gentlemen did.  On the other hand, it is the barest justice to him to say that his hands were clean from those ill-gotten gains which made the fortunes of many of the wealthiest public men at Rome, who were criminals in only a less degree than Verres—­peculation, extortion, and downright robbery in the unfortunate provinces which they were