From the Greeks he learnt to appreciate art.  How far his taste was really cultivated in this respect is difficult for us to judge.  Some passages in his letters to Atticus might lead us to suspect that, as Disraeli concludes, he was rather a collector than a real lover of art.  His appeals to his friend to buy up for him everything and anything, and his surrender of himself entirely to Atticus’s judgment in such purchases, do not bespeak a highly critical taste.  In a letter to another friend, he seems to say that he only bought statuary as “furniture” for the gymnasium at his country-seat; and he complains that four figures of Bacchanals, which this friend had just bought for him, had cost more than he would care to give for all the statues that ever were made.  On the other hand, when he comes to deal with Verres’s wholesale plunder of paintings and statues in Sicily, he talks about the several works with considerable enthusiasm.  Either he really understood his subject, or, like an able advocate, he had thoroughly got up his brief.  But the art-notices which are scattered through his works show a considerable acquaintance with the artist-world of his day.  He tells us, in his own admirable style, the story of Zeuxis, and the selection which he made from all the beauties of Crotona, in order to combine their several points of perfection in his portrait of Helen; he refers more than once, and always in language which implies an appreciation of the artist, to the works of Phidias, especially that which is said to have cost him his life—­the shield of Minerva; and he discusses, though it is but by way of illustration, the comparative points of merit in the statues of Calamis, and Myron, and Polycletus, and in the paintings of the earlier schools of Zeuxis, Polygnotus, and Timanthes, with their four primitive colours, as compared with the more finished schools of Protogenes and Apelles.

CHAPTER IX.

CICERO’S CORRESPONDENCE.

I. ATTICUS.

It seems wonderful how, in the midst of all his work, Cicero found time to keep up such a voluminous correspondence.  Something like eight hundred of his letters still remain to us, and there were whole volumes of them long preserved which are now lost,[1] to say nothing of the very many which may never have been thought worth preserving.  The secret lay in his wonderful energy and activity.  We find him writing letters before day-break, during the service of his meals, on his journeys, and dictating them to an amanuensis as he walked up and down to take needful exercise.

[Footnote 1:  Collections of his letters to Caesar, Brutus, Cornelius Nepos the historian, Hirtius, Pansa, and to his son, are known to have existed.]