Tiro is said to have written a life of his master.  And we certainly owe to his care the preservation of his correspondence.  His weak health did not prevent him from living to the age of a hundred and three.

Cicero pursued his homeward journey by slow stages, and it was not till November 25th that he reached Italy.  His mind was distracted between two anxieties—­the danger of civil war, which he perceived to be daily growing more imminent, and an anxious desire to have his military successes over the Cilician mountaineers rewarded by the distinction of a triumph.  The honor of a public thanksgiving had already been voted to him; Cato, who opposed it on principle, having given him offense by so doing.  A triumph was less easy to obtain, and indeed it seems to show a certain weakness in Cicero that he should have sought to obtain it for exploits of so very moderate a kind.  However, he landed at Brundisium as a formal claimant for the honor.  His lictors had their fasces (bundles of rods inclosing an ax) wreathed with bay leaves, as was the custom with the victorious general who hoped to obtain this distinction.  Pompey, with whom he had a long interview, encouraged him to hope for it, and promised his support.  It was not till January 4th that he reached the capital.  The look of affairs was growing darker and darker, but he still clung to the hopes of a triumph, and would not dismiss his lictors with their ornaments, though he was heartily wearied of their company.  Things went so far that a proposition was actually made in the Senate that the triumph should be granted; but the matter was postponed at the suggestion of one of the consuls, anxious, Cicero thinks, to make his own services more appreciated when the time should come.  Before the end of January he seems to have given up his hopes.  In a few more days he was fairly embarked on the tide of civil war.

CHAPTER XIV.

ATTICUS.

The name of Atticus has been mentioned more than once in the preceding chapters as a correspondent of Cicero.  We have indeed more than five hundred letters addressed to him, extending over a period of almost five-and-twenty years.  There are frequent intervals of silence—­not a single letter, for instance, belongs to the year of the consulship, the reason being that both the correspondents were in Rome.  Sometimes, especially in the later years, they follow each other very closely.  The last was written about a year before Cicero’s death.

Atticus was one of those rare characters who contrive to live at peace with all men.  The times were troublous beyond all measure; he had wealth and position; he kept up close friendship with men who were in the very thickest of the fight; he was ever ready with his sympathy and help for those who were vanquished; and yet he contrived to arouse no enmities; and after a life-long peace, interrupted only by one or two temporary alarms, died in a good old age.