the consideration not to trouble him after ten or eleven in the forenoon
(fashionable calls in those days began uncomfortably early); but there
were one or two, especially his next-door neighbour, Arrius, and a
friend's friend, named Sebosus, who were in and out at all hours: the
former had an unfortunate taste for philosophical discussion, and was
postponing his return to Rome (he was good enough to say) from day to day
in order to enjoy these long mornings in Cicero's conversation. Such are
the doleful complaints in two or three of the letters to Atticus; but,
like all such complaints, they were probably only half in earnest:
popularity, even at a watering-place, was not very unpleasant, and the
writer doubtless knew how to practise the social philosophy which he
recommends to others, and took his place cheerfully and pleasantly in the
society which he found about him--not despising his honest neighbours
because they had not all adorned a consulship or saved a state.

There were times when Cicero fancied that this rural life, with all its
refinements of wealth and taste and literary leisure, was better worth
living than the public life of the capital. His friends and his books, he
said, were the company most congenial to him; "politics might go to the
dogs;" to count the waves as they rolled on the beach was happiness; he
"had rather be mayor of Antium than consul at Rome"; "rather sit in
his own library with Atticus in their favourite seat under the bust of
Aristotle than in the curule chair". It is true that these longings for
retirement usually followed some political defeat or mortification; that
his natural sphere, the only life in which he could be really happy, was
in the keen excitement of party warfare--the glorious battle-field of the
Senate and the Forum. The true key-note of his mind is to be found in
these words to his friend Coelius: "Cling to the city, my friend, and
live in her light: all employment abroad, as I have felt from my earliest
manhood, is obscure and petty for those who have abilities to make them