our troubles, do not ruin the poor lad. Indeed he is ruined enough
already. If he has only something to keep him from want, then modest
merit and moderate good fortune will give him all he wants."

Appointed to the government of Cilicia, Cicero takes his son with him
into the province. When he starts on his campaign against the mountain
tribes, the boy and his cousin, young Quintus, are sent to the court of
Deiotarus, one of the native princes of Galatia. "The young Ciceros," he
writes to Atticus, "are with Deiotarus. If need be, they will be taken
to Rhodes." Atticus, it may be mentioned, was uncle to Quintus, and
might be anxious about him. The need was probably the case of the old
prince himself marching to Cicero's help. This he had promised to do,
but the campaign was finished without him. This was in the year 51 B.C.,
and Marcus was nearly fourteen years old, his cousin being his senior by
about two years. "They are very fond of each other," writes Cicero;
"they learn, they amuse themselves together, but one wants the rein, the
other the spur." (Doubtless the latter is the writer's son.) "I am very
fond of Dionysius their teacher: the lads say that he is apt to get
furiously angry. But a more learned and more blameless man there does
not live." A year or so afterwards he seems to have thought less
favorably of him. "I let him go reluctantly when I thought of him as the
tutor of the two lads, but quite willingly as an ungrateful fellow." In
B.C. 49, when the lad was about half through his sixteenth year, Cicero
"gave him his _toga_." To take the _toga_, that is to exchange the gown
of the boy with its stripe of purple for the plain white gown of the
citizen, marked the beginning of independence (though indeed a Roman's
son was even in mature manhood under his father's control). The ceremony
took place at Arpinum, much to the delight of the inhabitants, who felt
of course the greatest pride and interest in their famous
fellow-townsman. But it was a sad time. "There and every where as I