_On the Nature of the Gods_

_On the Commonwealth_






THE TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS.

INTRODUCTION.


In the year A.U.C. 708, and the sixty-second year of Cicero's age, his
daughter, Tullia, died in childbed; and her loss afflicted Cicero to
such a degree that he abandoned all public business, and, leaving the
city, retired to Asterra, which was a country house that he had near
Antium; where, after a while, he devoted himself to philosophical
studies, and, besides other works, he published his Treatise de
Finibus, and also this treatise called the Tusculan Disputations, of
which Middleton gives this concise description:

"The first book teaches us how to contemn the terrors of death, and to
look upon it as a blessing rather than an evil;

"The second, to support pain and affliction with a manly fortitude;

"The third, to appease all our complaints and uneasinesses under the