thought for awhile of giving himself up to philosophy, so that he
was called Greek and Sophist in ridicule. It is not, however, to be
believed that he ever for a moment abandoned the purpose he had formed
for his own career. It will become evident as we go on with his life,
that this so-called philosophy of the Greeks was never to him a matter
of more than interesting inquiry. A full, active, human life, in which
he might achieve for himself all the charms of high rank, gilded by
intelligence, erudition, and refined luxury, in which also he might
serve his country, his order, and his friends--just such a life as our
leading men propose to themselves here, to-day, in our country--this
is what Cicero had determined to achieve from his earliest years, and
it was not likely that he should be turned from it by the pseudo logic
of Greek philosophers, That the logic even of the Academy was false to
him we have ample evidence, not only in his life but in his writings.
There is a story that, during his travels, he consulted the oracle at
Delphi as to his future career, and that on being told that he must
look to his own genius and not to the opinion of the world at large,
he determined to abandon the honors of the Republic. That he should
have talked among the young men of the day of his philosophic
investigations till they laughed at him and gave him a nickname, may
be probable, but it cannot have been that he ever thought of giving up
the bar.

In the year of his return to Rome, when he was thirty, he married
Terentia, a noble lady, of whom we are informed that she had a good
fortune, and that her sister was one of the Vestal Virgins.[77] Her
nobility is inferred from the fact that the virgins were, as a rule,
chosen from the noble families, though the law required only that they
should be the daughters of free parents, and of persons engaged in no
mean pursuits. As to the more important question of Terentia's fortune