we now talk of Sulla instead of Sylla, we hardly venture on Antonius
instead of Antony. Considering all this, I have thought it better to
cling to the sounds which have ever been familiar to myself; and as
I talk of Virgil and of Horace and Ovid freely and without fear, so
shall I speak also of Pompey and of Antony and of Catiline. In regard
to Sulla, the change has been so complete that I must allow the old
name to have re-established itself altogether.

It has been customary to notify the division of years in the period of
which I am about to write by dating from two different eras, counting
down from the building of Rome, A.U.C., or "anno urbis conditae," and
back from the birth of Christ, which we English mark by the letters
B.C., before Christ. In dealing with Cicero, writers (both French and
English) have not uncommonly added a third mode of dating, assigning
his doings or sayings to the year of his age. There is again a fourth
mode, common among the Romans, of indicating the special years by
naming the Consuls, or one of them. "O nata mecum consule Manlio,"
Horace says, when addressing his cask of wine. That was, indeed, the
official mode of indicating a date, and may probably be taken as
showing how strong the impression in the Roman mind was of the
succession of their Consuls. In the following pages I will use
generally the date B.C., which, though perhaps less simple than the
A.U.C., gives to the mind of the modern reader a clearer idea of the
juxtaposition of events. The reader will surely know that Christ was
born in the reign of Augustus, and crucified in that of Tiberius; but
he will not perhaps know, without the trouble of some calculation,
how far removed from the period of Christ was the year 648 A.U.C., in
which Cicero was born. To this I will add on the margin the year
of Cicero's life. He was nearly sixty-four when he died. I shall,
therefore, call that year his sixty-third year.