Mithridates, and had come to Rome. To him I devoted myself entirety,
stirred up by a wonderful appetite for acquiring the Greek philosophy.
But in that, though the variety of the pursuit and its greatness
charmed me altogether, yet it seemed to me that the very essence of
judicial conclusion was altogether suppressed. In that year Sulpicius
perished, and in the next, three of our greatest orators,

Quintus Catulus, Marcus Antonius, and Caius Julius, were cruelly
killed." This was the time of the civil war between Marius and Sulla.
"In the same year I took lessons from Molo the Rhodian, a great
pleader and master of the art." In the next chapter he tells us that
he passed his time also with Diodatus the Stoic, who afterward lived
with him, and died in his house. Here we have an authentic description
of the manner in which Cicero passed his time as a youth at Rome,
and one we can reduce probably to absolute truth by lessening the
superlatives. Nothing in it, however, is more remarkable than the
confession that, while his young intellect rejoiced in the subtle
argumentation of the Greek philosophers, his clear common sense
quarrelled with their inability to reach any positive conclusion.

But before these days of real study had come upon him he had given
himself up to juvenile poetry. He is said to have written a poem
called Pontius Glaucus when he was fourteen years old. This was no
doubt a translation from the Greek, as were most of the poems that he
wrote, and many portions of his prose treatises.[35] Plutarch tells us
that the poem was extant in his time, and declares that, "in process
of time, when he had studied this art with greater application, he was
looked upon as the best poet, as well as the greatest orator in Rome.
"The English translators of Plutarch tell us that their author was an
indifferent judge of Latin poetry, and allege as proof of this that