Rome could afford; but even with them a generous allowance must have
been necessary, and this must have come from his father's pocket.

As we go on, a question will arise as to Cicero's income and the
sources whence it came. He asserts of himself that he was never paid
for his services at the bar. To receive such payment was illegal,
but was usual. He claims to have kept himself exempt from whatever
meanness there may have been in so receiving such fees--exempt, at
any rate, from the fault of having broken the law. He has not been
believed. There is no evidence to convict him of falsehood, but he has
not been believed, because there have not been found palpable sources
of income sufficient for an expenditure so great as that which we know
to have been incident to the life he led. But we do not know what were
his father's means. Seeing the nature of the education given to the
lad, of the manner in which his future life was prepared for him from
his earliest days, of the promise made to him from his boyhood of a
career in the metropolis if he could make himself fit for it, of the
advantages which costly travel afforded him, I think we have reason to
suppose that the old Cicero was an opulent man, and that the house at
Arpinum was no humble farm, or fuller's poor establishment.


NOTES:

[31] Hor., lib.i., Ode xxii.,

"Non rura qua; Liris quicta
Mordet aqua taciturnus amnis."

[32] Such was the presumed condition of things at Rome. By the passing