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Young Quintus, we hear, gets on
well with his rhetoric master; Cicero does not wholly approve the
style in which he is being taught, and thinks he may be able to teach
him his own more learned style, though the boy himself seems to prefer
the declamatory method of the teacher.[256] The last entry in these
letters to the absent father is curious:[257] "I love your Cicero as
he deserves and as I ought. But I am letting him leave me, because I
don't want to keep him from his masters, and because his mother is
going away,--and without her I am nervous about his greediness!" Up to
this point he has written in the warmest terms of the boy, but here,
as so often in Cicero's letters about other people, disapprobation is
barely hinted in order not to hurt the feelings of his correspondent.
The one thing that is really pleasing in these allusions is the
genuine desire of both parents that their boys shall be of good
disposition and well educated. But of real training or of home
discipline we unluckily get no hint.


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