This sketch of the country-houses of a man like Cicero may help us
to form some idea of the changeful life of a great personage of the
period. He did not look for the formation of steady permanent habits
in any one place or house; from an early age he was accustomed to
travel, going to Greece or Asia Minor for his "higher education,"
acting perhaps as quaestor, and again as praetor or consul, in some
province, then returning to Rome only to leave it for one or other of
his villas, and rarely settling down in one of these for any length of
time. It was not altogether a wholesome life, so far as the mind
was concerned; real thought, the working out of great problems of
philosophy or politics, is impossible under constant change of scene,
and without the opportunity of forming regular habits.[405] And the
fact is that no man at this time seriously set himself to think out
such problems. Cicero would arrive at Tusculum or Arpinum with some
necessary books, and borrowing others as best he could, would sit down
to write a treatise on ethics or rhetoric with amazing speed, having
an original Greek author constantly before him.
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