These sad meditations took a practical form
which at first astonishes us, but is not hard to understand when we
have to come to know Cicero well, and to follow the tendencies of
thought in these years. He might erect a tomb to her memory,--but
that would not satisfy him; it would not express his feeling that the
immortal godlike spark within her survived. He earnestly entreats
Atticus to find and buy him a piece of ground where he can build a
_fanum_, i.e. a shrine, to her spirit. "I wish to have a shrine built,
and that wish cannot be rooted out of my heart. I am anxious to avoid
any likeness to a tomb ... in order to attain as nearly as possible to
an apotheosis."[579] A little further on he calls these foolish ideas;
but this is doubtless only because he is writing to Atticus, a man
of the world, not given to emotion or mysticism. Cicero is really
speaking the language of the Italian mind, for the moment free from
philosophical speculation; he believes that his beloved dead lived
on, though he could not have proved it in argument.
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