The situation of this villa was close to the spot where now stands the city of Sora(409). "The Liris," says Eustace, "still bears its ancient name till it passes Sora, when it is called the Garigliano. The Fibrenus, still so called, falls into it a little below Sora, and continues to encircle the island in which Cicero lays the scene of the dialogue _De Legibus_. Arpinum, also, still retains its name(410)." Modern travellers bear ample testimony to the scenery round Sora being such as fully justifies the fond partiality of Cicero, and the admiration of Atticus. "Nothing," says Mr Kelsall, "can be imagined finer than the surrounding landscape. The deep azure of the sky, unvaried by a single cloud--Sora on a rock at the foot of the precipitous Apennines--both banks of the Garigliano covered with vineyards--the _fragor aquarum_, alluded to by Atticus in the work _De Legibus_--the coolness, rapidity, and ultramarine hue of the Fibrenus,--the noise of its cataracts--the rich turquoise colour of the Liris--the minor Apennines round Arpino, crowned with umbrageous oaks to their very summits, present scenery hardly elsewhere to be equalled, certainly not to be surpassed, even in Italy(411)." The spot where Cicero's villa stood, was, in the time of Middleton, possessed by a convent of monks, and was called the villa of St Dominic. It was built in the year 1030, from the fragments of the Arpine villa!
"Art, Glory, Freedom, fail--but Nature still is fair."
The first conference, _De Legibus_, is held in a walk on the banks of the Fibrenus; the other two in the island which it formed, and which Cicero called Amalthea, from a villa belonging to Atticus in Epirus. These three books are all that are now extant. It appears, however, that, at the commencement of the fifth dialogue, the sun having then passed the meridian, and its beams striking in such a direction that the speakers were no longer sheltered from its rays by the young plane-trees, which had been recently planted, they left the island, and descending to the banks of the Liris, finished their discourse under the shade of the alder-trees, which stretched their branches over its margin(412).
An ancient oak, which stood in Cicero's pleasure-grounds, led Atticus to inquire concerning the augury which had been presented to Marius, a native of Arpinum, from that very oak, and which Cicero had celebrated in a poem devoted to the exploits of his ferocious countryman, Cicero hints, that the portent was all a fiction; which leads to a discussion on the difference between poetry and history, and the poverty of Rome in the latter department. As Cicero, owing to the multiplicity of affairs, had not then leisure to supply this deficiency, he is requested by his guests, to give them, in the meanwhile, a dissertation on Laws--a subject with which he was so conversant, that he could require no previous preparation. It is agreed, that he should not treat of particular or arbitrary laws,--as those concerning _Stillicide_, and the forms of judicial procedure--but should trace the philosophic principles of jurisprudence to their remotest sources. From this recondite investigation he excludes the Epicureans, who decline all care of the republic, and bids them retire to their gardens. He entreats that the new Academy should be silent, since her bold objections would soon destroy the fair and well-ordered structure of his lofty system. Zeno, Aristotle, and the immediate followers of Plato, he represents as the teachers who best prepare a citizen for performing the duties of social life. Them he professes chiefly to follow; and, in conformity with their system, he announces in the first book, which treats of laws in general, that man being linked to a supreme God by reason and virtue, and the whole species being associated by a communion of feelings and interests, laws are alike founded on divine authority and natural benevolence.