"On another occasion, when a kinsman on his birthday invited some boys to supper and Cato with them, in order to pass the time they played in a part of the house by themselves, younger and older together: and the game consisted of accusations and trials, and the arresting of those who were convicted. Now one of the boys convicted, who was of a handsome presence, being dragged off by an older boy to a chamber and shut up, called on Cato for aid. Cato seeing what was going on came to the door, and pushing through those who were posted in front of it to prevent him, took the boy out; and went off home with him in a passion, accompanied by other boys."
This is a unique picture of the ways and games of boys in the last century of the Republic. Like the children of all times, they play at that in which they see their fathers most active and interested; and this particular game must have been played in the miserable years of the civil wars and the proscriptions, as Cato was born in 95 B.C. Whether the part played by Cato in the story be true or not, the lesson for us is the same, and we shall find it entirely confirmed in the course of this chapter. The main object of education was the mastery of the art of oratory, and the chief practical use of that art was to enable a man to gain a reputation as an advocate in the criminal courts.[253]
Cicero had one boy, and for several years two, to look after, one his own son Marcus, born in 65 B.C., and the other Quintus, the son of his brother, a year older. Of these boys, until they took the toga virilis, he says hardly anything in his letters to Atticus, though Atticus was the uncle of the elder boy. Only when his brother Quintus was with Caesar in Gaul do we really begin to hear anything about them, and even then more than once, after a brief mention of the young Quintus, he goes off at once to tell his brother about the progress of the villas that are being built for him. But it is clear that the father wished to know about the boy as well as about the villas;[254] and in one letter we find Cicero telling Quintus that he wishes to teach his boy himself, as he has been teaching his own son. "I'll do wonders with him if I can get him to myself when I am at leisure, for at Rome there is not time to breathe (nam Romae respirandi non est locus)."[255] It is clear that the boys, who were only eleven and twelve in this year 54, were being educated at home, and as clear too that Cicero, who was just then very much occupied in the courts, had no time to attend to them himself. 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.