Note 139 — LIFE OF CICERO.

Cicero himself did not claim any illustrious descent. The family had been long settled at Arpinum, now Arpino, a Volscian town. The first person who is mentioned as bearing the name of Cicero is C. Claudius Cicero, a tribunus plebis, B.C. 454 (Liv. 3. c. 31). M. Tullius Cicero, the grandfather of the orator, was born B.C. 140, and nothing is known of the orator’s family before him. Arpinum received the limited Roman civitas in B.C. 303 (Liv. 10. c. 1), that is, probably Commercium and Connubium, for the suffrage (suffragii latio) was not given to the people of Arpinum till B.C. 188 (Liv. 38. c. 36). The orator’s grandfather lived to see his grandson born B.C. 106. Cicero’s father belonged to the class of Equites. He spent the greater part of his life on his lands at Arpinum, near the junction of the Fibrenus with the Liris (Garigliano). He afterwards removed to Rome to educate his sons Marcus and Quintus, and had a house in the Carinæ. Among his friends were the orators M. Antonius and Lucius Crassus, and Q. Scævola the Augur, a distinguished Jurist. His sons had accordingly the advantage of being acquainted in their youth with some of the most distinguished of the Romans. He is said to have died B.C. 64, the year before his son was consul. A letter of Cicero to Atticus (i. 6) is generally supposed to speak of his father’s death, but the true reading is undoubtedly “pater a nobis discessit;” and it is plain that Cicero is simply speaking of his father leaving Rome for a time (Drumann, Tullii, p. 213).