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Epistulae ad Familiares, IV. xii.-xiii.

and there, considering the resources available at Athens, the funeral I took some pains to arrange for him was quite a handsome one.

I could not prevail upon the Athenians to make a grant of any burial ground within the city, as they alleged that they were prevented from doing so by their religious regulations; anyhow, we must admit that it was a concession they had never yet made to anybody. They did allow us to do what was the next best thing, to inter him in the precincts of any gymnasium we chose. We selected a spot near the most famous gymnasium in the whole world, that of the Academe,[1] and it was there we cremated the body, and after that arranged that the Athenians should also ask for tenders for the erection on the same spot of a marble monument in his honour. Thus have I discharged in his death as in his life all the duties he could claim from one who was his colleague and his familiar friend. Farewell.

XIII

M. T. Cicero to P. Nigidius Figulus[2]

Rome, August or September, 46 B.C.

1 I have been asking myself for some time past what I had best write to you; but not only does no definite theme suggest itself, but even the conventional style of letter-writing does not appeal to me. For one customary branch of correspondence in vogue among us when all was well,[3] has been torn away from us by the hardship of the times, and fortune has effectually debarred me from writing or

  1. ↑ Where Plato taught, on the north side of Athens.
  2. ↑ He was considered, next after Varro, the most learned man in Rome, especially in natural science and astronomy. He served Cicero well at the time of the Catilinarian conspiracy, and was praetor in 58. He sided with Pompey in the Civil War, and died in exile the year after this letter was written.
  3. ↑ He means the "intimate and jocular" (familiare et iocosum) style of writing, to which he refers in ii. 4. 1.
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