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'Ad illa mihi pro se quisque acriter intendat animum, quae vita, quae mores fuerint.'—LIVY, Praefatio.
This book was originally intended to be a companion to ProfessorTucker's Life in Ancient Athens, published in Messrs. Macmillan'sseries of Handbooks of Archaeology and Art; but the plan was abandonedfor reasons on which I need not dwell, and before the book was quitefinished I was called to other and more specialised work. As itstands, it is merely an attempt to supply an educational want. At ourschools and universities we read the great writers of the last age ofthe Republic, and learn something of its political and constitutionalhistory; but there is no book in our language which supplies a pictureof life and manners, of education, morals, and religion in thatintensely interesting period. The society of the Augustan age, whichin many ways was very different, is known much better; and of late myfriend Professor Dill's fascinating volumes have familiarised us withthe social life of two several periods of the Roman Empire. But theage of Cicero is in some ways at least as important as any period ofthe Empire; it is a critical moment in the history of Graeco-Romancivilisation. And in the Ciceronian correspondence, of more than ninehundred contemporary letters, we have the richest treasure-house ofsocial life that has survived from any period of classical antiquity.
Apart from this correspondence and the other literature of the time,my mainstay throughout has been the Privatleben der Römer ofMarquardt, which forms the last portion of the great Handbuch derRömischen Altertümer of Mommsen and Marquardt. My debt is great alsoto Professors Tyrrell and Purser, whose labours have provided us witha text of Cicero's letters which we can use with confidence; thecitations from these letters have all been verified in the new Oxfordtext edited by Professor Purser. One other name I must mention withgratitude. I firmly believe that the one great hope for classicallearning and education lies in the interest which the unlearned publicmay be brought to feel in ancient life and thought. We have just lostthe veteran French scholar who did more perhaps to create andmaintain such an interest than any man of his time; and I gladly hereacknowledge that it was Boissier's Cicéron et ses amis that in myyounger days made me first feel the reality of life and characterin an age of which I then hardly knew anything but the perplexingpolitical history.
I have to thank my old pupils, Mr. H.E. Mann and Mr. Gilbert Watson,for kind help in revising the proofs.
Virgil's hero arrives at Rome by the Tiber: we follow his example;justification of this; view from Janiculum and its lessons; advantagesof the position of Rome, for defence and advance; disadvantages as tocommerce and salubrity; views of Roman writers; a walk through thecity in 50 B.C.; Forum Boarium and Circus maximus; Porta Capena; viaSacra; summa sacra via and view of Forum; religious buildings ateastern end of Forum; Forum and its buildings in Cicer