But in that, though the variety of the pursuit and its greatness charmed me altogether, yet it seemed to me that the very essence of judicial conclusion was altogether suppressed.

In that year Sulpicius perished, and in the next, three of our greatest orators, Quintus Catulus, Marcus Antonius, and Caius Julius, were cruelly killed." This was the time of the civil war between Marius and Sulla.

"In the same year I took lessons from Molo the Rhodian, a great pleader and master of the art." In the next chapter he tells us that he passed his time also with Diodatus the Stoic, who afterward lived with him, and died in his house.

Here we have an authentic description of the manner in which Cicero passed his time as a youth at Rome, and one we can reduce probably to absolute truth by lessening the superlatives.

Nothing in it, however, is more remarkable than the confession that, while his young intellect rejoiced in the subtle argumentation of the Greek philosophers, his clear common sense quarrelled with their inability to reach any positive conclusion.
But before these days of real study had come upon him he had given himself up to juvenile poetry.