Caesar also went to Rhodes, and he and Cicero both attended the lectures of Molo in rhetoric, in which study, as well as in philosophy, lectures were to be heard in all the great Greek cities.[304] Cicero sent his own son to "the University in Athens" at the age of twenty, giving him an ample allowance and doubtless much good advice.

The young man soon outran his allowance and got into debt; the good advice he seems to have failed to utilise, and in fact gave his father considerable anxiety.
The following letter, which seems to show that a youth who had excellent opportunities might still be lacking in principle and self-control, is the only one which survives of the letters of undergraduates of that day.

It was written by the young Cicero, after he had repented and undertaken to reform, not to his father himself, but to the faithful friend and freedman of his father, Tiro, who afterwards edited the collection of letters in which he inserted it.[305] It is on the whole a pleasing letter, and seems to show real affection for Tiro, who had known the writer from his infancy.

It is a little odd in the choice of words, perhaps a trifle rhetorical.

The reader shall be left to decide for himself whether it is perfectly straight and genuine.