He earnestly entreats Atticus to find and buy him a piece of ground where he can build a _fanum_, i.e.a shrine, to her spirit.

"I wish to have a shrine built, and that wish cannot be rooted out of my heart.

I am anxious to avoid any likeness to a tomb ...

in order to attain as nearly as possible to an apotheosis."[579] A little further on he calls these foolish ideas; but this is doubtless only because he is writing to Atticus, a man of the world, not given to emotion or mysticism.

Cicero is really speaking the language of the Italian mind, for the moment free from philosophical speculation; he believes that his beloved dead lived on, though he could not have proved it in argument.