[1] After this, when the government had been changed to a monarchy, Cicero abstained from public affairs and devoted his time to those of the young men who wished to study philosophy, and mainly from his intimacy with these, since they were of the highest birth and standing, he was once more very influential in the state.
[2] He made it his business also to compose and translate philosophical dialogues, and to render into Latin the several terms of dialectics and natural philosophy; for he it was, as they say, who first, or principally, provided Latin names for
phantasia,
synkatathesis,
epokhe, and
katalepsis, as well as for
atomon,
ameres,
kerton,
1
and many others like these, contriving partly by metaphors and partly by new and fitting terms to make them intelligible and familiar.
[3] His facility in verse-making, too, he employed to divert himself. It is said, indeed, that when he applied himself to such work, he would make five hundred verses in a night.
During this time, then, he lived for the most part at his country-seat in Tusculum, and he used to write to his friends that he was living the life of Laertes,
2
either jesting, as was his wont, or because his ambition filled him with a desire for public activity and made him dissatisfied with the turn things had taken.
[4] He rarely went down to the city, and then only to pay court to Caesar, and he was foremost among those who advocated Caesar’s honours and were eager to be ever saying something new about him and his measures. Of this sort is what he said about the statues of Pompey. These Caesar ordered to be set up again after they had been thrown down and taken away; and they were set up again. What Cicero said was that by this act of generosity Caesar did indeed set up the statues of Pompey, but firmly planted his own also.
Cicero. Plutarch. Bernadotte Perrin (Translator). Cambridge, MA. 1919.
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