Plutarch Cicero 41

[1] He purposed, as we are told, to write a comprehensive history of his native country, combining with it many Greek details, and introducing there all the tales and myths which he had collected; but he was prevented by many public affairs which were contrary to his wishes, and by many private troubles, most of which seem to have been of his own choosing.

[2] For in the first place he divorced his wife Terentia because he had been neglected by her during the war, so that he set out in lack of the necessary means for his journey, and even when he came back again to Italy did not find her considerate of him. For she did not come to him herself, although he tarried a long time at Brundisium, and when her daughter, a young girl, ¹ made the long journey thither, she supplied her with no fitting escort and with no means; nay, she actually stripped and emptied Cicero’s house of all that it contained, besides incurring many large debts.

[3] These, indeed, are the most plausible reasons given for the divorce. Terentia, however, denied that these were the reasons, and Cicero himself made her defence a telling one by marrying shortly afterwards a maiden. ² This he did, as Terentia asserted, out of love for her youthful beauty; but as Tiro, Cicero’s freedman, has written, to get means for the payment of his debts.

[4] For the girl was very wealthy, and Cicero had been left her trustee and had charge of her property. So since he owed many tens of thousands he was persuaded by his friends and relatives to marry the girl, old as he was, and to get rid of his creditors by using her money. But Antony, who spoke of the marriage in his replies to Cicero’s Philippics, says that he cast out of doors the wife with whom he had grown old, and at the same time makes witty jibes upon the stay-at-home habits of Cicero, who was, he said, unfit for business or military service.

[5] Not long after Cicero’s marriage his daughter died in child-birth at the house of Lentulus, to whom she had been married after the death of Piso, her former husband. His friends came together from all quarters to comfort Cicero; but his grief at his misfortune was excessive, so that he actually divorced the wife he had wedded, because she was thought to be pleased at the death of Tullia.