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Cicero at School

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

Towards the end of his Brutus Cicero gives a memorable account of his education. He begins at the year 90, when he was sixteen, had assumed the toga uirilis, and so was no longer a boy. He was now apprenticed to public life, and while continuing his academic education, in rhetoric and philosophy, was learning the ways of the forum. Of the first sixteen years of his life the Brutus tells us nothing. We have to look elsewhere for evidence about his earlier education, his schooldays as we may call them, and there is such evidence, though his biographers have not made full use of it.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1968

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References

page 18 note 1 Brut. 305–16. (References, unless otherwise stated, are to Cicero's works.)Google Scholar

page 18 note 2 Some would date his assumption of the toga uirilis a year earlier.

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page 20 note 1 He came to Rome in 102 and had lived there for many years when he obtained citizenship in 89. Arch. 5 and 7.Google Scholar

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page 20 note 3 Arch. 6Google Scholar ; De Or. ii. 2Google Scholar . I am inclined to think, however, that Cicero is here referring to teachers of rhetoric.

page 20 note 4 Nepos, , Att. 4. 1.Google Scholar

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page 21 note 1 Ibid. i.

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page 22 note 1 Quintilian, i. 2. 20.Google Scholar