We begged off the cowering delinquent from this extreme of retribution. Picking up the bridle flung to him, he followed us at a disconsolate and respectful distance. Cicero had a fine, peppery temper of his own. Did he ever have a fracas with his charioteer in this steep lane, I wonder?
We dismounted at what are supposed to be the ruins of his Villa. Some archæologists give the preference to the spot now occupied by the Villa Ruffinella, which we had seen on our way up. The best authorities had decided, at the date of our excursion to Tusculum, that the orator’s favorite residence, “ad latera superiora” of the eminence culminating in the Tusculan fortress, stood nearer the city than was once thought, and that its remains are the thick walls and vaulted doorway we examined in profound belief in this theory. It is not an extensive nor a very picturesque remainder, although the buried foundations may be traced over a vast area. Against the sunniest wall grows an immense ivy-tree, spreading broad arms and tenacious fingers over the brick-work. The side adhering to the wall is flat, of course. We measured the outer surface, at the height of five feet from the ground. It was thirty-nine inches from side to side. This may almost be rated as the diameter, the bark being very slightly protuberant.
For beauty of situation the Villa was without an equal. Forsyth says,—“On the acclivity of the hill were scattered the villas of Balbus, Brutus, Catullus, Metellus, Crassus, Pompey, Cæsar, Gabinus, Lucullus, Lentulus and Varro, so that Cicero was in the midst of his acquaintances and friends.”
“In that place, alone”—wrote Cicero of his Tusculan home to his best friend and correspondent—“do I find rest and repose from all my troubles and toil.”
In his “Essay upon Old Age,” he drawls an attractive picture of the country-life of a gentleman-farmer at that time. I have not room to transcribe it here, faithfully as it portrays the real tastes and longings of the ambitious lawyer and successful politician. “What need”—and there is a sigh for the Tusculan upper hillside in the sentence—“to dwell upon the charm of the green fields, the well-ordered shrubberies, the beauty of vineyards and olive-groves?”
These smile no more about the site of the desolated villa. Terraces, slopes and summits are overgrown with wild grass. A few goats were feeding upon these at the door where little Tullia—the “Tulliola” of the fond father—his “delicia nostræ”—may have frolicked while he watched her from the colonnade overlooking Rome,—or one of “the seats with niches against the wall adorned with pictures;”—or, still, within sound of her voice, wrote in his library to Atticus, that the young lady threatened to sue him, (Atticus,) for breach of contract in not having sent her a promised gift.
The paved road, firm velvet ridges of turf rising between the blocks, runs beyond the Villa, directly to a small theatre. The upper walls are gone, but the foundations are entire, with fifteen rows of seats. It is a semicircular hollow in the turfy bank, excavated by Lucien Bonaparte while he lived at Villa Ruffinella. We descended half a dozen steps and stood upon the stone platform where it is generally believed Cicero held the famous Tusculan Disputations. The topics of these familiar dialogues or talks were “Contempt of Death,” “Constancy in Suffering,” and the like. Did he draw consolation from a review of his own philosophy, upon that bitter day when, deserted by partisans, and chased by his enemies, he withdrew to his beloved “Tusculaneum” and from these heights looked down upon the city whose pride he had been?—
“Rerum, pulcherrima Roma!”
Waiting, doubting, dreading, he at length received the news that a price had been set upon his head, fled in a blind, strange panic; returned upon his steps; again took flight, doubled a second time upon the track, and sat down, stunned and desperate, to await the death-blow.
Instead of the myrtle-tree, thorn-bushes and brambles grow rankly in