r was being born at the moment
of her divorce from her third husband. She was about thirty-two years of
age, and it seems that Cicero had taken consolation in her misfortunes
from the expected pleasure of her companionship. She was now dead, and
he was left alone.

She had died in February, and we know nothing of the first outbreak of
his sorrow. It appears that he at first buried himself for a while in a
villa belonging to Atticus, near Rome, and that he then retreated to his
own at Astura. From thence, and afterward from Antium, there are a large
number of letters, all dealing with the same subject. He declares
himself to be inconsolable; but he does take consolation from two
matters--from his books on philosophy, and from an idea which occurs to
him that he will perpetuate the name of Tullia forever by the erection
of a monument that shall be as nearly immortal as stones and bricks can
make it.

His letters to Atticus at this time are tedious to the general reader,
because he reiterates so often his instructions as to the purchase of
the garden near Rome in which the monument is to be built; but they are
at the same time touching and natural. "Nothing has been written," he
says, "for the lessening of grief which I have not read at your house;
but my sorrow breaks through it all."[156] Then he tells Atticus that he
too has endeavored to console himself by writing a treatise on
Consolation. "Whole days I write; not that it does any good." In that he
was wrong. He could find no cure for his grief; but he did know that
continued occupation would relieve him, and therefore he occupied
himself continually. "Totos dies scribo." By doing so, he did contrive
not to break his heart. In a subsequent letter he says, "Reading and
writing do not soften it, but they deaden it."[157]

On the Appian Way, a short distance out of Rome, the traveller is shown
a picturesque ancient building, of enormous strength, called the Mole of
Caecilia Metella. It is a castle in size, but is believed to have been
the tomb erected to the memory of Caecilia, the daughter of Metellus
Creticus, and the wife of Crassus the rich. History knows of her nothing
more, and authentic history hardly knows so much of the stupendous
monument. There it stands, however, and is supposed to be proof of what
might be done for a Roman lady in the way of perpetuating her memory.
She was, at any rate, older than Tullia, having been the wife of a man
older than Tullia's