nated in the bitter words
spoken as to the profanation of the Bona Dea, and led to the means for
achieving Cicero's exile and other untoward passages of his life. In the
year 60 B.C., when Metellus Celer and Afranius were Consuls, Clodius was
tried for insulting the Bona Dea, and the since so-called Triumvirate
was instituted. It has already been shown that Cicero, not without many
doubts, rejected the first offers which were made to him to join the
forces that were so united. He seems to have passed the greater portion
of this year in Rome. One letter only was written from the country, to
Atticus, from his Tusculan villa, and that is of no special moment. He
spent his time in the city, still engaged in the politics of the day; as
to which, though he dreaded the coming together of Caesar and Pompey and
Crassus--those "graves principum amicitias" which were to become so
detrimental to all who were concerned in them--he foresaw as yet but
little of the evil which was to fall upon his own head. He was by no
means idle as to literature, though we have but little of what he wrote,
and do not regret what we have lost. He composed a memoir of his
Consulate in Greek, which he sent to Atticus with an allusion to his own
use of the foreign language intended to show that he is quite at ease in
that matter. Atticus had sent him a memoir, also written in Greek, on
the same subject, and the two packets had crossed each other on the
road. He candidly tells Atticus that his attempt seems to be "horridula
atque incompta," rough and unpolished; whereas Posidonius, the great
Greek critic of Rhodes who had been invited by him, Cicero, to read the
memoir, and then himself to treat the same subject, had replied that he
was altogether debarred from such an attempt by the excellence of his
correspondent's performance.[244] He also wrote three books of a poem on
his Consulate, and sent them to Atticus; of which we have a fragment of
seventy-five lines quoted by himself,[243] and four or five other lines
including that unfortunate verse handed down by Quintilian, "O
fortunatum natam me consule Romam"--unless, indeed, it be spurious, as
is suggested by that excellent critic and whole-hearted friend of the
orator's, M. Gueroult. Previous to these he had produced in hexameters,
also, a translation of the Prognostics of Aratus. This is the second
part of a poem on the heavenly bodies, the first part, the Phaenomena,
having been turned into Latin verse