o. His grandfather and his father were both prominent
orators and politicians, as Cicero tells us in his Brutus.[117] The
grandfather reached the praetorship in the year in which Gaius Gracchus
was done to death by his political opponents, while Curio pater was
consul, in 76 B.C., when the confusion which followed the breaking up of
the constitution and of the party of Sulla was at its height. Cicero tells
us that the second Curio had "absolutely no knowledge of letters," but
that he was one of the successful public speakers of his day, thanks to
the training which he had received at home. The third Curio, with whom we
are concerned here, was prepared for public life as his father had been,
for Cicero remarks of him that "although he had not been sufficiently
trained by teachers, he had a rare gift for oratory."[118]

On this point Cicero could speak with authority, because Curio had very
possibly been one of his pupils in oratory and law. At least the very
intimate acquaintance which he has with Curio's character and the
incidents of his life, the fatherly tone of Cicero's letters to him, and
the fact that Curio's nearest friends were among his disciples make this a
natural inference. How intimate this relation was, one can see from the
charming picture which Cicero draws, in the introductory chapters of his
Essay on Friendship, of his own intercourse as a young man with the
learned Augur Scaevola. Roman youth attended their counsellor and friend
when he went to the forum to take part in public business, or sat with him
at home discussing matters of public and private interest, as Cicero and
his companions sat on the bench in the garden with the pontiff Scaevola,
when he set forth the discourse of Laelius on friendship, and thus, out of
his experience, the old man talked to the young men about him upon the
conduct of life as well as upon the technical points of law and oratory.
So many of the brilliant young politicians of this period had been brought
into close relations with Cicero in this way, that when he found himself
forced out of politics by the Caesarians, he whimsically writes to his
friend Paetus that he is inclined to give up public life and open a school,
and not more than a year before his death he pathetically complains that
he has not leisure even to take the waters at the spa, because of the
demands which are made upon him for lessons in oratory.

If it did not take us too far from our chosen subject, it