The third letter from Cicero in this year was to Sextius, who was then acting as Quæstor--or Proquæstor, as Cicero calls him--with Antony as Proconsul in Macedonia. It is specially interesting as telling us that the writer had just completed the purchase of a house in Rome from Crassus for a sum amounting to about £30,000 of our money. There was probably no private mansion in Rome of greater pretension. It had been owned by Livius Drusus, the Tribune--a man of colossal fortune, as we are told by Mommsen--who was murdered at the door of it thirty years before. It afterward passed into the hands of Crassus the rich, and now became the property of Cicero. We shall hear how it was destroyed during his exile, and how fraudulently made over to the gods, and then how restored to Cicero, and how rebuilt at the public expense. The history of the house has been so well written that we know even the names of Cicero's two successors in it, Censorinus and Statilius.[217]
It is interesting to know the sort of house which Cicero felt to be suitable to his circumstances, for by that we may guess what his circumstances were. In making this purchase he is supposed to have abandoned the family house in which his father had lived next door to the new mansion, and to have given it up to his brother. Hence we may argue that he had conceived himself to have risen in worldly circumstances. Nevertheless, we are informed by himself in this letter to Sextius that he had to borrow money for the occasion--so much so that, being a man now indebted, he might be supposed to be ripe for any conspiracy. Hence has come to us a story through Aulus Gellius, the compiler of anecdotes, to the effect that Cicero was fain to borrow this money from a client whose cause he undertook in requital for the favor so conferred. Aulus Gellius collected his stories two centuries afterward for the amusement of his children, and has never been regarded as an authority in matters for which confirmation has been wanting. There is no allusion to such borrowing from a client made by any contemporary. In this letter to Sextius, in which he speaks jokingly of his indebtedness, he declares that he has been able to borrow any amount he wanted at six per cent--twelve being the ordinary rate--and gives as a reason for this the position which he has achieved by his services to the State. Very much has been said of the story, as though the purchaser of the house had done something of which he ought to have been ashamed, but this seems to have sprung entirely from the idea that a man who, in the midst of such wealth as prevailed at Rome, had practised so widely and so successfully the invaluable profession of an advocate, must surely have taken money for his services. He himself has asserted that he took none, and all the evidence that we have goes to show that he spoke the truth. Had he taken money, even as a loan, we should have heard of it from nearer witnesses than Aulus Gellius, if, as Aulus Gellius tells us, it had become known at the time. But because he tells his friend that he has borrowed money for the purpose, he is supposed to have borrowed it in a disgraceful manner! It will be found that all the stones most injurious to Cicero's reputation have been produced in the same manner. His own words have been misinterpreted--either the purport of them, if spoken in earnest, or their bearing, if spoken in joke--and then accusations have been founded on them.[218]