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46 B.C.] and for statesmanship to Pericles and Theramenes. These compliments called forth a suitable letter in reply from Cicero. "I wrote," he says to Atticus, "precisely as I should have done to an equal; for I really think highly of his work, as I mentioned to you in conversation, so that without flattery I was able to write what he, I think, will be pleased to read."

At some time during the year 46 the estrangement between Cicero and his wife Terentia ended in a divorce. We hear very little about this in his letters. He would hardly write on such a subject to any one but Atticus, and probably Atticus was with him when matters came to a crisis. Soon afterwards Cicero took a second wife, a young and wealthy woman named Publilia, who had been his ward. In the interest of this new connection, in literature and in the pleasures of society, graver cares were for the moment forgotten. "I would write more at length," he says in a letter to Cassius, "if I had any nonsense to write about, for we can hardly discuss serious topics without danger. Well at any rate, you say, we can laugh. That is not so easy after all; but