3.4
and so at last, in his destitution, the young man had recourse to Cicero. Cicero’s friends encouraged him to undertake the case, arguing that he would never again have a more brilliant or a more honourable opportunity to win fame. Accordingly, he undertook the defence of Roscius,See the oration pro Roscio Amerino . won his cause, and men admired him for it; but fearing Sulla, he made a journey to Greece, after spreading a report that his health needed attention.
3.5
For in fact he was spare and lean, and owing to a weakness of the stomach could only with difficulty take a little light food late in the day; his voice, however, was full and strong, but harsh and unmodulated, and since, owing to the vehemence and passion of his oratory, it was always forced into the higher tones, it made men apprehensive for his health.
4.1
On coming to Athens he attended the lectures of Antiochus of Ascalon, and was charmed by his fluency and grace of diction, although he disapproved of his innovations in doctrine. For Antiochus had already fallen away from what was called the New Academy and abandoned the sect of Carneades, either moved thereto by the clear evidence of the sense-perceptions,This the New Academy refused to admit. or, as some say, led by a feeling of ambitious opposition to the disciples of Cleitomachus and Philon to change his views and cultivate in most cases the doctrine of the Stoics.
4.2
But Cicero loved the systems which Antiochus discarded and devoted himself the rather to them, purposing, in case he was altogether driven out of a public career, to change his home to Athens, away from the forum and the business of the state, and spend his life in the quiet pursuit of philosophy.
