Cicero

After this, when the government had been changed to a monarchy, Cicero abstained from public affairs and devoted his time to those of the young men who wished to study philosophy, and mainly from his intimacy with these, since they were of the highest birth and standing, he was once more very influential in the state.

He made it his business also to compose and translate philosophical dialogues, and to render into Latin the several terms of dialectics and natural philosophy; for he it was, as they say, who first, or principally, provided Latin names for phantasia, synkatathesis, epokhe, and katalepsis, as well as for atomon, ameres, kerton,[*](In Latin, respectively, visum (conception), assensio (assent), assensionis retentio (withholding of assent), comprehensio (perception), individuum (atom), vacuum (void); ameres (indivisible), with its Latin equivalent, does not occur in the extant works of Cicero (Gudeman).) and many others like these, contriving partly by metaphors and partly by new and fitting terms to make them intelligible and familiar.

His facility in verse-making, too, he employed to divert himself. It is said, indeed, that when he applied himself to such work, he would make five hundred verses in a night.

During this time, then, he lived for the most part at his country-seat in Tusculum, and he used to write to his friends that he was living the life of Laertes,[*](Cf. Odyssey, i. 189 ff. ) either jesting, as was his wont, or because his ambition filled him with a desire for public activity and made him dissatisfied with the turn things had taken.