We have no letters from Atticus to Cicero.
[49] Quintilian, lib.x., ca.

1.
[50] Clemens of Alexandria, in his exhortation to the Gentiles, is very severe upon the iniquities of these rites.

"All evil be to him," he says, "who brought them into fashion, whether it was Dardanus, or Eetion the Thracian, or Midas the Phrygian." The old story which he repeats as to Ceres and Proserpine may have been true, but he was altogether ignorant of the changes which the common-sense of centuries had produced.
[51] De Legibus, lib.ii., c.

xiv.
[52] It was then that the foreign empire commenced, in ruling which the simplicity and truth of purpose and patriotism of the Republic were lost.
[53] The reverses of fortune to which Marius was subjected, how he was buried up to his neck in the mud, hiding in the marshes of Minturnae, how he would have been killed by the traitorous magistrates of that city but that he quelled the executioners by the fire of his eyes; how he sat and glowered, a houseless exile, among the ruins of Carthage--all which things happened to him while he was running from the partisans of Sulla--are among the picturesque episodes of history.

There is a tragedy called the _Wounds of Civil War_, written by Lodge, who was born some eight years before Shakspeare, in which the story of Marius is told with some exquisite poetry, but also with some ludicrous additions.