Marcus Cicero, who thus speaks of him in his epistle to Dolabella 879: “I have more need of receiving letters from you, than you have of desiring them from me. For there is nothing going on at Rome in which I think you would take any interest, except, perhaps, that you may like to know that I am appointed umpire between our friends Nicias and Vidius. The one, it appears, alleges in two short verses that Nicias owes him (517) money; the other, like an Aristarchus, cavils at them. I, like an old critic, am to decide whether they are Nicias’s or spurious.”
Again, in a letter to Atticus 880, he says: “As to what you write about Nicias, nothing could give me greater pleasure than to have him with me, if I was in a position to enjoy his society; but my province is to me a place of retirement and solitude. Sicca easily reconciled himself to this state of things, and, therefore, I would prefer having him. Besides, you are well aware of the feebleness, and the nice and luxurious habits, of our friend Nicias. Why should I be the means of making him uncomfortable, when he can afford me no pleasure? At the same time, I value his goodwill.”
XV. LENAEUS was a freedman of Pompey the Great, and attended him in most of his expeditions. On the death of his patron and his sons, he supported himself by teaching in a school which he opened near the temple of Tellus, in the Carium, in the quarter of the city where the house of the Pompeys stood 881. Such was his regard for his patron’s memory, that when Sallust described him as having a brazen face, and a shameless mind, he lashed the historian in a most bitter satire 882, as “a bull’s-pizzle, a gormandizer, a braggart, and a tippler, a man whose life and writings were equally monstrous;” besides charging him with being “a most unskilful plagiarist, who borrowed the language of Cato and other old writers.” It is related, that, in his youth, having escaped from slavery by the contrivance of some of his friends, he took refuge in his own country; and, that after he had applied himself to the liberal arts, he brought the price of his freedom to his former master, who, however, struck by his talents and learning, gave him manumission gratuitously.