Larry Miller, Tennessee Place Names: "The community is referred to as Tusculum College, or simply Tusculum. According to one account, early founders named the institution of higher learning after the summer home of the Caesars, outside of Rome."
Tusculum University, a small Presbyterian college located just outside of Greeneville, Tennessee, is named for the ancient Roman city of Tusculum, a resort town in the Alban hills outside of Rome where a number of prominent Romans had villas, most notably Marcus Tullius Cicero. It was in his Tusculan villa, of course, that he wrote one of his well-known philosophical treatises, the Tusculan Disputations.
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| During my visit to Tusculum, I visited the President Andrew Johnson Museum and Library. (Johnson, who served as President upon the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, came from nearby Greeneville.) The small museum features a display dedicated to Cicero, including a bronze portrait. The card next to the portrait reads: “Bronze bust of Marcus Tullius Cicero: Roman lawyer, politician, and philosopher, by Italian sculptor, A. De Luca. (c. 1900).” It doesn’t look like most representations of Cicero. In fact, the prominent wart on his left cheek looks much more like Lucius Caecilius Iucundus, the Pompeian businessman featured in the Cambridge Latin textbook series. |
Ancient Tusculum
Sample Latin Text:
Cicero, Pro Fonteio 41
Cicero, in defending Marcus Fonteius against charges of corruption while he served as a governor in Gaul, cites the long-standing connections of the Fonteius family to Tusculum - a clarissimum municipium - as evidence of his client's strong moral character.
Videte igitur utrum sit aequius hominem honestissimum, virum fortissimum, civem optimum dedi inimicissimis atque immanissimis nationibus an reddi amicis, praesertim cum tot res sint quae vestris animis pro huius innocentis salute supplicent, primum generis antiquitas, quam Tusculo, ex clarissimo municipio, profectam in monumentis rerum gestarum incisam ac notatam videmus, tum autem continuae praeturae, quae et ceteris ornamentis et existimatione innocentiae maxime floruerunt.
Loeb Translation:
"Ask yourselves, then, whether it is more just that an honorable man, a gallant gentleman, and a patriotic citizen should be given over to hostile and insensible barbarians or given back to his friends, especially when there are so many circumstances which appeal to your sympathies and urge the acquittal of my innocent client. There is first the antiquity of his family, springing, as we know, from the illustrious municipality of Tusculum, upon the records of whose history it is conspicuously engraved; there is next an unbroken series of praetorships held by that family, distinguished by general brilliance of achievement, but above all by the spotless character they bear before the world."
Sample Latin Text:
Cicero, Pro Fonteio 41
Cicero, in defending Marcus Fonteius against charges of corruption while he served as a governor in Gaul, cites the long-standing connections of the Fonteius family to Tusculum - a clarissimum municipium - as evidence of his client's strong moral character.
Videte igitur utrum sit aequius hominem honestissimum, virum fortissimum, civem optimum dedi inimicissimis atque immanissimis nationibus an reddi amicis, praesertim cum tot res sint quae vestris animis pro huius innocentis salute supplicent, primum generis antiquitas, quam Tusculo, ex clarissimo municipio, profectam in monumentis rerum gestarum incisam ac notatam videmus, tum autem continuae praeturae, quae et ceteris ornamentis et existimatione innocentiae maxime floruerunt.
Loeb Translation:
"Ask yourselves, then, whether it is more just that an honorable man, a gallant gentleman, and a patriotic citizen should be given over to hostile and insensible barbarians or given back to his friends, especially when there are so many circumstances which appeal to your sympathies and urge the acquittal of my innocent client. There is first the antiquity of his family, springing, as we know, from the illustrious municipality of Tusculum, upon the records of whose history it is conspicuously engraved; there is next an unbroken series of praetorships held by that family, distinguished by general brilliance of achievement, but above all by the spotless character they bear before the world."
