s
and Proconsuls, the object of which was to enforce the recall of Piso
from Macedonia and Gabinius from Syria, and to win Caesar's favor by
showing that Caesar should be allowed to keep the two Gauls and
Illyricum. To these must be added two others, made within the same
period, for Caelius and Balbus. The close friendship between Cicero and
the young man Caelius was one of the singular details of the orator's
life. Balbus was a Spaniard, attached to Caesar, and remarkable as having
been the first man not an Italian who achieved the honor of the
Consulship.

It has been disputed whether the first four of these orations were
really the work of Cicero, certain German critics and English scholars
having declared them to be "parum Ciceronias"--too little like Cicero.
That is the phrase used by Nobbe, who published a valuable edition of
all Cicero's works, after the text of Ernesti, in a single volume. Mr.
Long, in his introduction to these orations, denounces them in language
so strong as to rob them of all chance of absolute acceptance from those
who know the accuracy of Mr. Long's scholarship.[2] There may probably
have been subsequent interpolations. The first of the four, however, is
so closely referred to by Cicero himself in the speech made by him two
years subsequently in the defence of Plancius, that the fact of an
address to the Senate in the praise of those who had assisted him in his
return cannot be doubted; and we are expressly told by the orator that,
because of the importance of the occasion, he had written it out before
he spoke it.[3] As to the Latinity, it is not within my scope, nor
indeed within my power, to express a confident opinion; but as to the
matter of the speech, I think that Cicero, in his then frame of mind,
might have uttered what is attributed to him. Having said so much, I
shall best continue my narrative by dealing with the four speeches as
though they were genuine.

[Sidenote: B.C. 57, aetat. 50.]

Cicero landed at Brundisium on the 5th of August, the day on which his
recall from exile had been enacted by the people, and there met his
daughter Tullia, who had come to welcome him back to Italy on that her
birthday. But she had come as a widow, having just lost her first
husband, Piso Frugi. At this time she was not more than nineteen years
old. Of Tullia's feelings we know nothing from her own expressions, as
they have not reached us; but from the warmth of her father's love for
her, a