must have surely
learned at last to hate all compromise. But he had fallen on hard times,
and the task before him was impossible. If, however, his hands were
clean when those of others were dirty, and his motives patriotic while
those of others were selfish, so much ought to be said for him.

In the same year he defended Rabirius Postumus, and in doing so carried
on the purpose which he had been instigated to undertake by Caesar in
defending Gabinius. This Rabirius was the nephew of him whom ten years
before Cicero had defended when accused of having killed Saturninus. He
was a knight, and, as was customary with the Equites, had long been
engaged in the pursuit of trade, making money by lending money, and
such like. He had, it seems, been a successful man, but, in an evil time
for himself, had come across King Ptolemy Auletes when there was a
question of restoring that wretched sovereign to the throne of Egypt. As
Cicero was not himself much exercised in this matter, I have not
referred to the king and his affairs, wishing as far as possible to
avoid questions which concern the history of Rome rather than the life
of Cicero; but the affairs of this banished king continually come up in
the records of this time. Pompey had befriended Auletes, and Gabinius,
when Proconsul in Syria, had succeeded in restoring the king to his
throne--no doubt in obedience to Pompey, though not in obedience to the
Senate. Auletes, when in Rome, had required large sums of
money--suppliant kings when in the city needed money to buy venal
Senators--and Rabirius had supplied him. The profits to be made from
suppliant kings when in want of money were generally very great, but
this king seems so have got hold of all the money which Rabirius
possessed, so that the knight-banker found himself obliged to become one
of the king's suite when the king went back to take possession of his
kingdom. In no other way could he hang on to the vast debt that was
owing to him. In Egypt he found himself compelled to undergo various
indignities. He became no better than a head-servant among the king's
servants. One of the charges brought against him was that he, a Roman
knight, had allowed himself to be clothed in the half-feminine garb of
an Oriental attendant upon a king. It was also brought against him as
part of the accusation that he had bribed, or had endeavored to bribe, a
certain Senator. The crime nominally laid to the charge of Rabirius was
"de repetundis"