re he soon
made himself a great name, the more distinguished since he kept up the
old custom of refusing fees. A wealthy marriage increased his
consequence. His honesty and ability made him respected by all sorts of
people. Cicero used his gifts in the most honourable way by defending
the people of the provinces, who before his time had hardly ever got a
hearing, against the rapacity of some of the Roman tax collectors.
A case which made his name known throughout the Roman world was the
prosecution of Caius Verres which he undertook on behalf of the people
of Sicily. Verres, once an officer in Marius's army, was a man of
notoriously bad character. Like other praetors he looked on his
governorship simply as an opportunity to make money for himself and his
friends; it was freely said, even in Rome, that his misrule was ruining
Sicily. And Sicily was one of the chief granaries of Rome. The greatest
excitement was aroused over the case because the Democratic party took
it up as a means of discrediting the Government; and at the same time
brought in a Bill for the reform of the law courts by making the jurors
not senators only, but, as before Sulla's time, men belonging to the
Equestrian Order. This frightened the Conservatives: they saw that much
hung on the case of Verres. Quintus Hortensius, the most famous advocate
of his time, agreed to defend him.

Cicero went to Sicily to collect evidence. He was quick to feel, in all
his sensitive nerves, the tense atmosphere of excitement gathering round
the case. It was to make or mar him. His genius rose delighted to the
great occasion. He understood, as the Conservatives did not, the
feelings that were dumbly stirring the mind of the ordinary decent
Roman, and could give them voice. As the evidence he had collected was
unrolled the story of the greed of Verres and the suffering of the
people of Sicily was laid bare step by step. Excitement and anger
against the class in power who did and defended such things grew and
grew. Each day an enormous crowd thronged the Forum and at times its
feelings made it positively dangerous. One witness told how a Roman
citizen had been crucified: his appeal, 'Civis Romanus sum--I am a Roman
citizen', had fallen on deaf ears. At this the hearers were stirred to
such rage that Verres was only saved from being torn to pieces by the
adjournment of the hearing. After fourteen days the defendants realized
that their case was lost; no judge dared acquit